China is giving the country free shit
And that isn't going to last, take advantage of it while you can, America.
You can build domestic industry and jobs without this dumb shit. It's just going to reduce the purchasing power.
Extremely critical support to Trump for destroying the AmeriKKKan empire
It would be very funny to see Americans mald over rising treat prices, except...
re-capitalization may seem alluring to American nationalists but its actually dumb as hell. Capitalism is a world system lubricated by USD, which americans send abroad to pay for imports. Its not a competition of discrete national economies, capitalism is global and totalizing. Everyone else in the world does the actual work, Americans just need to do their part: consume to provide high-end demand. Trying to go to protectionism now is like trying to make the oil pump in the opposite direction, your gonna break the motor and probably set something on fire.
IMO points #1 and #2 are key reasons why #3, as you describe it (with appropriate skepticism) isn't going to happen. The parasitism of deeply established rentiers (of industry) and the hyper-financialization is not going to come to a halt, not without what can only be described as a death to the system (it could be resuscitated after- but all these contradictions would frankly need to be purged, a politically painful and systematically tumultuous process, to allow for such developments).
The world reserve currency status and the consequences of its decades-long abuse/"cheap money" (or rather, toilet paper money, the ubiquitousness and cartoonish levels of debt and speculation, etc) is also a noose around AmeriKKKa's neck in this regard. There is no soft landing, and there will be no reining in the system, not without the destruction of the wealth of the capitalist classes and of the global economic system the US has made itself the center of (though it is unsustainable in its own right).
As for #4... sure, I agree entirely. And thus personally I hope to get the hell out of the imperial cores before the death camps and/or pogroms begin, if they do. But thankfully however, the rest of the world- the overwhelming majority of the world- is moving past the west's hateful, racist, genocidal, and deranged system, and will leave them in the dust if they cannot progress forward (IMO the west will not- not for a long time, anyways, the social, ideological, institutional, etc. contradictions of 500 years, and the contradiction of settlerism in particular, shall be a hurdle that will take a very long time to be overcome, if ever- though I do expect it will happen eventually in the long run).
The west will embrace fascism, and likely will try to take all the rest of humanity down with it if they can't keep them as their slaves. It sounds dismal, but that's my expectations for the western regimes, anyways- whether the masses, or even those within the system with the decency or self-preservation to resist and break free from this course, will be able to recognize in full just what path they are headed down and prevent it is another matter.
But- in response to #4- my answer is- "yeah, so what?" Not to be callous, but this is the path these societies were almost certainly going to go down from the beginning; this is the great hurdle they must overcome (that they created for themselves). I am not disregarding the suffering that it will cause (which I will likely also face, and so will many of my loved ones). But this is still progress of an overwhelmingly positive nature for the rest of the world- just because the slave masters (the "international community") might tear themselves apart and get homicidal, does not mean that the slaves (the overwhelming global majority) should wait on their liberation and the improvement of their lives till it is convenient; it does not mean that the global south should continue bending over to western parasitism (which is in fact becoming more and more deranged and intolerable, as shown with their attempts at "Ukrainizing" countries like the Philippines and Armenia and their march to WW3, with their blatant genocide in Gaza and their constant provocations and meddling reaching a fever pitch across the globe, their attempts to destroy the peace, prosperity, and development of ASEAN, of Africa through its trade and cooperation with BRICS, etc...).
If the west wishes to go fascist (which I don't doubt they most likely will), if they want to destroy all of humanity if they cannot re-establish global slavery, unquestioned imperialism, and omnipresent hegemony as they desire- that's a hurdle that humanity will have to face. And humanity, the collective humanity, will either win (whether those in the west wish to consider themselves a part of it, or bring destruction upon their heads to the bitter end is another matter) or go extinct, but either way the ordeal will have been- if not necessary, absolutely inevitable (because the west and even the western masses, if they play along with their regimes, will have done everything to ensure it was so).
The world will free themselves from AmeriKKKa and the league of western imperialists- they will free themselves from the petrodollar's parasitism, from western enforced monopolies, from theft and coercion, from the US' salami-slicing tactics of moving ever-closer to a "winnable nuclear war" and the effective genocide or enslavement of the entire planet. Whether the western populations are ready for such a change is irrelevant, and they can either get with the program (and they will have every chance of doing so- right up until the call comes to launch the nukes) or die rejecting the most basic decency and humanity.
That's my take on it, anyways. All the west, the "garden peoples," have left (as a simplification- they have much, but their system has reached the end of the road and they can only try to threaten the world to prevent it from moving further) is terrorism. And all the west, the "garden," can accept, is the complete subservience and enslavement of the world, to return to the unipolar moment and not only that, but worse- to gradually balkanize and de-industrialize all the nations of the global south, so as to never allow such a challenge to their "garden" to arise again.
All they offer is terrorism, and their reward, to those who submit- as Russia's experience post-dissolution, Ukraine's current experience, etc. and that of countless others have shown- the reward for submission is slavery and death, the loss of everything of value and of all hope. The global south (and the masses of the west, if they can get their heads out of their asses to realize it) truly has nothing to lose but their chains.
To your point 3, I don't think the US in its current form will ever actually onshore meaningful industry. Industry is a riskier and lower impact investment. It takes a ton of money to buy land, build a huge building on it, fill it with machines, fill it with people, train those people, fill it with inputs, and coordinate the shipping and distribution of the outputs. This is a huge huge huge cost for not a lot of payoff in the short term, at least to someone trying to fund it privately.
What private investors want to do that when they can just buy real estate or insurance bonds or whatever, rent it or turn around and sell it all in a few years for a huge profit to some other investors trying to do the same?
Trying to onshore industry to the US via protectionism won't accomplish anything meaningful beyond "Americans can afford less shit." An economy built on financialization and that doesn't care about anything except short term profit has no incentive to build industry. At the kind of scale that would make a meaningful impact on the average American, only a government could accomplish it, and that definitely won't happen.
Wasn't the 1890s a time were Americans were still dying of dysntry?
Cholera, Typhus, Whooping Cough, Tuberculosis, Strident Rubella, Poor Man's Gout, Shanty Fever, Housemaid's Knee, Jungle Rot, The Staggers, Climactic Bouba, Dum-Dum Fever, and The Lurch just to name a few
And smallpox too! Don't forget that one, deadliest disease in history, the Best, Yuuge Illness! And Trump will open up those bio-labs and bring it back to the American people!
HOLY SHIT lmfao called it https://lemmy.ml/post/20132665/13578648
Yes, please introduce 20% tariffs, American will be deprived of their treats, surely they will love you for that
A tariff on cell phones, just like the 1890s
Do the imperialists not understand imperialism or am I missing something? Trump is really making me reconsider everything I know to be true
no, trump is part of the new wave of American reactionaries who actually believe their own propaganda. They attack the old guard imperialists as "the deep state", they literally don't understand.
They understand that to do imperialism efficiently you actually need domestic industry or other countries would just say to fuck off, but tariffs and subsidies are the only tools they have that don't significantly undermine internal power of the capitalist class.
How else can you build domestic industry and jobs within American capitalism?
You have to lower real wages by fixing the various factors pushing up wages. Healthcare, infrastructure, housing, daycare. If a government can provide those things and basically internalize those costs the production of goods becomes cheaper and more competitive on the global stage because as an industrialist you can pay lower wages without effecting the subsistence rate of workers. This will obviously never happen.
you could target the tariffs instead of a blanket tariff so that the domestic private sector in priority sectors can be built up with less competition from imports without causing general price increases.
or you could provide subsidies so the domestic goods are more competitive.
or better yet, state owned enterprises so the capitalists don't get free Government money (directly anyway). the state can price it competitively.
its really their choice, yea some neolibs would scream communism but the US can have imports and domestic production/jobs.
or you can destroy amerikkka with 500% tariff so that China is forced to sell goods to itself and other countries.
Foreign competition was kept out by a high tariff conveniently set by Congress, and by 1880 Carnegie was producing 10,000 tons of steel a month, making $1 1/2 million a year in profit. By 1900 he was making $40 million a year, and that year, at a dinner party, he agreed to sell his steel company to J. P. Morgan. He scribbled the price on a note: $492,000,000.
Morgan then formed the U.S. Steel Corporation, combining Carnegie's corporation with others. He sold stocks and bonds for $1,300,000,000 (about 400 million more than the combined worth of the companies) and took a fee of 150 million for arranging the consolidation. How could dividends be paid to all those stockholders and bondholders? By making sure Congress passed tariffs keeping out foreign steel; by closing off competition and maintaining the price at $28 a ton; and by working 200,000 men twelve hours a day for wages that barely kept their families alive.
And so it went, in industry after industry-shrewd, efficient businessmen building empires, choking out competition, maintaining high prices, keeping wages low, using government subsidies
Industrial capitalist
(Before they realise the US still has no real industrial capacity)
Within a capitalist framework? Some sort of Keynesian program. Have the government buy stuff with some specifications that they have to be American made and the jobs have to be decent. Put money in regular folks hands and they will drive up consumption, which could lead to more jobs.
However, I think State owned enterprises like we see in China could become the new model capitalist solution for growth.