Ralph welcomes New York Times journalist, David Enrich, author of “Murder the Truth” an in-depth exposé of the attack on freedom of the press as protected by the landmark Supreme Court decision “Sullivan v.
Thank you Ralph for all that you do. Especially your tweet to the President telling him just what kind of person he is. We have been conned into voting for the wrong people for generations and these Hyenas are all Red and Blue. They serve The Party and take their $Reward$ out of our hides and people in foreign countries. WAR, COERCION, DECEIT, EXPLOITATION, COVERT DESTRUCTION of other people's countries and BRUTE MILITARY FORCE is the sum of what these people we elect bring to the world. Hell, they even stand and applaud Netanyahu when he comes to Washington to lecture to them. But America continues to buy their line so I expect we will see more of the same and worse to come in the future.
I don't even listen to your segments with Trump Derangement Syndrome obsessed Bruce Fein. I get the sense that your long history with him has led you to naively believe his nonsense. Analyzing the truly bad things that Trump and Musk are doing and discussing strategies to stop them is valuable. Obsessing about the ridiculous fairytale ideas that Trump embodies 'fascist dictatorship' akin to Nazism, that January 6 was an 'insurrection' or 'coup' (when it clearly wasn't one) and that we can impeach Trump (when there is no way in hell that is going to happen, and there is in fact no strong legal basis for it) is not only not helpful, it is destructive to bringing together conservatives and liberals to fight oligarchy.
I’m sorry you feel that way. I don’t know Ralph personally, but I’ve followed him for 21 years and I don’t get the impression he is swayed by any particular person. I rarely disagree with Mr. Nader, but I do on occasion. This is not an instance in which I do, however.
Then you need to stop listening to NPR, Rachel Maddow, Thom Hartmann, etc, and deprogram yourself. The narrative that Trump is somehow some new and unique fascist threat to the nation (and that his supporters are racist Nazis) is utterly ridiculous and has no basis in fact. This country already became fascist decades ago under President Bill Clinton.
Fascism is the merging of state and corporate power, enforced by mass surveillance, elite control of the media, police violence, and mass imprisonment.
The administration of Bill Clinton turned the US into a fascist oligarchy with:
- The Biden Crime Bill (doubled the prison population)
- 120,000 more cops (for a war on Black people)
- Repeal of Glass-Steagall (allowing Wall Street to usurp the economy)
- Bankers from Goldman Sachs, et al running the White House (Trump is simply switching to Tech moguls)
- The Telecommunications Act (letting 6 corporations replace free speech)
Obsessing about Trump as if none of this was established long before 2016, destructively derails liberals into thinking the problem is solved when the 'Democrats' regain control of Washington DC.
I was trained in Ralph Nader's PIRGs in the mid 80s and have been a full time grassroots environmental and social justice organizer ever since. Ralph is a mentor and personal hero of mine.
But my respect for him is being severely strained, and pissed away, by his buying into these ridiculous paranoid hysterics about Trump.
Is Trump bad? You bet. Let's stick to what he is doing that is bad and work to stop it instead of fanning the flames of paranoia which alienates working class liberals and conservatives from each other and divides the nation against itself, thereby enabling the oligarchs who control all of us, to literally get away with murder, because people are fighting each other instead of those oligarchs.
Why do you just assume what people listen to? Why anyone who sees the danger we are in have a problem? If you were educated in this country you are already in a disadvantage. I was educated in another country where we MUST study the history of the world beginning in 7th grade. I also lived under a dictatorship, a fascist regime. So I can tell you that we are in the early stages of fascism. Stop assuming that everyone is just freaking out for no reason and go study the what happened to real people in those countries.
All you listed are really true. It does not diminish the danger we are in right now. What kind of comparison is this, where just because one group of people did bad things then we cannot point out the much worse situation being delivered by another group of people?
"Fascism is the merging of state and corporate power, enforced by mass surveillance, elite control of the media, police violence, and mass imprisonment." Ok, which of those are Trump not doing yet? And saying that "elite" media is only the "liberal" media does not count since you already established that the media became part of "Clinton's fascism". People are being deported based on absurd claims or as part of clear persecution. Musk is the de facto president, Il Duce salute and all. People are being chastised (only that , for now) for targeting Tesla. Police violence comes way before Clinton, basically since police became an institution. Besides, it is a fact that the police is swarmed with white supremacists.
Forbidden words in scientific words, not being able to criticize the president, being persecuted for not bending to his wishes, ending the department of education, ending Medicaid (and by ending I don't mean scraping. I mean that it is with intention of harm, by firing so many people that the departments/agencies cannot fulfill the job), more money to military and mercenaries, demanding loyalty form law enforcement, persecuting one group of people who are not breaking laws (first they came for...), all of this, all at once, under a democratic party that is hiding in fear, and a republican party that has been salivating for many of those policies, or that is so afraid of Trump that they remain silent and lie to us.
It is terrible, it is fascism, it is not hysteria. Wake up
Look. Because 1) you are not from the US and clearly don't understand how our politics work, and 2) whatever media you are reading, listening to and watching is not giving you an accurate picture of what is actually happening, you are completely missing the point.
I fully recognize that the Trump/Musk administration is even more authoritarian than previous administrations, and is putting us on an all too-easy-slope toward totalitarianism. What *you* don't recognize is that under a president Harris the same worsening progression toward totalitarian fascism (which again has *already* been worsening with every administration for 30 YEARS) would still have been happening, but it would have been even worse because liberals in the US would *not* be opposing it. That makes the potential danger under a president like Clinton or Harris far more dangerous, which is why US Greens worked so hard to bring those 'Democrats' down. (And note: The fact that you naively believe we are just in the "early stages of fascism" when we've already been UNDER full fascism for 30 years under 'liberals' is telling, and shows that you are being influenced by Soros, Omidyar, Atlantic Council and neoliberal-government news sources that are not telling you the whole truth, and often outright lying to you.)
In any case, what Trump and Musk are doing is indeed *also* fascist and chilling. (Note: Several European leaders and governments are heading in essentially the same direction, so perhaps look to the plank in your own eye and deal with *that* rather than pontificating to US residents on how to handle our own government.)
It is no surprise at all that the US and Europe have several governments in which conservative totalitarian attitudes are running the show, because the global economy is collapsing on the lower, working and middle classes, and whenever that happens we inevitably get these flips into conservative authoritarianism.
But Trump is only going to be in office for four years, and economic cycles change. In addition, Trump and Musk don't remotely have the deep networks and movement (especially within the military) that Hitler and the Nazis had in the 30s. Even if Trump and Musk seek to completely hijack the US government, they have absolutely no structural ability to do so.
So the US has far less an imperative to go into a mode of fear about Trump because his particular brand of fascism is highly unlikely to continue after 2028. The US system is not built for that, and doesn't work that way.
With that said, I am not seeking to diminish the dangers of Trump and Musk. We need to be bitter and determined in *aggressively* fighting against what they are doing.
What I *am* seeking is to get people like you to better educate themselves and recognize the far larger, older and more frightening decades-long global corporate fascist milieu that made the Trump administration possible in the first place, an inherent long-entrenched fascism that will be moving forward like a freight train in 2028 regardless of Trump.
We need to be fighting the oligarchs directly, and supporting efforts like BRICS from the global East and South to put an end to the US/NATO empire, not impotently freaking out about Trump who is not the one in charge, and is instead a circus clown being propped up to distract us into whingeing about abortion, gender, identity, and deportations (deportations which in fact were just as bad under Obama and Biden and are *not* worse under Trump) and fearing insignificant alt-right caricatures like 'The Proud Boys' (which is essentially an FBI psyop not even a real organization).
This gets to the key. The purpose of getting the lower, working and middle classes on the liberal side to freak out about Trump and conservative voters as 'the new Nazis', and on the right to freak out about the Democrats and liberal voters as 'the new Nazis' is to get those two equally sized elements of the public to fear, hate, and attack each other, so that they have no time and energy to fight the actual oligarchs who are controlling everything and ruining their lives. This is classic divide and conquer stuff.
Thankfully, one prominent silver lining to the Trump administration is that the oligarchs who tell Trump what to do were actually arrogant and fool enough to put one of their own (Musk) directly in charge of government, naively assuming that conservatives would not notice that, when in fact they have, and they do *not* like it.
Because of mistakes like that (and because of liberal hatred) the Trump administration is very similar to Nixon in the 60s and 70s and is much easier to pressure with public opinion than the Democrats.
So instead of your naive finger-wagging at me, you need to pay attention to your own back yard and bitterly fight the corporate neoliberal interests that are now dominating you through your un-elected EU, and engaging in a dangerous war in Europe (Ukraine) which is impoverishing your countries and putting us all on the brink of World War III - a Ukraine war that Trump (in one of his few good acts) is actually seeking to *end* instead of inflame.
I am not American born but have been in this country for decades and am an American, who does not vote D or R. I am not wagging my finger at you, I am just putting a mirror in front of you because you assume what people watch and how they inform themselves. I only listen to Ralph Nader and Chris Hedges, and read Drop Site News when I can stomach, because sometimes I need breaks from the news. I check the local news in my area to see if I need to be informed about anything pressing.
Again, you are right but you seem to be falling in the same kind of trap the people who only see the duopoly do: if one party is terrible, and the other one is terrible too, if the one in power does something really devastating to people, then it is just the continuation of the first party's policies. It is not. It is a continuation, not JUST.
Trump is the one coming after Medicaid and Medicare, privatizing the only thing that helps disabled and poor people by claiming fraud. I have spent my decades in this country working with disabled people and I know how hard it is to survive and have to fight every year to have basic services. I have seen disabled people die waiting for those basic services. Withe the proposed changes to Medicaid, what are they going to do? This, to me, is worse than anything you might list that anyone has done up to now. Trump changed how people can access Social Security, make changes or get help. Only in person or online. Many people are not able to use the computer due to age or cognitive function, some don't have a family member that really care. Some cannot go to the offices because of transportation and mobility. On top of that, Trump is also closing many offices. This will generate real fraud, and people will literally die. Do you have any idea of how the really poor and disabled people live - or more accurately - survive?
And I am not European either. See, you assume a lot. You are the one who seems to listen to the things that are talked about loudly, like wars and the macro economics, and very little about the "small" things like how prohibiting words in scientific research, prohibiting studies on mRNA vaccines will affect all of us. Or what will happen to the eduction on this country without a functioning Department of Education. The question of war is important and hopefully the war in Ukraine will end. If Trump does it, he deserves praise. He also deserved praise for putting a pause on the genocide in Gaza and look where we are now. Just because the democrats don't do better, it doesn't mean that Trump will not be much worse for most people and in most cases. That is my point and NOW I am wagging my finger at you
Most of what you just written is skewed in key ways from the actual true situation we find ourselves in, and also outrageously ignores what the Biden administration did to Palestine. From my ongoing work for the last 40 years as a full time grassroots organizer, I can tell you that *all* of the attacks on welfare, the environment, Social Security, and Medicare/Medicaid have been going on, and becoming steadily worse for decades under both Republican and Democrat administrations, especially since the Bill Clinton Administration. Clinton gutted welfare, remember? Clinton gutted the US economy and working people with NAFTA and the WTO, remember? Obama passed a corporate bailout that left 80 million people in 'America' uninsured or under-insured for health care. Every president since Reagan has attempted to cut Social Security.
And as I noted above, the fact that you are actually stating with a straight face that our struggles over social welfare cuts in the US are somehow equally important to a fucking genocide that has mutilated and killed tens of thousands of little children, and a US manufactured war in Ukraine that is putting us on the brink of global nuclear war holocaust (neither of which would have happened without the Biden administration) is disturbingly self absorbed.
Trump is only 'worse' because *every* president is worse than the previous one. The US empire is in a death spiral.
AGAIN: PUTTING TOO MUCH EMPHASIS ON TRUMP MAKES THE LIBERAL PUBLIC DANGEROUSLY BELIEVE THAT ELECTING DEMOCRATS WILL BRING US BACK TO 'DEMOCRACY' WHEN IT *WON'T* AND WE *MUST* STOP PLAYING INTO THAT ILLUSION.
Chris Hedges supported Clinton's war on Yugoslavia. Ralph Nader has become hopelessly lost in Trump obsession. You need better news sources to better understand these realities. Here's a list with links:
- https://JohnPilger.com (Recently passed, stellar global war and Western intervention reporter for decades. I recommend reading through his archives.)
100% THIS. Age 68 and news seeker since 1969, activist and was reliable Dem voter. Register Green in AK or ME but so fed up with Duopoly that chose monkey wrenchers Tulsi and RFk as maybe drip of change to dismantle Swamp. Done with all war mongers. Despise 99% Dem leaders so Party less.
You need to stop listening to eel musk, don the con and the idiots who are trying to dismantle democracy. “ God Bless America, land that I love. Stand beside her & guide her through the night with the light from above. From the mountains, to the prairies , to the ocean white with foam. God Bless America my home sweet home!”
Just to be clear I do not listen to NPR, Rachel Maddow, or Thom Hartmann. I've also never voted democrat in the general election and that includes 2020, and 2024. The first vote I ever cast was to Ralph Nader, I then dabbled in Ron Paul a bit during the Obama years. I did vote for Bernie in the primaries in 2016 and 2020, but did not vote for Hillary or Biden. Like many others though, my respect for Bernie has waned.
I voted for Barbara Lee in the California Senate primaries and then voted for Steve Garvey in the general in an attempt to stop Adam Schiff. I typically don't vote for one candidate in order to block another, but I felt Adam Schiff was a unique case.
As you stated, "fascism is the merging of state and corporate power, enforced by mass surveillance, elite control of the media, police violence, and mass imprisonment." Literally all of that is coming to fruition under Trump, who is an oligarch by the way. The Trumps and Musks of the world have always been the real government, but now that they have a direct line in the executive branch.
Mass imprisonment? Have you not seen the mass deportations that are happening without due process? They've already gotten some of the deportations wrong too. Elite control of the media? Legacy media doesn't have any power anymore (which is not a bad thing by the way!), but Musk controls information through X which he is constantly meddling in, in order to control the narrative. Never mind Zuckerberg with Facebook and Bezos with the Washington Post. Police violence? See ICE. And never mind that Trump is absolutely trampling the first amendment.
And now of course, the genocide in Gaza is back on and Trump is bombing Yemen. Neither of those things are particularly "fascist", more just par for the course for a sitting President.
By the way, during Trump's first term, I actually talked to MAGA and had conversations with them and treated them like actual humans. I've always felt that rather than scream at someone, you should seek to understand them instead. But my patience is wearing thin of late due to many of them having openly racist views towards Arabs. Biden was also openly racist towards Arabs, but that doesn't mean you can't call out MAGA for doing it too.
I should point out that I agree with you with regard to January 6 not being a coup or insurrection.
Well, with all your points taken (except for your point on immigration, which is not correct) it is hard for me to understand why you think the Trump administration is substantially worse than the previous one, or in any way rises to the level of a Hitler/Nazi level threat, when it just doesn't.
The only thing I find particularly alarming (unlike the previous variations on US fascism) is this emplacement of Musk to actually run aspects of the government by his own hand (and who actually *did* throw up a Nazi salute.) Musk is the dangerous one, not Trump who is even doing some good things like ending the Ukraine proxy war and appointing RFK to run HHS.
We need to focus on the true oligarchs and corporations who actually run things like Musk - and fight *them*. (Trump is a very minor player who is barely even a billionaire.)
On immigration, Trump makes a lot of noise but he is not substantially worse than the Democrats. The deportation numbers are relatively the same. And that won't change because if Trump tries to deport too many low wage immigrant workers, the business community which deeply depends on that exploited workforce, would step in to put a stop to the further deportations.
Finally while I must grant that you are apparently not being duped by corporate and government media, somehow your media matrix is not giving you the full picture. Note that traditional alternative media like Democracy Now, Mother Jones, The Intercept, The Young Turks and Jacobin are now also compromised and often lying about matters like Ukraine and Syria.
I would urge you to dig into far better sources like Black Agenda Report, The Grayzone, Glenn Greenwald, and Mint Press News.
- https://JohnPilger.com (Recently passed, stellar global war and Western intervention reporter for decades. I recommend reading through his archives.)
My point in bringing up my voting record was to point out that I don’t believe that voting Democrat will solve anything. As I pointed out, I did not vote for Clinton, Biden, nor Harris.
In fact, if I had lived in a swing state, I would have been more active in the abandon Harris movement. Had Harris been elected to office, it would have been a disaster as she is more mold-able to the National Security interests and stands for absolutely nothing.
I believe we need to fight the system. Another Democrat in the White House just kicks the can down the hall and doesn’t solve anything or even attempt to right the ship. It also further disenfranchises people and then they turn to Trumps.
That said, I used to think as you did and roll my eyes whenever I would hear “fascist” in regard to Trump. But after his mass deportation effort (again, without due process), his unleashing of Musk to destroy all consumer protection, worker protections, and gut social safety nets (which they darn well better reimburse me for all paid into Social Security), and the fact that he is just another warmonger. I think those in the independent spaces aren’t taking notice enough. And I believe it’s because of how disingenuous the Democratic Party is and so we almost instinctively want to be contrarians and down play Trump as a result.
But to your point, I already read and listen to a lot of those.
I’ve been reading The Grayzone since 2019, and I’m a patreon supporter. I’ve met and have a photo with Max Blumenthal. I also have several of Max’s books as well as Anya’s Corporate Coup. I still occasionally read Ben Norton’s stuff after he left, but admittedly I don’t do as often due to time constraints.
I’ve also been reading Black Agenda Report since 2019. RIP Glen Ford.
I am a co-conspirator for Breakthrough News (I have a $25 a month subscription), they sent me a mug. I was devastated in that I dropped it while hand washing it. It can’t retain liquid anymore, but I still display it. I’ve been a subscriber since 2021.
Check out my paid subscriptions on substack: Racket News, Chris Hedges, Michael Tracy, Aaron Mate. I'm also subscribed to Caitlin Johnstone, but not a paid subscriber because she's cool like that gives everyone the benefit of her words.
I listen to Glenn Greenwalds podcast frequently but I’m not a paid subscriber. I also have a few of his books.
You should see my YouTube subscriptions. Too many to list. None of those subscriptions are the ones you’ve listed. EDIT: By none of those subscriptions, I meant The Young Turks, etc. Yes, Jimmy Dore did kind of sent me on this path in like 2016 but without his platform, I never would have found the Grayzone.
Regarding the downplaying of Trump (I’m not saying Democrats are better, but DOGE absolutely is unprecedented as is Trump’s deporting pro-Palestine supporters…again without due process or he’s trying to circumvent it anyway), it seems to me many of the independent traditionally left spaces have picked up a lot of MAGA or MAGA adjacent readers over the years because of how critical we all are of the Democratic Party. Because of this, they tend to downplay Trump because my goodness can MAGA throw a tantrum. Essentially, they don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them. It’s not necessarily audience capture, but it’s perhaps tertiary. EDIT: I noticed, this independently over the years, but Caitlin Johnstone also covered it in one of her newsletters. And gosh darn it, if she didn't have so many gosh darn daily newsletters, I might be able to find it and link it to you.
If you want to see a current example of a MAGA tantrum, check out the comments section of Matt Taibbi's coverage of Mahmoud Khalil on Racket News.
To be clear, I don’t think the election of Trump is going to mean we don’t get to make believe democracy every two to four years anymore, but I do think the U.S. empire is trending in the direction of fascism and Trump is in fact moving it along.
EDIT: (sorry for the edits, I was originally typing this on my phone after a really long day of work. For some reason every client ever wants submittals in April and I'm slammed.). I wanted to elaborate on why even if the shear number of mass deportations are lower than Biden's was during at this same time of year, it is unprecedented in he's circumventing due process and ignoring judge's orders. You mentioned Glenn Greendwald, I recommend you check out Glenn's coverage of this lack of due process.
I wanted to make one more point on immigration. According to a Grayzone article, Trump's sadistic executive orders on Venezuela caused the deaths of 100,000 Venezuelans in a single year. One cannot blame Trump's swamp creature cabinet on this because these were his own executive orders. Let's not forget that he tried to install Juan Guido during his first term as well. This also fueled a mass exodus from Venezuela. In fact, most people who are here illegally are here because of our sadistic foreign policy and meddling in that region. Liberals love to talk about how cheap labor helps our economy, Conservatives love to blame immigrants for everything, but the fact of the matter is, or at least I imagine, most of them would not even be here if we didn't destabilize their homes.
Back in the Obama years, my Grandma who is a Danish citizen but lives here now with my mom who takes care of her, was complaining to me about the influx of Muslims to Scandinavia. I pointed out then that they would not be there had NATO not destroyed their homes and Danmark is a member of NATO and took part in those operations. The same applies to us.
None of us are free until all of us are free. Free Palestine.
None of this obviates the crucial fact that if we create a narrative frame that Trump is uniquely dangerous (when he isn't, see below) it deeply entrenches neoliberal propaganda convincing liberals that we should support Democrats. We MUST not do that. It keeps the entire country and the fascism that has controlled it for 30 years trapped in amber.
Furthermore Trump is NOT uniquely dangerous. All of this has happened before. Both Bill Clinton an Barack Obama *literally* put Wall Street bankers in charge of the Cabinet. Banks and investment firms *ran* the US Government during their administrations.
FDR appointed oil magnate Nelson Rockefeller to run foreign affairs for the State Department, and FDR mass imprisoned Japanese people in the US during World War II in a smashing of US civil rights multiple orders of *magnitude* worse than anything Trump has yet done.
Since its inception, the US Federal Reserve has placed private bankers in almost complete control of the US economy.
And robber baron Andrew Mellon (the Elon Musk of his time) ran the US Treasury under *three* consecutive presidential administrations (see link below) in a capture of the US government by the oligarchy vastly worse and more complete than what Musk is doing (the latter whom is being blocked from directly controlling the Treasury, while much of his DOGE nonsense is being struck down in court.) Mellon makes Musk look like an amateur in comparison.
These are just examples. There are many others.
Here's the article detailing Mellon's history as Treasury Secretary. Search 'mellon' at:
I'm pretty sure I can prove it does by asking you a simple question. Did Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump collude to manipulate the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections to favor Trump getting elected?
No it isn't. There is no evidence whatsoever that Putin/Russia colluded to manipulate US elections, and no evidence whatsoever that Russia has any leverage whatsoever by which to manipulate Trump. So the question is meant to identify if you are aware of this, and if you are not, to show that you have believed lies you've been told.
Your refusal to answer this simple factual question shows pretty clearly that you believe the totally specious claims that there was Russia/Trump collusion, and this in turn shows that you are a victim of corporate and government media Trump Derangement Syndrome brainwashing.
Does that about cover it, or would you like to surprise me and verify that there was in fact no collusion?
Note: I say all of this as a radical left anarchist. I did not support or vote for Trump.
One of your guests said that non-profits can be used for good. Let's use that idea to help solve the problem you discussed with your other guest.
Once again I suggest that you, Ralph, set up a non-profit media conglomerate selling shares for 100 dollars. The shares could only be owned by US citizens with no one person owning more than 10 shares and the shares could only be sold for 100 dollars as the purpose of owning the shares is not to make a profit on the value of the shares but to have the media conglomerate owned and controlled by ordinary citizens. A board of people like Ralph would oversee it.
Just 10% of the 150 million voters investing in one share would total 1.5 billion dollars to get this started. If started now it could be up and running in time for the 2026 elections.
This would result in a media conglomerate that does not have a conflict of interest- it would have a convergence of interest with ordinary citizens. It would be a combination of the Radio Hour and the Capitol Hill Citizen on steroids.
And it would be big enough to withstand any SLAPP lawsuits or other intimidation.
This can all be done right now- with no need to wait for legislation or convince the big money politicians to do anything that would be a conflict of interest with their big money benefactors.
The only thing preventing this from getting started is someone like you using your network of activists to organize citizens to participate.
Please help keep the truth from being murdered by giving citizens the power to destroy the hold the big money interests have over the news and our political process.
Unfortunately, while Michael Graetz does present some very accurate and relevant facts, Graetz and Mr. Nader paint a very false picture of the overall situation. It must be stated that the last time the United States federal government did not carry a debt was during the Andrew Jackson administration. There have only been a handful of yearly fiscal surpluses since that era. The notion that our grandchildren are going to pay for an increasing national debt, as stated my Mr. Nader, is absurd now just as it would have been absurd to make that point 150 years ago. Graetz said that it was his opinion that trouble will be coming because of the national debt, but that is only based on opinion, or faith really. There is no empirical reason why a currency-issuing government with a fiat currency, as is the case with the US federal government, cannot sustain such a situation. Mr. Nader and Graetz are simply ignoring empiricism and going with a fanatical religious-like belief that bad things will happen even though similar statements made after the GFC have been proven incorrect especially with the expansionary Covid-era budgets that went well beyond anything during the GFC. The listeners of this august program deserve better than religious-like beliefs, especially ones which have been demonstrated to be incorrect. The listeners deserve empirically-backed theory.
I have more to say about my disagreements with Mr. Nader, though I’ll write about that at the end of the comment after I offer commentary on what was said by Graetz.
Now, Graetz is very correct in discussing that the national debt will accelerate tremendously because of interest paid on the national debt. Economically speaking, the economy will not collapse because of this fact, barring any artificial policy like the debt ceiling, and that is where Graetz and Mr. Nader are incorrect. The real cost to society because of this, and both the Feldmans made astute comments in this regard, is that it accelerates economic inequality. Those who have money to save can simply buy bonds and take advantage of this ‘free government money’. Those who do not have savings cannot take advantage of this.
Again, related to the astute comments by the Feldmans, this isn’t entirely a taxation problem. In fact, taxation is probably a lesser issue compared to other potential reforms. One way to alleviate this inequality is to go to a permanent zero-rate policy. Also, remember that the issuance of bonds is entirely residue from when the US was on a gold standard, something which has not been the case in a very long time. At this point, with the floating US Dollar, there is no natural reason to keep a bond market at all other than, to the points of the Feldmans, that the bond market helps wealthy individuals, financial institutions, and also non-profits especially because non-profits like to invest in very safe investments and bonds are that.
So, back to taxation. Given everything mentioned above, it must be stated that tax receipts do not ‘fund’ government spending. Any notion that we need tax receipts to reduce the national debt or to fund healthcare, etc. is balderdash. Graetz’ notion of fiscal/policy space is complete malarkey. Now, better targeted tax policy can help on the inflation front. This is more relevant on the timing of tax rate changes on the lower-income brackets as tax rate changes on the wealthiest brackets are unlikely to alter discretionary spending much which is why the 2017 tax cuts, and other previous ones, did not affect inflation. There are really no reasons to maintain FICA taxes and these should be eliminated as they are a senseless tax on working people, though doing so when the economy is doing well could present inflationary risks barring better policies in other areas like maintaining full employment, regulation over industry to prevent monopolies and cartels, and so forth. Thus, progressive policy needs to be more than just tax policy, it must encompass many other things.
Perhaps the greatest point which needs to be made, and which was not addressed by Graetz and Mr. Nader, is that taxation can be used to help maintain democracy. This transcends economic policy. We may not need to tax the wealthiest brackets because we need their tax receipts to fund social spending, but we may want to tax the wealthiest to restrict their ability to buy political influence. This also means closing political donation loopholes and resolving other campaign finance issues. If the current oligopoly doesn’t show the relevance of this point, I don’t know what else would.
On a concluding note, I’m really quite despondent about Mr. Nader’s monetarist narratives in this episode and in many previous ones. I have some sympathy for Mr. Nader and the likes of Graetz because I can empathize with the problem of maintaining empirically-based narratives when it might contradict one’s earlier books, speeches, and so forth. Society might view someone as being a mediocre ‘expert’ if they are contradicting their own earlier work, but this is ultimately a very unscientific attitude. None of us possess all the knowledge we need to know in our 20s. As one continues to learn about the world, it is natural that one may have new knowledge which might contradict previous, less-informed understandings. Perhaps society does not hold this view, but people who are willing to advance and challenge their knowledge should be lauded, not left to feel disrespected.
Mr. Nader may feel the need to keep a consistent narrative, but I challenge this belief. Surely Mr. Nader does not want his legacy to be one of ‘he meant well and he tried hard, but his knowledge of the world is stuck in the 1950s when he graduated from Princeton and he refused to converse with anyone outside of his yellowed Rolodex.’ Conversely, if Mr. Nader espoused empirically-based economic narratives, his legacy might well be that ‘he never stopped furthering himself through education, even in his 90s+, and he used that as a basis for his advocacy.’
Mr. Nader has given us all so much intellectual fruit that hopefully he views this suggestion from the audience as a form of gratitude. Ultimately, I disagree with Mr. Nader because I agree with Mr. Nader, so I only mean this as constructive criticism meant to improve our shared cause.
While I tend to agree, and Nader and Graetz clearly are stuck in outdated remedial libertarian thinking about debt, there are two very real problems with the current debt.
1) The US debt to GDP ratio is now well over 100%. That's over 25 trillion dollars (one fourth of the *global* GDP). There are limits to how much and how quickly debt can be expanded and still be sustainable. We are straining those limits and may as a result cause a Great Depression level collapse.
2) If things go well and the BRICS countries manage to sideline the US Dollar, our country's ability to sustain traditional sustainable sovereign debt will evaporate. If this happens amidst a Debt to GDP ratio of over 100%, it will bring about a crash far worse than the Great Depression.
In any case, I'm sure that we can both agree that all of this talk of debt limits is nothing but theatre to justify taking a chainsaw to government spending and thereby force across the board privatization of government services, as well as a rise in unemployment, both of which will further enrich hundred billionaires like Musk.
Eric, these are interesting discussion points and the deserve analysis.
On point 1: I disagree with your assertion. If you think a debt to GDP of 100% is high, look at Japan where their debt to GDP crossed 100% in around 2003 and has steadily increased to what it is now, 263%, and it’ll continue to grow. And, yet, Japan is one of the world’s strongest economies with an unemployment rate well below ours and with life expectancies well above ours in the US. Monetarists, or economic libertarians if you want to call them that, like Graetz have been sounding alarms about Japan for years and years, and yet, the Japanese economy continues to show strength and resilience. ‘Bond vigilantes’ and whatever other nonsense the monetarists come up with have not been a problem for Japan.
I can understand why the debt numbers are troubling to many. If a family, business, or even local government had numbers like that, it would be alarming, but those entities do not have floating currencies like the US and Japan have. The concept of household debt is completely different from the concept of currency-issuing country national debt. Fiscal responsibility has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the national debt.
What are risks to economic strength? To name a few, not being able to produce food domestically (perhaps due to environmental factors and a lack of research even aside from environmental factors), unemployment, having labor productivity loss due to poor physical and mental health, labor productivity loss due to poor education, a lack of research & development, poor infrastructure, global and domestic humanitarian disasters (perhaps caused by poor foreign policy), poor allocation of labor though policies which emphasizes unproductive industries versus productive ones, general issues of inflation related to poor allocated resources and poorly targeted spending, poor government regulation which leads to things such as monopolies, and governance instability generally (which can be caused by an uneven distribution of wealth within a country).
Looking at these factors above, and also the issue of foreign debt and obligations which is central to everything else listed, you can also see the difference between a country like Japan which has a high debt-to-GDP rate and struggling developing/’Global South’ countries.
In order to maintain the high standards necessary to have a strong, stable government, government spending is absolutely necessary. This is why I say that austerity thinking is fiscally irresponsible, making the definition of ‘fiscal responsibility’ almost the opposite of the commonly-accepted definition of the term.
On point 2: The growing strength of the Chinese economy will not ‘sideline’ the US Dollar or the economic strength of the United States unless we artificially choose economic instability through things such as the ‘debt ceiling’. For one, the Chinese have an export-based economy, as discussed last week on the RNRH by Lori Wallach, which means the Chinese are taking US Dollars in, so this hardly makes the case for the irrelevance of the US Dollar. It is quite to the contrary.
Aside from that, the US surpassed the United Kingdom as the largest global economy sometime in the latter half of the 1800s, but the UK pound sterling remained the reserve currency for decades after and likely would have remained so if it wasn’t for European self-destruction and the subsequent re-writing of the global economy following World War II by the US at the the famed meeting in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.
As long as US policy continues to protect the reserve currency status of the US Dollar, as they did during the GFC, there isn’t reason to fear the Dollar’s position and fear mongering by politicians and low-grade economists should be ignored.
The position of the US Dollar isn’t even of great relevance really. Countries with their own floating currencies such as Canada, Australia, the UK, and Japan, as mentioned above, are more than capable of guaranteeing full employment, national health, and so forth through their own fiscal policies. Europe is a bit of a more complicated story because of the Eurozone, but even then, European Central Bank policies can be made to be congruent with this model (in theory at least, the EU and Eurozone are neoliberal organizations so expect neoliberal policies). So, with this in mind, is the global position of the US Dollar really of importance and worth all this unfounded fear-mongering?
Finally, to address your last paragraph, yes, you’re absolutely correct about that! And it isn’t just a US issue or a right-wing party issue, look at the social austerity/neoliberalism being imposed by the ‘center-left’ Labour Party government right now in the UK which is being sold as being ‘fiscal responsibility’ and ‘government efficiency’ when really it is just eroding the economic strength factors which I mentioned under point 1. With that in mind, your other comment about the erosion of government over the past 40-50 years leading to Trump, and maybe even something worse in the future, is the natural result and I agree that people need to understand that Trump isn’t really the cause of these problems, it is the natural result of the lack of sufficient governance and people need to work together to advocate for better governance while being guided by empirical knowledge of economics rather than faith-based, religious-like beliefs about economics.
Excellent arguments, but they don't tell the whole story.
Japan: 1) Has a robust welfare state and because of this has been able to socially and micro-economically weather multiple serious crashes under its money printer go "BRRR" economics. 2) Is able to ride the wave of the much larger and ever expanding multi Quadrillion dollar Wall Street debt bubble to keep its own system from collapsing. 3) I often raise your very point about Japan when I'm arguing with self interested gloom and doomers (particularly gold bugs) to argue that the US Fed money printing could last for decades or even centuries longer. But:
China/BRICS: The US dollar has never faced a worldwide structural threat like BRICS and its mirror financial infrastructures in Central Asia. Since the Ukraine war sanctions imposed on the world by the US (the straw that broke the camel’s back for the Global East and South) the BRICS and other such multilateral platforms have been rapidly forging an international trade infrastructure that will soon be able to simply replace the US Dollar as the global default currency of exchange.
While as you say interlinked debt and trade relationships mitigate against the Global East and South actually taking this drastic measure which would also harm their own interest, if you look out how fed up the rest of the world is with US imperial oppression, and economic domineering and extortion through SWIFT, etc (which is also impoverishing the world nearly as badly) you have to face the reality that they might actually pull that lever within the next decade. And this would totally change the game. Without global dollar dominance stable US sovereign money printing will no longer function and the US house of cards will fail.
I would urge you to do a web search on the combined terms “Pepe Escobar” and “BRICS” to read what Escobar has written about all of this, and so get a far better sense of the sophistication and imminence of this new global multilateral counter-structure to US hegemony.
“Japan: 1) Has a robust welfare state and because of this has been able to socially and micro-economically weather multiple serious crashes under its money printer go "BRRR" economics.”
Japan does have a robust welfare state, but remember, such stability is gained through social spending, not through austerity.
You may be using the term ‘money printing’ as an analogy, but for the sake of anyone reading this who does not know, the US does not spend by printing money. The term ‘money printing’ is laced with incorrect monetarist assumptions that creating money naturally results in inflation. Creating money, and spending money for that matter, does not lead to anything by itself, what might create inflation is poorly targeted spending/ poor fiscal policy, including tax policy, along with poor monetary policy.
“2) Is able to ride the wave of the much larger and ever expanding multi Quadrillion dollar Wall Street debt bubble to keep its own system from collapsing.”
No, not at all. Remember, during and after the GFC, Japan’s economy did not suffer any worse than any other country with less debt, and Japan actually had a smoother recovery in many ways. Japan’s unemployment rate was much lower than the US’ during that period. This is even more remarkable given that Japan also had to deal with the tsunami not long after the GFC and, of course, Covid. Through all of this, the Japanese economy has remained robust and resilient.
Japanese industries have, in many ways, been hurt by a US debt bubble of sorts, but not the one you’re referring to. The Japanese auto industry, for example, has been hurt by sluggish sales of automobiles in the US and elsewhere in the west due to working-class citizens carrying large amounts of personal debt and seeing low income growth due to the very uneven income structure in the US and increasing unevenness in other western countries. However, even with this, as mentioned above, Japan remains strong.
It should be noted that Japan has maintained a near-0% interest rate policy and understands that economic stability is achieved via fiscal policy (including the aforementioned social spending) and not via monetary policy. Every so often, Japan will tinker with their sales taxes and such for the purpose of reducing government debt rather than reducing demand, and it only ends up hurting their economy as opposed to the intended goal. At least Japan has shown more of a willingness to learn from these mistakes than we have in the US.
“3) I often raise your very point about Japan when I'm arguing with self interested gloom and doomers (particularly gold bugs) to argue that the US Fed money printing could last for decades or even centuries longer.”
Decades, centuries, or an infinite amount of time as long factors I mentioned in my earlier reply are addressed and artificial barriers are not imposed such as the ‘debt ceiling’ or self-imposed fiscal rules like what the UK is suffering from in the Labour Party’s best efforts to emulate Musk.
“Without global dollar dominance stable US sovereign money printing will no longer function and the US house of cards will fail.”
As I said in my previous reply, this is simply not true. The Canadian Dollar, Australian Dollar, Japanese Yen, UK Pound Sterling are not, at least in current times, reserve currencies, but that does not prevent Canada, Australia, Japan, or the UK from spending in their own currency as they wish.
There is nothing especially magical about the US Dollar’s reserve currency status, nor is it especially endangered. The BRICS are, rightfully so, setting up BRICS PAY as a means to bypass SWIFT. China will likely become the largest global economy in the near future. None of this directly endangers the economic strength of the United States, the ability for the United States to deficit spend, or the ability for the United States to enact social programs.
Likewise, when the UK Pound Sterling lost reserve status after Bretton Woods and had no longer been the largest economy in the world decades before Bretton Woods, it did not prevent the UK government from enacting the National Health Service (nationalized healthcare), public housing programs, or any number of reforms which allowed the UK to rebuild and thrive after the war. It has only been through foolish self-imposed austerity starting with Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan and then expanded by Thatcher, Blair, and subsequent PMs that the living standards for the British have decreased.
Furthermore, if we look at the US itself, the Progressive Era reforms and especially the New Deal all occurred while the UK Pound Sterling was the reserve currency. So, again, reserve currency status is not at all relevant to the US’ economic strength or the ability for the US government to improve conditions for US citizens. There are no ‘ifs and buts’ about it, aside from the constraints mentioned in my earlier comment.
To describe the dot com bubble now we observe the variety of supportive mental services surrounding Lutheran social services website around the country. All of these are medical research facilities with llc fictitious business tax research license for chemical imbalance price to earnings ratios. A single layer Ponzi scheme
I don’t know, Taibbi’s kind of exaggeration, spin, and pandering in an attempt to not upset his new MAGA readership has been a little tough to stomach for me. I can’t help but notice his glaring omission of pro Palestine crack downs and arrests in Europe (Richard Medhurst for one) in his lauding of J.D. Vance’s performative free speech…speech. And Walker Kirn is just straight up insufferable to me.
Thank you Ralph for all that you do. Especially your tweet to the President telling him just what kind of person he is. We have been conned into voting for the wrong people for generations and these Hyenas are all Red and Blue. They serve The Party and take their $Reward$ out of our hides and people in foreign countries. WAR, COERCION, DECEIT, EXPLOITATION, COVERT DESTRUCTION of other people's countries and BRUTE MILITARY FORCE is the sum of what these people we elect bring to the world. Hell, they even stand and applaud Netanyahu when he comes to Washington to lecture to them. But America continues to buy their line so I expect we will see more of the same and worse to come in the future.
I don't even listen to your segments with Trump Derangement Syndrome obsessed Bruce Fein. I get the sense that your long history with him has led you to naively believe his nonsense. Analyzing the truly bad things that Trump and Musk are doing and discussing strategies to stop them is valuable. Obsessing about the ridiculous fairytale ideas that Trump embodies 'fascist dictatorship' akin to Nazism, that January 6 was an 'insurrection' or 'coup' (when it clearly wasn't one) and that we can impeach Trump (when there is no way in hell that is going to happen, and there is in fact no strong legal basis for it) is not only not helpful, it is destructive to bringing together conservatives and liberals to fight oligarchy.
I’m sorry you feel that way. I don’t know Ralph personally, but I’ve followed him for 21 years and I don’t get the impression he is swayed by any particular person. I rarely disagree with Mr. Nader, but I do on occasion. This is not an instance in which I do, however.
Then you need to stop listening to NPR, Rachel Maddow, Thom Hartmann, etc, and deprogram yourself. The narrative that Trump is somehow some new and unique fascist threat to the nation (and that his supporters are racist Nazis) is utterly ridiculous and has no basis in fact. This country already became fascist decades ago under President Bill Clinton.
Fascism is the merging of state and corporate power, enforced by mass surveillance, elite control of the media, police violence, and mass imprisonment.
The administration of Bill Clinton turned the US into a fascist oligarchy with:
- The Biden Crime Bill (doubled the prison population)
- 120,000 more cops (for a war on Black people)
- Repeal of Glass-Steagall (allowing Wall Street to usurp the economy)
- Bankers from Goldman Sachs, et al running the White House (Trump is simply switching to Tech moguls)
- The Telecommunications Act (letting 6 corporations replace free speech)
Obsessing about Trump as if none of this was established long before 2016, destructively derails liberals into thinking the problem is solved when the 'Democrats' regain control of Washington DC.
I was trained in Ralph Nader's PIRGs in the mid 80s and have been a full time grassroots environmental and social justice organizer ever since. Ralph is a mentor and personal hero of mine.
But my respect for him is being severely strained, and pissed away, by his buying into these ridiculous paranoid hysterics about Trump.
Is Trump bad? You bet. Let's stick to what he is doing that is bad and work to stop it instead of fanning the flames of paranoia which alienates working class liberals and conservatives from each other and divides the nation against itself, thereby enabling the oligarchs who control all of us, to literally get away with murder, because people are fighting each other instead of those oligarchs.
Why do you just assume what people listen to? Why anyone who sees the danger we are in have a problem? If you were educated in this country you are already in a disadvantage. I was educated in another country where we MUST study the history of the world beginning in 7th grade. I also lived under a dictatorship, a fascist regime. So I can tell you that we are in the early stages of fascism. Stop assuming that everyone is just freaking out for no reason and go study the what happened to real people in those countries.
All you listed are really true. It does not diminish the danger we are in right now. What kind of comparison is this, where just because one group of people did bad things then we cannot point out the much worse situation being delivered by another group of people?
"Fascism is the merging of state and corporate power, enforced by mass surveillance, elite control of the media, police violence, and mass imprisonment." Ok, which of those are Trump not doing yet? And saying that "elite" media is only the "liberal" media does not count since you already established that the media became part of "Clinton's fascism". People are being deported based on absurd claims or as part of clear persecution. Musk is the de facto president, Il Duce salute and all. People are being chastised (only that , for now) for targeting Tesla. Police violence comes way before Clinton, basically since police became an institution. Besides, it is a fact that the police is swarmed with white supremacists.
Forbidden words in scientific words, not being able to criticize the president, being persecuted for not bending to his wishes, ending the department of education, ending Medicaid (and by ending I don't mean scraping. I mean that it is with intention of harm, by firing so many people that the departments/agencies cannot fulfill the job), more money to military and mercenaries, demanding loyalty form law enforcement, persecuting one group of people who are not breaking laws (first they came for...), all of this, all at once, under a democratic party that is hiding in fear, and a republican party that has been salivating for many of those policies, or that is so afraid of Trump that they remain silent and lie to us.
It is terrible, it is fascism, it is not hysteria. Wake up
Look. Because 1) you are not from the US and clearly don't understand how our politics work, and 2) whatever media you are reading, listening to and watching is not giving you an accurate picture of what is actually happening, you are completely missing the point.
I fully recognize that the Trump/Musk administration is even more authoritarian than previous administrations, and is putting us on an all too-easy-slope toward totalitarianism. What *you* don't recognize is that under a president Harris the same worsening progression toward totalitarian fascism (which again has *already* been worsening with every administration for 30 YEARS) would still have been happening, but it would have been even worse because liberals in the US would *not* be opposing it. That makes the potential danger under a president like Clinton or Harris far more dangerous, which is why US Greens worked so hard to bring those 'Democrats' down. (And note: The fact that you naively believe we are just in the "early stages of fascism" when we've already been UNDER full fascism for 30 years under 'liberals' is telling, and shows that you are being influenced by Soros, Omidyar, Atlantic Council and neoliberal-government news sources that are not telling you the whole truth, and often outright lying to you.)
In any case, what Trump and Musk are doing is indeed *also* fascist and chilling. (Note: Several European leaders and governments are heading in essentially the same direction, so perhaps look to the plank in your own eye and deal with *that* rather than pontificating to US residents on how to handle our own government.)
It is no surprise at all that the US and Europe have several governments in which conservative totalitarian attitudes are running the show, because the global economy is collapsing on the lower, working and middle classes, and whenever that happens we inevitably get these flips into conservative authoritarianism.
But Trump is only going to be in office for four years, and economic cycles change. In addition, Trump and Musk don't remotely have the deep networks and movement (especially within the military) that Hitler and the Nazis had in the 30s. Even if Trump and Musk seek to completely hijack the US government, they have absolutely no structural ability to do so.
So the US has far less an imperative to go into a mode of fear about Trump because his particular brand of fascism is highly unlikely to continue after 2028. The US system is not built for that, and doesn't work that way.
With that said, I am not seeking to diminish the dangers of Trump and Musk. We need to be bitter and determined in *aggressively* fighting against what they are doing.
What I *am* seeking is to get people like you to better educate themselves and recognize the far larger, older and more frightening decades-long global corporate fascist milieu that made the Trump administration possible in the first place, an inherent long-entrenched fascism that will be moving forward like a freight train in 2028 regardless of Trump.
We need to be fighting the oligarchs directly, and supporting efforts like BRICS from the global East and South to put an end to the US/NATO empire, not impotently freaking out about Trump who is not the one in charge, and is instead a circus clown being propped up to distract us into whingeing about abortion, gender, identity, and deportations (deportations which in fact were just as bad under Obama and Biden and are *not* worse under Trump) and fearing insignificant alt-right caricatures like 'The Proud Boys' (which is essentially an FBI psyop not even a real organization).
This gets to the key. The purpose of getting the lower, working and middle classes on the liberal side to freak out about Trump and conservative voters as 'the new Nazis', and on the right to freak out about the Democrats and liberal voters as 'the new Nazis' is to get those two equally sized elements of the public to fear, hate, and attack each other, so that they have no time and energy to fight the actual oligarchs who are controlling everything and ruining their lives. This is classic divide and conquer stuff.
Thankfully, one prominent silver lining to the Trump administration is that the oligarchs who tell Trump what to do were actually arrogant and fool enough to put one of their own (Musk) directly in charge of government, naively assuming that conservatives would not notice that, when in fact they have, and they do *not* like it.
Because of mistakes like that (and because of liberal hatred) the Trump administration is very similar to Nixon in the 60s and 70s and is much easier to pressure with public opinion than the Democrats.
So instead of your naive finger-wagging at me, you need to pay attention to your own back yard and bitterly fight the corporate neoliberal interests that are now dominating you through your un-elected EU, and engaging in a dangerous war in Europe (Ukraine) which is impoverishing your countries and putting us all on the brink of World War III - a Ukraine war that Trump (in one of his few good acts) is actually seeking to *end* instead of inflame.
I am not American born but have been in this country for decades and am an American, who does not vote D or R. I am not wagging my finger at you, I am just putting a mirror in front of you because you assume what people watch and how they inform themselves. I only listen to Ralph Nader and Chris Hedges, and read Drop Site News when I can stomach, because sometimes I need breaks from the news. I check the local news in my area to see if I need to be informed about anything pressing.
Again, you are right but you seem to be falling in the same kind of trap the people who only see the duopoly do: if one party is terrible, and the other one is terrible too, if the one in power does something really devastating to people, then it is just the continuation of the first party's policies. It is not. It is a continuation, not JUST.
Trump is the one coming after Medicaid and Medicare, privatizing the only thing that helps disabled and poor people by claiming fraud. I have spent my decades in this country working with disabled people and I know how hard it is to survive and have to fight every year to have basic services. I have seen disabled people die waiting for those basic services. Withe the proposed changes to Medicaid, what are they going to do? This, to me, is worse than anything you might list that anyone has done up to now. Trump changed how people can access Social Security, make changes or get help. Only in person or online. Many people are not able to use the computer due to age or cognitive function, some don't have a family member that really care. Some cannot go to the offices because of transportation and mobility. On top of that, Trump is also closing many offices. This will generate real fraud, and people will literally die. Do you have any idea of how the really poor and disabled people live - or more accurately - survive?
And I am not European either. See, you assume a lot. You are the one who seems to listen to the things that are talked about loudly, like wars and the macro economics, and very little about the "small" things like how prohibiting words in scientific research, prohibiting studies on mRNA vaccines will affect all of us. Or what will happen to the eduction on this country without a functioning Department of Education. The question of war is important and hopefully the war in Ukraine will end. If Trump does it, he deserves praise. He also deserved praise for putting a pause on the genocide in Gaza and look where we are now. Just because the democrats don't do better, it doesn't mean that Trump will not be much worse for most people and in most cases. That is my point and NOW I am wagging my finger at you
Most of what you just written is skewed in key ways from the actual true situation we find ourselves in, and also outrageously ignores what the Biden administration did to Palestine. From my ongoing work for the last 40 years as a full time grassroots organizer, I can tell you that *all* of the attacks on welfare, the environment, Social Security, and Medicare/Medicaid have been going on, and becoming steadily worse for decades under both Republican and Democrat administrations, especially since the Bill Clinton Administration. Clinton gutted welfare, remember? Clinton gutted the US economy and working people with NAFTA and the WTO, remember? Obama passed a corporate bailout that left 80 million people in 'America' uninsured or under-insured for health care. Every president since Reagan has attempted to cut Social Security.
And as I noted above, the fact that you are actually stating with a straight face that our struggles over social welfare cuts in the US are somehow equally important to a fucking genocide that has mutilated and killed tens of thousands of little children, and a US manufactured war in Ukraine that is putting us on the brink of global nuclear war holocaust (neither of which would have happened without the Biden administration) is disturbingly self absorbed.
Trump is only 'worse' because *every* president is worse than the previous one. The US empire is in a death spiral.
AGAIN: PUTTING TOO MUCH EMPHASIS ON TRUMP MAKES THE LIBERAL PUBLIC DANGEROUSLY BELIEVE THAT ELECTING DEMOCRATS WILL BRING US BACK TO 'DEMOCRACY' WHEN IT *WON'T* AND WE *MUST* STOP PLAYING INTO THAT ILLUSION.
Chris Hedges supported Clinton's war on Yugoslavia. Ralph Nader has become hopelessly lost in Trump obsession. You need better news sources to better understand these realities. Here's a list with links:
- https://ConsortiumNews.com
- https://BlackAgendaReport.com
- http://CaitlinJohnstone.substack.com
- Aaron Mate at https://mate.substack.com/account
- The Grayzone https://thegrayzone.com (great on geopolitics - not good on environmental reporting)
- MintPress News https://www.mintpressnews.com
- Pepe Escobar at: https://new.thecradle.co/columns/pepe-escobar
(Deconstructs US/Western Empire & global South/East response)
- Venzuelanalysis : https://venezuelanalysis.com (Venzuela and other South America reports)
- https://JohnPilger.com (Recently passed, stellar global war and Western intervention reporter for decades. I recommend reading through his archives.)
VIDEO/AUDIO
Black Agenda Radio
https://blackagendareport.com/articlelist/radio-podcasts
Breakthrough News (especially important Middle East & North Africa reports
https://www.youtube.com/c/BreakThroughNews/videos
Behind The Headlines
https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindTheHeadlines/videos
The Red Nation (indigenous)
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheRedNation/videos
Black Alliance for Peace
https://www.youtube.com/c/BlackAllianceforPeace
The Project Censored Show
https://www.projectcensored.org/category/the-project-censored-show
Mint Press News
https://www.youtube.com/user/MintPressNews
The Grayzone (great on geopolitics - not good on environmental reporting)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEXR8pRTkE2vFeJePNe9UcQ/videos
Glenn Greenwald https://rumble.com/c/GGreenwald
(Excellent debunking both corporate parties & bridging left & right. Steer conservatives to Greenwald!)
100% THIS. Age 68 and news seeker since 1969, activist and was reliable Dem voter. Register Green in AK or ME but so fed up with Duopoly that chose monkey wrenchers Tulsi and RFk as maybe drip of change to dismantle Swamp. Done with all war mongers. Despise 99% Dem leaders so Party less.
You need to stop listening to eel musk, don the con and the idiots who are trying to dismantle democracy. “ God Bless America, land that I love. Stand beside her & guide her through the night with the light from above. From the mountains, to the prairies , to the ocean white with foam. God Bless America my home sweet home!”
Just to be clear I do not listen to NPR, Rachel Maddow, or Thom Hartmann. I've also never voted democrat in the general election and that includes 2020, and 2024. The first vote I ever cast was to Ralph Nader, I then dabbled in Ron Paul a bit during the Obama years. I did vote for Bernie in the primaries in 2016 and 2020, but did not vote for Hillary or Biden. Like many others though, my respect for Bernie has waned.
I voted for Barbara Lee in the California Senate primaries and then voted for Steve Garvey in the general in an attempt to stop Adam Schiff. I typically don't vote for one candidate in order to block another, but I felt Adam Schiff was a unique case.
As you stated, "fascism is the merging of state and corporate power, enforced by mass surveillance, elite control of the media, police violence, and mass imprisonment." Literally all of that is coming to fruition under Trump, who is an oligarch by the way. The Trumps and Musks of the world have always been the real government, but now that they have a direct line in the executive branch.
Mass imprisonment? Have you not seen the mass deportations that are happening without due process? They've already gotten some of the deportations wrong too. Elite control of the media? Legacy media doesn't have any power anymore (which is not a bad thing by the way!), but Musk controls information through X which he is constantly meddling in, in order to control the narrative. Never mind Zuckerberg with Facebook and Bezos with the Washington Post. Police violence? See ICE. And never mind that Trump is absolutely trampling the first amendment.
And now of course, the genocide in Gaza is back on and Trump is bombing Yemen. Neither of those things are particularly "fascist", more just par for the course for a sitting President.
By the way, during Trump's first term, I actually talked to MAGA and had conversations with them and treated them like actual humans. I've always felt that rather than scream at someone, you should seek to understand them instead. But my patience is wearing thin of late due to many of them having openly racist views towards Arabs. Biden was also openly racist towards Arabs, but that doesn't mean you can't call out MAGA for doing it too.
I should point out that I agree with you with regard to January 6 not being a coup or insurrection.
Well, with all your points taken (except for your point on immigration, which is not correct) it is hard for me to understand why you think the Trump administration is substantially worse than the previous one, or in any way rises to the level of a Hitler/Nazi level threat, when it just doesn't.
The only thing I find particularly alarming (unlike the previous variations on US fascism) is this emplacement of Musk to actually run aspects of the government by his own hand (and who actually *did* throw up a Nazi salute.) Musk is the dangerous one, not Trump who is even doing some good things like ending the Ukraine proxy war and appointing RFK to run HHS.
We need to focus on the true oligarchs and corporations who actually run things like Musk - and fight *them*. (Trump is a very minor player who is barely even a billionaire.)
On immigration, Trump makes a lot of noise but he is not substantially worse than the Democrats. The deportation numbers are relatively the same. And that won't change because if Trump tries to deport too many low wage immigrant workers, the business community which deeply depends on that exploited workforce, would step in to put a stop to the further deportations.
Finally while I must grant that you are apparently not being duped by corporate and government media, somehow your media matrix is not giving you the full picture. Note that traditional alternative media like Democracy Now, Mother Jones, The Intercept, The Young Turks and Jacobin are now also compromised and often lying about matters like Ukraine and Syria.
I would urge you to dig into far better sources like Black Agenda Report, The Grayzone, Glenn Greenwald, and Mint Press News.
Here's a full list of such sources, with links:
TEXT
- https://ConsortiumNews.com
- https://BlackAgendaReport.com
- http://CaitlinJohnstone.substack.com
- Aaron Mate at https://mate.substack.com/account
- The Grayzone https://thegrayzone.com (great on geopolitics - not good on environmental reporting)
- MintPress News https://www.mintpressnews.com
- Pepe Escobar at: https://new.thecradle.co/columns/pepe-escobar
(Deconstructs US/Western Empire & global South/East response)
- Venzuelanalysis : https://venezuelanalysis.com (Venzuela and other South America reports)
- https://JohnPilger.com (Recently passed, stellar global war and Western intervention reporter for decades. I recommend reading through his archives.)
VIDEO/AUDIO
Black Agenda Radio
https://blackagendareport.com/articlelist/radio-podcasts
Breakthrough News (especially important Middle East & North Africa reports)
https://www.youtube.com/c/BreakThroughNews/videos
Behind The Headlines
https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindTheHeadlines/videos
The Red Nation (indigenous)
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheRedNation/videos
Black Alliance for Peace
https://www.youtube.com/c/BlackAllianceforPeace
The Project Censored Show
https://www.projectcensored.org/category/the-project-censored-show
Mint Press News
https://www.youtube.com/user/MintPressNews
The Grayzone (great on geopolitics - not good on environmental reporting)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEXR8pRTkE2vFeJePNe9UcQ/videos
Glenn Greenwald https://rumble.com/c/GGreenwald
(Excellent debunking both corporate parties & bridging left & right. Steer conservatives to Greenwald!)
My point in bringing up my voting record was to point out that I don’t believe that voting Democrat will solve anything. As I pointed out, I did not vote for Clinton, Biden, nor Harris.
In fact, if I had lived in a swing state, I would have been more active in the abandon Harris movement. Had Harris been elected to office, it would have been a disaster as she is more mold-able to the National Security interests and stands for absolutely nothing.
I believe we need to fight the system. Another Democrat in the White House just kicks the can down the hall and doesn’t solve anything or even attempt to right the ship. It also further disenfranchises people and then they turn to Trumps.
That said, I used to think as you did and roll my eyes whenever I would hear “fascist” in regard to Trump. But after his mass deportation effort (again, without due process), his unleashing of Musk to destroy all consumer protection, worker protections, and gut social safety nets (which they darn well better reimburse me for all paid into Social Security), and the fact that he is just another warmonger. I think those in the independent spaces aren’t taking notice enough. And I believe it’s because of how disingenuous the Democratic Party is and so we almost instinctively want to be contrarians and down play Trump as a result.
But to your point, I already read and listen to a lot of those.
I’ve been reading The Grayzone since 2019, and I’m a patreon supporter. I’ve met and have a photo with Max Blumenthal. I also have several of Max’s books as well as Anya’s Corporate Coup. I still occasionally read Ben Norton’s stuff after he left, but admittedly I don’t do as often due to time constraints.
I’ve also been reading Black Agenda Report since 2019. RIP Glen Ford.
I am a co-conspirator for Breakthrough News (I have a $25 a month subscription), they sent me a mug. I was devastated in that I dropped it while hand washing it. It can’t retain liquid anymore, but I still display it. I’ve been a subscriber since 2021.
Check out my paid subscriptions on substack: Racket News, Chris Hedges, Michael Tracy, Aaron Mate. I'm also subscribed to Caitlin Johnstone, but not a paid subscriber because she's cool like that gives everyone the benefit of her words.
I listen to Glenn Greenwalds podcast frequently but I’m not a paid subscriber. I also have a few of his books.
You should see my YouTube subscriptions. Too many to list. None of those subscriptions are the ones you’ve listed. EDIT: By none of those subscriptions, I meant The Young Turks, etc. Yes, Jimmy Dore did kind of sent me on this path in like 2016 but without his platform, I never would have found the Grayzone.
Regarding the downplaying of Trump (I’m not saying Democrats are better, but DOGE absolutely is unprecedented as is Trump’s deporting pro-Palestine supporters…again without due process or he’s trying to circumvent it anyway), it seems to me many of the independent traditionally left spaces have picked up a lot of MAGA or MAGA adjacent readers over the years because of how critical we all are of the Democratic Party. Because of this, they tend to downplay Trump because my goodness can MAGA throw a tantrum. Essentially, they don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them. It’s not necessarily audience capture, but it’s perhaps tertiary. EDIT: I noticed, this independently over the years, but Caitlin Johnstone also covered it in one of her newsletters. And gosh darn it, if she didn't have so many gosh darn daily newsletters, I might be able to find it and link it to you.
If you want to see a current example of a MAGA tantrum, check out the comments section of Matt Taibbi's coverage of Mahmoud Khalil on Racket News.
To be clear, I don’t think the election of Trump is going to mean we don’t get to make believe democracy every two to four years anymore, but I do think the U.S. empire is trending in the direction of fascism and Trump is in fact moving it along.
EDIT: (sorry for the edits, I was originally typing this on my phone after a really long day of work. For some reason every client ever wants submittals in April and I'm slammed.). I wanted to elaborate on why even if the shear number of mass deportations are lower than Biden's was during at this same time of year, it is unprecedented in he's circumventing due process and ignoring judge's orders. You mentioned Glenn Greendwald, I recommend you check out Glenn's coverage of this lack of due process.
I wanted to make one more point on immigration. According to a Grayzone article, Trump's sadistic executive orders on Venezuela caused the deaths of 100,000 Venezuelans in a single year. One cannot blame Trump's swamp creature cabinet on this because these were his own executive orders. Let's not forget that he tried to install Juan Guido during his first term as well. This also fueled a mass exodus from Venezuela. In fact, most people who are here illegally are here because of our sadistic foreign policy and meddling in that region. Liberals love to talk about how cheap labor helps our economy, Conservatives love to blame immigrants for everything, but the fact of the matter is, or at least I imagine, most of them would not even be here if we didn't destabilize their homes.
Back in the Obama years, my Grandma who is a Danish citizen but lives here now with my mom who takes care of her, was complaining to me about the influx of Muslims to Scandinavia. I pointed out then that they would not be there had NATO not destroyed their homes and Danmark is a member of NATO and took part in those operations. The same applies to us.
None of us are free until all of us are free. Free Palestine.
None of this obviates the crucial fact that if we create a narrative frame that Trump is uniquely dangerous (when he isn't, see below) it deeply entrenches neoliberal propaganda convincing liberals that we should support Democrats. We MUST not do that. It keeps the entire country and the fascism that has controlled it for 30 years trapped in amber.
Furthermore Trump is NOT uniquely dangerous. All of this has happened before. Both Bill Clinton an Barack Obama *literally* put Wall Street bankers in charge of the Cabinet. Banks and investment firms *ran* the US Government during their administrations.
FDR appointed oil magnate Nelson Rockefeller to run foreign affairs for the State Department, and FDR mass imprisoned Japanese people in the US during World War II in a smashing of US civil rights multiple orders of *magnitude* worse than anything Trump has yet done.
Since its inception, the US Federal Reserve has placed private bankers in almost complete control of the US economy.
And robber baron Andrew Mellon (the Elon Musk of his time) ran the US Treasury under *three* consecutive presidential administrations (see link below) in a capture of the US government by the oligarchy vastly worse and more complete than what Musk is doing (the latter whom is being blocked from directly controlling the Treasury, while much of his DOGE nonsense is being struck down in court.) Mellon makes Musk look like an amateur in comparison.
These are just examples. There are many others.
Here's the article detailing Mellon's history as Treasury Secretary. Search 'mellon' at:
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/what-businessman-white-house-looks/
Trump derangement syndrome doesn't exist.
I'm pretty sure I can prove it does by asking you a simple question. Did Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump collude to manipulate the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections to favor Trump getting elected?
Your reply is a Gotcha question.
No it isn't. There is no evidence whatsoever that Putin/Russia colluded to manipulate US elections, and no evidence whatsoever that Russia has any leverage whatsoever by which to manipulate Trump. So the question is meant to identify if you are aware of this, and if you are not, to show that you have believed lies you've been told.
Your refusal to answer this simple factual question shows pretty clearly that you believe the totally specious claims that there was Russia/Trump collusion, and this in turn shows that you are a victim of corporate and government media Trump Derangement Syndrome brainwashing.
Does that about cover it, or would you like to surprise me and verify that there was in fact no collusion?
Note: I say all of this as a radical left anarchist. I did not support or vote for Trump.
One of your guests said that non-profits can be used for good. Let's use that idea to help solve the problem you discussed with your other guest.
Once again I suggest that you, Ralph, set up a non-profit media conglomerate selling shares for 100 dollars. The shares could only be owned by US citizens with no one person owning more than 10 shares and the shares could only be sold for 100 dollars as the purpose of owning the shares is not to make a profit on the value of the shares but to have the media conglomerate owned and controlled by ordinary citizens. A board of people like Ralph would oversee it.
Just 10% of the 150 million voters investing in one share would total 1.5 billion dollars to get this started. If started now it could be up and running in time for the 2026 elections.
This would result in a media conglomerate that does not have a conflict of interest- it would have a convergence of interest with ordinary citizens. It would be a combination of the Radio Hour and the Capitol Hill Citizen on steroids.
And it would be big enough to withstand any SLAPP lawsuits or other intimidation.
This can all be done right now- with no need to wait for legislation or convince the big money politicians to do anything that would be a conflict of interest with their big money benefactors.
The only thing preventing this from getting started is someone like you using your network of activists to organize citizens to participate.
Please help keep the truth from being murdered by giving citizens the power to destroy the hold the big money interests have over the news and our political process.
This could also make Ralph a Job Creator!
Unfortunately, while Michael Graetz does present some very accurate and relevant facts, Graetz and Mr. Nader paint a very false picture of the overall situation. It must be stated that the last time the United States federal government did not carry a debt was during the Andrew Jackson administration. There have only been a handful of yearly fiscal surpluses since that era. The notion that our grandchildren are going to pay for an increasing national debt, as stated my Mr. Nader, is absurd now just as it would have been absurd to make that point 150 years ago. Graetz said that it was his opinion that trouble will be coming because of the national debt, but that is only based on opinion, or faith really. There is no empirical reason why a currency-issuing government with a fiat currency, as is the case with the US federal government, cannot sustain such a situation. Mr. Nader and Graetz are simply ignoring empiricism and going with a fanatical religious-like belief that bad things will happen even though similar statements made after the GFC have been proven incorrect especially with the expansionary Covid-era budgets that went well beyond anything during the GFC. The listeners of this august program deserve better than religious-like beliefs, especially ones which have been demonstrated to be incorrect. The listeners deserve empirically-backed theory.
I have more to say about my disagreements with Mr. Nader, though I’ll write about that at the end of the comment after I offer commentary on what was said by Graetz.
Now, Graetz is very correct in discussing that the national debt will accelerate tremendously because of interest paid on the national debt. Economically speaking, the economy will not collapse because of this fact, barring any artificial policy like the debt ceiling, and that is where Graetz and Mr. Nader are incorrect. The real cost to society because of this, and both the Feldmans made astute comments in this regard, is that it accelerates economic inequality. Those who have money to save can simply buy bonds and take advantage of this ‘free government money’. Those who do not have savings cannot take advantage of this.
Again, related to the astute comments by the Feldmans, this isn’t entirely a taxation problem. In fact, taxation is probably a lesser issue compared to other potential reforms. One way to alleviate this inequality is to go to a permanent zero-rate policy. Also, remember that the issuance of bonds is entirely residue from when the US was on a gold standard, something which has not been the case in a very long time. At this point, with the floating US Dollar, there is no natural reason to keep a bond market at all other than, to the points of the Feldmans, that the bond market helps wealthy individuals, financial institutions, and also non-profits especially because non-profits like to invest in very safe investments and bonds are that.
So, back to taxation. Given everything mentioned above, it must be stated that tax receipts do not ‘fund’ government spending. Any notion that we need tax receipts to reduce the national debt or to fund healthcare, etc. is balderdash. Graetz’ notion of fiscal/policy space is complete malarkey. Now, better targeted tax policy can help on the inflation front. This is more relevant on the timing of tax rate changes on the lower-income brackets as tax rate changes on the wealthiest brackets are unlikely to alter discretionary spending much which is why the 2017 tax cuts, and other previous ones, did not affect inflation. There are really no reasons to maintain FICA taxes and these should be eliminated as they are a senseless tax on working people, though doing so when the economy is doing well could present inflationary risks barring better policies in other areas like maintaining full employment, regulation over industry to prevent monopolies and cartels, and so forth. Thus, progressive policy needs to be more than just tax policy, it must encompass many other things.
Perhaps the greatest point which needs to be made, and which was not addressed by Graetz and Mr. Nader, is that taxation can be used to help maintain democracy. This transcends economic policy. We may not need to tax the wealthiest brackets because we need their tax receipts to fund social spending, but we may want to tax the wealthiest to restrict their ability to buy political influence. This also means closing political donation loopholes and resolving other campaign finance issues. If the current oligopoly doesn’t show the relevance of this point, I don’t know what else would.
On a concluding note, I’m really quite despondent about Mr. Nader’s monetarist narratives in this episode and in many previous ones. I have some sympathy for Mr. Nader and the likes of Graetz because I can empathize with the problem of maintaining empirically-based narratives when it might contradict one’s earlier books, speeches, and so forth. Society might view someone as being a mediocre ‘expert’ if they are contradicting their own earlier work, but this is ultimately a very unscientific attitude. None of us possess all the knowledge we need to know in our 20s. As one continues to learn about the world, it is natural that one may have new knowledge which might contradict previous, less-informed understandings. Perhaps society does not hold this view, but people who are willing to advance and challenge their knowledge should be lauded, not left to feel disrespected.
Mr. Nader may feel the need to keep a consistent narrative, but I challenge this belief. Surely Mr. Nader does not want his legacy to be one of ‘he meant well and he tried hard, but his knowledge of the world is stuck in the 1950s when he graduated from Princeton and he refused to converse with anyone outside of his yellowed Rolodex.’ Conversely, if Mr. Nader espoused empirically-based economic narratives, his legacy might well be that ‘he never stopped furthering himself through education, even in his 90s+, and he used that as a basis for his advocacy.’
Mr. Nader has given us all so much intellectual fruit that hopefully he views this suggestion from the audience as a form of gratitude. Ultimately, I disagree with Mr. Nader because I agree with Mr. Nader, so I only mean this as constructive criticism meant to improve our shared cause.
While I tend to agree, and Nader and Graetz clearly are stuck in outdated remedial libertarian thinking about debt, there are two very real problems with the current debt.
1) The US debt to GDP ratio is now well over 100%. That's over 25 trillion dollars (one fourth of the *global* GDP). There are limits to how much and how quickly debt can be expanded and still be sustainable. We are straining those limits and may as a result cause a Great Depression level collapse.
2) If things go well and the BRICS countries manage to sideline the US Dollar, our country's ability to sustain traditional sustainable sovereign debt will evaporate. If this happens amidst a Debt to GDP ratio of over 100%, it will bring about a crash far worse than the Great Depression.
In any case, I'm sure that we can both agree that all of this talk of debt limits is nothing but theatre to justify taking a chainsaw to government spending and thereby force across the board privatization of government services, as well as a rise in unemployment, both of which will further enrich hundred billionaires like Musk.
Eric, these are interesting discussion points and the deserve analysis.
On point 1: I disagree with your assertion. If you think a debt to GDP of 100% is high, look at Japan where their debt to GDP crossed 100% in around 2003 and has steadily increased to what it is now, 263%, and it’ll continue to grow. And, yet, Japan is one of the world’s strongest economies with an unemployment rate well below ours and with life expectancies well above ours in the US. Monetarists, or economic libertarians if you want to call them that, like Graetz have been sounding alarms about Japan for years and years, and yet, the Japanese economy continues to show strength and resilience. ‘Bond vigilantes’ and whatever other nonsense the monetarists come up with have not been a problem for Japan.
I can understand why the debt numbers are troubling to many. If a family, business, or even local government had numbers like that, it would be alarming, but those entities do not have floating currencies like the US and Japan have. The concept of household debt is completely different from the concept of currency-issuing country national debt. Fiscal responsibility has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the national debt.
What are risks to economic strength? To name a few, not being able to produce food domestically (perhaps due to environmental factors and a lack of research even aside from environmental factors), unemployment, having labor productivity loss due to poor physical and mental health, labor productivity loss due to poor education, a lack of research & development, poor infrastructure, global and domestic humanitarian disasters (perhaps caused by poor foreign policy), poor allocation of labor though policies which emphasizes unproductive industries versus productive ones, general issues of inflation related to poor allocated resources and poorly targeted spending, poor government regulation which leads to things such as monopolies, and governance instability generally (which can be caused by an uneven distribution of wealth within a country).
Looking at these factors above, and also the issue of foreign debt and obligations which is central to everything else listed, you can also see the difference between a country like Japan which has a high debt-to-GDP rate and struggling developing/’Global South’ countries.
In order to maintain the high standards necessary to have a strong, stable government, government spending is absolutely necessary. This is why I say that austerity thinking is fiscally irresponsible, making the definition of ‘fiscal responsibility’ almost the opposite of the commonly-accepted definition of the term.
On point 2: The growing strength of the Chinese economy will not ‘sideline’ the US Dollar or the economic strength of the United States unless we artificially choose economic instability through things such as the ‘debt ceiling’. For one, the Chinese have an export-based economy, as discussed last week on the RNRH by Lori Wallach, which means the Chinese are taking US Dollars in, so this hardly makes the case for the irrelevance of the US Dollar. It is quite to the contrary.
Aside from that, the US surpassed the United Kingdom as the largest global economy sometime in the latter half of the 1800s, but the UK pound sterling remained the reserve currency for decades after and likely would have remained so if it wasn’t for European self-destruction and the subsequent re-writing of the global economy following World War II by the US at the the famed meeting in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.
As long as US policy continues to protect the reserve currency status of the US Dollar, as they did during the GFC, there isn’t reason to fear the Dollar’s position and fear mongering by politicians and low-grade economists should be ignored.
The position of the US Dollar isn’t even of great relevance really. Countries with their own floating currencies such as Canada, Australia, the UK, and Japan, as mentioned above, are more than capable of guaranteeing full employment, national health, and so forth through their own fiscal policies. Europe is a bit of a more complicated story because of the Eurozone, but even then, European Central Bank policies can be made to be congruent with this model (in theory at least, the EU and Eurozone are neoliberal organizations so expect neoliberal policies). So, with this in mind, is the global position of the US Dollar really of importance and worth all this unfounded fear-mongering?
Finally, to address your last paragraph, yes, you’re absolutely correct about that! And it isn’t just a US issue or a right-wing party issue, look at the social austerity/neoliberalism being imposed by the ‘center-left’ Labour Party government right now in the UK which is being sold as being ‘fiscal responsibility’ and ‘government efficiency’ when really it is just eroding the economic strength factors which I mentioned under point 1. With that in mind, your other comment about the erosion of government over the past 40-50 years leading to Trump, and maybe even something worse in the future, is the natural result and I agree that people need to understand that Trump isn’t really the cause of these problems, it is the natural result of the lack of sufficient governance and people need to work together to advocate for better governance while being guided by empirical knowledge of economics rather than faith-based, religious-like beliefs about economics.
Excellent arguments, but they don't tell the whole story.
Japan: 1) Has a robust welfare state and because of this has been able to socially and micro-economically weather multiple serious crashes under its money printer go "BRRR" economics. 2) Is able to ride the wave of the much larger and ever expanding multi Quadrillion dollar Wall Street debt bubble to keep its own system from collapsing. 3) I often raise your very point about Japan when I'm arguing with self interested gloom and doomers (particularly gold bugs) to argue that the US Fed money printing could last for decades or even centuries longer. But:
China/BRICS: The US dollar has never faced a worldwide structural threat like BRICS and its mirror financial infrastructures in Central Asia. Since the Ukraine war sanctions imposed on the world by the US (the straw that broke the camel’s back for the Global East and South) the BRICS and other such multilateral platforms have been rapidly forging an international trade infrastructure that will soon be able to simply replace the US Dollar as the global default currency of exchange.
While as you say interlinked debt and trade relationships mitigate against the Global East and South actually taking this drastic measure which would also harm their own interest, if you look out how fed up the rest of the world is with US imperial oppression, and economic domineering and extortion through SWIFT, etc (which is also impoverishing the world nearly as badly) you have to face the reality that they might actually pull that lever within the next decade. And this would totally change the game. Without global dollar dominance stable US sovereign money printing will no longer function and the US house of cards will fail.
I would urge you to do a web search on the combined terms “Pepe Escobar” and “BRICS” to read what Escobar has written about all of this, and so get a far better sense of the sophistication and imminence of this new global multilateral counter-structure to US hegemony.
Eric, I’ll address each point individually:
“Japan: 1) Has a robust welfare state and because of this has been able to socially and micro-economically weather multiple serious crashes under its money printer go "BRRR" economics.”
Japan does have a robust welfare state, but remember, such stability is gained through social spending, not through austerity.
You may be using the term ‘money printing’ as an analogy, but for the sake of anyone reading this who does not know, the US does not spend by printing money. The term ‘money printing’ is laced with incorrect monetarist assumptions that creating money naturally results in inflation. Creating money, and spending money for that matter, does not lead to anything by itself, what might create inflation is poorly targeted spending/ poor fiscal policy, including tax policy, along with poor monetary policy.
“2) Is able to ride the wave of the much larger and ever expanding multi Quadrillion dollar Wall Street debt bubble to keep its own system from collapsing.”
No, not at all. Remember, during and after the GFC, Japan’s economy did not suffer any worse than any other country with less debt, and Japan actually had a smoother recovery in many ways. Japan’s unemployment rate was much lower than the US’ during that period. This is even more remarkable given that Japan also had to deal with the tsunami not long after the GFC and, of course, Covid. Through all of this, the Japanese economy has remained robust and resilient.
Japanese industries have, in many ways, been hurt by a US debt bubble of sorts, but not the one you’re referring to. The Japanese auto industry, for example, has been hurt by sluggish sales of automobiles in the US and elsewhere in the west due to working-class citizens carrying large amounts of personal debt and seeing low income growth due to the very uneven income structure in the US and increasing unevenness in other western countries. However, even with this, as mentioned above, Japan remains strong.
It should be noted that Japan has maintained a near-0% interest rate policy and understands that economic stability is achieved via fiscal policy (including the aforementioned social spending) and not via monetary policy. Every so often, Japan will tinker with their sales taxes and such for the purpose of reducing government debt rather than reducing demand, and it only ends up hurting their economy as opposed to the intended goal. At least Japan has shown more of a willingness to learn from these mistakes than we have in the US.
“3) I often raise your very point about Japan when I'm arguing with self interested gloom and doomers (particularly gold bugs) to argue that the US Fed money printing could last for decades or even centuries longer.”
Decades, centuries, or an infinite amount of time as long factors I mentioned in my earlier reply are addressed and artificial barriers are not imposed such as the ‘debt ceiling’ or self-imposed fiscal rules like what the UK is suffering from in the Labour Party’s best efforts to emulate Musk.
“Without global dollar dominance stable US sovereign money printing will no longer function and the US house of cards will fail.”
As I said in my previous reply, this is simply not true. The Canadian Dollar, Australian Dollar, Japanese Yen, UK Pound Sterling are not, at least in current times, reserve currencies, but that does not prevent Canada, Australia, Japan, or the UK from spending in their own currency as they wish.
There is nothing especially magical about the US Dollar’s reserve currency status, nor is it especially endangered. The BRICS are, rightfully so, setting up BRICS PAY as a means to bypass SWIFT. China will likely become the largest global economy in the near future. None of this directly endangers the economic strength of the United States, the ability for the United States to deficit spend, or the ability for the United States to enact social programs.
Likewise, when the UK Pound Sterling lost reserve status after Bretton Woods and had no longer been the largest economy in the world decades before Bretton Woods, it did not prevent the UK government from enacting the National Health Service (nationalized healthcare), public housing programs, or any number of reforms which allowed the UK to rebuild and thrive after the war. It has only been through foolish self-imposed austerity starting with Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan and then expanded by Thatcher, Blair, and subsequent PMs that the living standards for the British have decreased.
Furthermore, if we look at the US itself, the Progressive Era reforms and especially the New Deal all occurred while the UK Pound Sterling was the reserve currency. So, again, reserve currency status is not at all relevant to the US’ economic strength or the ability for the US government to improve conditions for US citizens. There are no ‘ifs and buts’ about it, aside from the constraints mentioned in my earlier comment.
Please just go away!
Not an argument.
To describe the dot com bubble now we observe the variety of supportive mental services surrounding Lutheran social services website around the country. All of these are medical research facilities with llc fictitious business tax research license for chemical imbalance price to earnings ratios. A single layer Ponzi scheme
I don’t know, Taibbi’s kind of exaggeration, spin, and pandering in an attempt to not upset his new MAGA readership has been a little tough to stomach for me. I can’t help but notice his glaring omission of pro Palestine crack downs and arrests in Europe (Richard Medhurst for one) in his lauding of J.D. Vance’s performative free speech…speech. And Walker Kirn is just straight up insufferable to me.