As recently reported on politico.eu, the absolute stupidity of Trump's desire for Canada, Greenland, Venezuela play, his foul ignorant mouth on NATO, and criticism of Euro countries has made him too risky to be associated with. He's becoming radioactive skank on parade bad.
For those in the US like me: Trump will be the single largest reason for the rise of popularist left politics here, which we don't need either.
Granted like the Marshal Tucker song "I heard it in a love song" ... "can't be wrong" Trump isn't actually popular right. Trump is about vanity and self enrichment.
Moreover it'll ruin USD as a reserve currency another unforced error.
Where in the hell is Congress? Talk about useless, a blankin' useless institution. The checkbook is a 1a or 1b named, explicit role and responsibility.
Congress republicans are fully in agreement with Trump project and openly support it. They are not sleeping doing nothing. They are actively supporting it.
In near term you are mostly ie 85% right. And yet the time will come when they'll have to choose between themselves and Trump in the 2026 and 2028 elections. Meanwhile, I think a lot of Republicans simply don't know how to handle this and by inertia do nothing out of cowardice.
Now this situation is complicated. Take the border. The dems (plus cnn, ms-now) cannot bring themselves to say: illegal immigrants must be deported, and those adjudicated in court ordered to leave but didn't must be deported. That kind of stupidy doesn't help force Republicans to get a backbone as it may keep the voting public somewhat on trump side, which happened on 2024.
At the same time ICE's execution is so piss-poor including ignoring habius corps, ignoring court orders, snd killing US citizens Republicans without backbone cannot delay their reckoning overly long.
Indeed republican congressman are uniquely positioned to effect law+funding to deport lawfully, to require operational control at the border, and to mark off limits those that are here legally and do something about the multi-year backlog in cases. And importantly hold the executive branch in check.
@iamnowhere this is music to my ears. Under the slap stick stupidity of Congress (albeit with real consequences unfortunately) lay bigger problems.
I'll redo the argument slightly differently. The core management problem is demands on resources always exceed resources. So perhaps the single salient aspect of management is the strategy and parameters which yields a procedure on what demand to reject leaving YES to remaining demands.
One weakness of the current strategy is it's too greedy and short termed. Now perhaps the Chinese take it too far the other way (not consequence free btw) but we USA are too anemic short term.
Perhaps one change post 1980 is prices may have to go up to trade for longer term stability and jobs in the US. Second, although I think corps and top 5% are under taxed (after writeoffs are incl) Washington's congress doesnt have the institutional credibility to tax it because perpetual debt spending is normal ... which is variation on all that matters is the next election ie short term thinking.
Congress is really competent about getting voters stuff now --- they have no self sourced and self disiplined way to manage demands --- and paying for it after the next election by more debt. Nowadays they even stopped faking concern about debt.
> The core management problem is demands on resources always exceed resources. So perhaps the single salient aspect of management is the strategy and parameters which yields a procedure on what demand to reject leaving YES to remaining demands.
True and important. One reason the US did so well after WWII was that resources were abundant, and the technology to exploit those resources improved rapidly until the middle of the century. Although I think industrial policy and infrastructure helped as well.
> Perhaps one change post 1980 is prices may have to go up to trade for longer term stability and jobs in the US.
I definitely think so. It’s strange how luxuries have become so cheap while essentials (food, transportation, and shelter) keep becoming more expensive. As a society I think we could afford to pay a little more for things like smartphones and TVs if that money could be moved towards lowering the cost of essentials. Tariffs and state investment (Intel) may have actually opened the door to thinking about things like this, but we’re a long way from a coherent strategy. I also worry that the bungling of these things may lead the next administration to return to business as usual, if that’s even possible at this point.
Here again I agree. Housing, health insurance, and education costs have risen far exceeding inflation elsewhere. Post-covid food prices are higher and may not return anytime soon. These are serious head winds for the bottom 70%.
Now the return of the 1960s seems nieve when the middle class was more secure. The return of clothing manufacturers, umbrella, USB cords, and a lot of the misc stuff made in China we get at Kmart is not and should not come back to the US.
We could do better by getting more of our supply chain in medicine, manufacturing into NA or Europe. We could also help by a 10 year plan to get debt down with consequent reduction on interest payments in DC. Interest payments on debt are among the top 3 largest federal spends.
Bush junior tried to increase housing ownership which indirectly lead to the 2008 crisis since lenders and brokers passed risk to the fed among other things. Perhaps the fed ought to work with states to simplify and make zoning uniform. From what I understand zoning complications are a major contributor to housing shortage on the supply side.
This is an incomplete list ... but you're right: Washington is a 100 light years away from a technocratic industrial policy that is hybrid capitalism through state strategy.
I was solicited by an intermediary of CZ out of I believe the UK with a whatsup number from some Chinese lady (based on name) just before trump was elected ... now I knew trump and crypto are perfect for each other ... but obviously never responded. If you're in crypto you're still always hours away from a scam and two weeks away from a knock on your door at 4am from law enforcement once again when trump is out. Wow! talk about radioactive skank on parade...
Gerstner's overhaul at ibm was one of the best reads i made in business sharing with a few Drucker articles and tqm the japanese way by Ishikawa. Since 1980 I think I've only met two managers (one chemE and one manager at a credit card company) that came close to "Management". I miss those guys.
What I don't want is outsourcing risk to tax payers,beyond leverage discussed last.
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