8mo ago

Show these trumpers what a failing economy looks like.

The people in cities and in blue states made this economic turn around happen. Trump does not deserve the credit he will claim. Burn it down.

Edit: If you leave this thread learning anything please let it be this one thing. Organic political movement isn't schemed up in a board room or carefully planned and executed every step of the way. It starts inside of you and people like you and you lend your support not knowing the outcome but believing in the cause. If it's not here, it's not here. I don't mean to supply you with fuel needed but only the spark to ignite flame waiting to be ignited.

I'm out though.

95 comments

My plan is to stop participating in the economy as much as I can. Only the basic necessities now. The fun times are over. Let’s help crash the Trump economy.
- a lot of us have been 'existing' on 'only the basic necessities' for years
  
  That’s true. I guess I sounded privileged there.
- And to strike
  
  I would join one if it happens. I feel like one of the best ways to strike is just to stop buying shit. The economy thrives on American excess and consumption.
- Everyone should save as much money as they can and probably not play the stock market. I have a feeling 401k's are going to take a gigantic shit.
  I have no idea what's going to happen. I hope none of this happens. it's just a very pessimistic gut feeling.
- That's a completely asinine take. Just live your life and try to stay out the Trump administrations path.
  
  It does not matter a single person might think. It only matters they strike on Jan 6th and together we show them what we all think about oppression and authoritarianism. That no amount of money can buy my freedom. That no exchange of goods is worth exchanging the people I love and am suppose to protect.
  
  Fuck that. I want to help crash Trump’s economy. Sabotage them in every way possible.
There's no need.
Really.
If Trump does what he says he was going to do-and I don't doubt he will--then the economy will crash on its own.
Tariffs will raise prices, and will drive inflation. Why will tariffs raise prices? Because the people selling will just add the price of the tariff to the goods sold. And unless the tariffs are the result of a new law, any incoming president can cancel them. That means that it would be a very risky environment to try and build domestic production in. The place I work for uses aluminum extrusion; we get it from a domestic supplier, and they get all their raw aluminum stock from China. When tariffs were enacted on Chinese aluminum, our supplier passed the cost on to us, and we had to raise our prices to account for our increased costs. So our customers had to pay more to get exactly the same product.
Deporting all of the undocumented immigrants will mean that we'll suddenly have lots of jobs not getting done; most produce is picked by undocumented immigrants, a ton of general construction is done by undocumented immigrants, most meat-packing plants are full of undocumented immigrants laborers. We'll suddenly be a negative unemployment; there won't be enough workers in the workforce to fill demand. That means wages will have to rise, which will drive inflation, and housing costs will rise sharply because new construction will be so expensive with undocumented immigrants. One of the people I work with is undocumented; if he gets deported, then we're up shit creek, because no one else can do his job as efficiently as he can, if anyone can do it at all (yay, lean manufacturing...).
I would place a financial bet on the economy crashing if Trump actually does what he says he will.
- My expectation is that the "mass deportations" will quickly morph into "mass incarceration" will quickly morph into an enslaved workforce.
  There will probably be one wave of deportations just to "show we mean business" or something and then the news will move onto the next distraction while the remaining undocumented immigrants are quietly sent back off to do the jobs they were doing only now the business don't have to pay them.
- Wages rising? Not if they can help it. Other people mentioned prison labor. But they're overlooking child labor, which is already being brought back in multiple states. Throw in some pretty weakly disguised slave labor in the form of company stores, and there's no reason to pay actual workers what they're worth.
- Brexit was supposed to make farm workers' wages higher. The EU workers left, and crops rotted on the fields, because Brits didn't want those jobs, no matter what wages the farmers were offering. So they had to tell the EU workers they were welcome again and introduce special visas to lure them back.
- I doubt Trump is going to care enough to keep his promises. He ran to avoid jail and for the ego trip from winning - he got both, so he's gonna coast and do whatever his handlers tell him just so long as they let him take full credit for anything positive.
  They will tell him to do things that will benefit them by removing the guardrails on the economy so they can exploit the hell out of it in record time. As such, it'll initially look good before it burns itself out, by which time most of his term will be up anyway. By that time he'll have gotten his sycophants to ensure he is fully immune to prosecution, along with a more fully stacked Supreme Court to ensure it stays that way.
  Need proof? How much has Mexico paid into the border wall, eh? Plenty of other unfulfilled promises from the first time around to point at, if you need more.
  
  See, the issue is that most of Trump's policies didn't come from him in 2016 - he went out and hung out with dictators and played golf and held rallies while his Cabinet did almost all of the heavy lifting. Remember that several of his staffers said they couldn't get him to pay attention to important things like briefings unless they had something positive ABOUT HIM PERSONALLY every two sentences.
  That's how a lot of this shit is gonna get done - dozens of Yes Men all implementing whatever part of The Plan they're supposed to implement from their appointed office, so Trump doesn't take the heat for it.
- There's been a recession start in every single republican presidential term of my life. I'm over 40. Each of Reagan's terms. HW Bush. Each of the second Bush (these were the worst, dot-com crash and the great recession starting in 2007/8). And then the great Covid bungling. As you point out: if they implement their agenda it's likely to happen again.
  There has never been a recession start during a democratic president in my lifetime (although Biden's term came close).
  The opposition needs to be ready to jump on this and yell from the figurative rooftops so conservatives can't spin it away. And it needs to be most heavily broadcast where the electorate shifted to the right this election. The fact that people generally think republicans are better for the economy is a severe failure on the part of the democrats.
  
  Something I just thought of today...
  Industry has been outsourcing for more than 40 years now. Manufacturing has been gutted in the US, and that's wrecked labor. With the loss of the power of organized labor, money has flowed up from the workers to the executives. We've seen labor unions making big gains under Biden, but there simply aren't enough people covered by unions in the US to reverse this trend. Right now we have a smallish-number of higher-paid information workers, a somewhat larger number of people in manufacturing, and a LOT of people in service-sector jobs that aren't organized, or can't effectively organize. An economy built largely around large numbers of low-wage service-sector jobs, with a small number of higher paid information workers just isn't sustainable.
  Tariffs that went on long enough would force manufacturing to be done in the US. And wages would have to rise, because if the workers can't afford the products they make, then an economy collapses completely (unless you are exporting a lot). Yeah, it would be super-rough until factories were back in the US, maybe 10+ years. But our thirst for more and cheaper plastic shit from Asia is gonna be the death of us. (...That is, if climate change doesn't do it first.) In that respect, Trump is kind of right, but the tariffs are probably going to be so harmful in the short run that people will reject any attempts to restructure the economy. I don't think that Trump is principled in this at all; I think that it's populist, and he's a broken clock on this issue.
- Hey, wages rising would at least be nice.
  ...not going to happen though, more likely to see an increase in prison labour
  
  Maybe for some things, like working in fields. (Maybe. That would be a preeeeeettttttty good time for someone to pull a runner.) Probably not for construction, where you'd have to be giving inmates access to things that readily be used as weapons. Same with meat packing, where they'd literally be working with knives.
  If people that are left of center can get their shit together some day, they really need to rewrite that amendment to ban all involuntary servitude.
  
  Wages rising? No.
  Salaries rising? A little.
  Executive pay and bonuses? Huge.
- Demand 4: no new tarrifs.
General strike on January 6th?
- Yup, its time for a general strike. Spread the word to all
GENERAL STRIKE JAN 6
The voices of the workers will echo throughout the entire globe. Find a local left wing organization, organize, and when the day comes we fight like hell.
- Jan 20. If we do Jan 6th, those who can't hold out will go back to work 2 weeks later, and Trump will get credit for ending Biden's strike.
  
  Jan 6 for those who can hold out and Jan 20 for those who cant
You won't even have to do anything, the Tariffs will.
- And the loss of labor in the agricultural, construction, food service, and hospitality industries.
- Demand 4: No new tarrifs.
Let's do it. Start the plans. Make the sticky posts. I'm about it. Just tell me what I need to do.
- That's the beauty, you do nothing. Jk, no it starts with spreading the word but also ensure every one you tell that you have them. We need to come together and it will cost. Let them know we are in it together.
  List of demands:
  1 Biden expand the supreme court unopposed.
  2 Federal legislation enshrining abortion rights, gay marriage, and decriminilizing Marijuana.
  3 Legislation to expand Medicare and make it single payer.
  60 million can't beat trump at the ballot box but they can beat anyone who dare try to oppress them.
  
  Is there a petition? A news letter? Anything for us to use all this anger and despair on right now?
- Build community. Volunteer at local organizations such as food bank or mutual aid, or just get your friends together and do something weird like a free public picnic in the park. It's a lot of fun, you meet lots of cool people. And you make a community more able to resist and protect.
  Also stock up on several weeks of food and goods. You'll want to share when disaster happens.
Why strike when you can unionize?
Start building small unions for blue collar roles that focus primarily on employment protection, rather than pushing salaries high. From there, as the cost of living increases, push for a percentage increase that aligns, and strike fully if those demands aren't met.
If Trump wants to block migration, then forming unions would be the defining legacy of a Trump administration. He can't go for cheap foreign labour, and he can't remove domestic...
Woo woo housing market is gonna craaaaaassshhhhh… just in time for me to leave the country to avoid persecution. Crap.
- There is no greater strike then completely removing yourself from this nation. If you voted blue you were 10x the economic power any red state has ever offered.
  
  That’s a good point. I’m out!
  
  Removing yourself from the nation? So your idea is to just remove what blue voters are left? Also do you have sources to back up your claims about economic power? California is a massive powerhouse but many other blue states just aren't. Like Oregon.
But their whole plan is to have the economy fail, then transfer wealth to themselves:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-musk-economy-trump-hardship-b2637850.html
A general strike will take a lot of planning. I'd estimate that an intense organizing campaign over the span of a year could make it happen, if all the organizers are willing to set aside most of their personal life for that time. Add an additional year if the organizing committee cannot make that commitment. If we start the planning now, it could grind the Trump economy to a total halt in q4 2026, peak profit for most companies.
- It doesn’t work unless you can cover the costs of all the many people living paycheck to paycheck.
  
  Yes, precisely. That's what all the planning is needed for.
- Waiting for things to cool off is the one sure fire way to make sure it will never happen. Anyone tempted to subscribe to this belief has already in their head given up their freedom. Has already resided their fate and is ready for the new world order.
  
  I'm not saying this out of ignorance. I'm a professional organizer. I'm telling you that a strike without planning is like jumping into the deep end without learning to swim. The strike will fail if things aren't prepared first.
  ETA: all said, if you want to start organizing this strike I will help. I absolutely agree, a strike is really the only tool left in our "peaceful protest" toolbox.
  
  This is a take I actually agree with you on. Complacency is this country's biggest flaw and why shit has cranked so hard to the right. But people need leaders with plans and social skills. In the same breath of saying inaction is deadly, so is unorganized action. That's how movements die. Remember occupy Wall Street? Favorite example.
Bullshit like this always pisses me off. You look at the comments, no plan, no organization nothing but more pretty words. Keyboard jockey neo-liberals.
If you want to "resist", go outside and organize with existing groups and participate. Don't just talk about how cool it would be if we "stuck it to the man" and leave it there. Just saying "we should strike" doesn't mean a fucking thing. Lots of people, myself included, can't afford to strike. I could lose my job, then my home. Get real dude. Don't just make half assed posts without any plans or actionable steps to jerk yourself off.
- Bullshit like this is the exact reason we fail each other every fucking day. I'm asking you to lift others up and all you can do is put me down. I'm not special but I'm 10x more then you'll ever be.
  
  Then do something. Get off your keyboard and do something. Prove me wrong. Please, I want you to. But you won't.
We're primed for a leftist version of the Tea Party. A Guillotine party.
- I like it
votes for the candidate openly talking about plans that only help the rich become richer
how could this happen?
Strike? Better make it quick.
When Trump fires and replaces the NLRB with loyalists, you’ll lose the NLRA that defends your right to strike. Without that, you’ll just get fired for job abandonment.
- Jan 6th

95 comments

GENERAL STRIKE JAN 6