Is there any value in listening to a man who is consistently wrong? Did he get something profoundly correct that I just never learned of?
maybe do some a bit deeper research before claiming "man who is consistently wrong"?
Also Hungary's Fidesz basically spelling the end of their democracy.
I thought the McDonald's thing was Friedman?
Incidentally this is why businessmen's experience is of little value to being president. Laying off a division doesn't solve anything in macroeconomic-land.
"In 1996, columnist Thomas Friedman came up with what is known as the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention, the notion that no two countries with McDonald's franchises have ever gone to war with each other. "
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-countries-war/
"So I've had this thesis for a long time and came here to Hamburger University at McDonald's headquarters to finally test it out. The thesis is this: No two countries that both have a McDonald's have ever fought a war against each other."
Friedman, Thomas L. https://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/08/opinion/foreign-affairs-b...
The right approach is: "This argument is dubious / incorrect / however you might want to refer to 'wrong' because X" where X could be "there's this and that proof that there -are- deals being made" or "Here is proof the Japanese DID drop bowling balls" or even a more esoteric "I don't think grousing about one-party rule and the death of US democracy is reasonable; these concerns are overblown", which feels more like a slugfest between 2 'vibes' which seems kinda silly, but, by all means, share your opinion here.
But, "Paul Krugman said it therefore what the fuck who cares?" is a logical fallacy and it should have no place here on HN.
One could be wrong despite the right reasoning or right for the wrong reasons.
And yet, at some level, I agree with you. It's natural to weight what other people say by perception of their prior predictions. I have a similar reaction to Larry Kudlow or Jim Cramer: if one of them told me the sky was blue, I would have to go outside and double check.
Thinking about it some more, I think I can reconcile the difference by looking at the reasoning versus looking at the result. Like poker: you can make the right move and still lose, or make the wrong move and still win.
To bring that back to the current topic: Trump may yet escape causing a recession, but the reasoning for "this tariff war is a terrible idea" has thus far struck me as a lot more coherent than the reasoning for "this tariff war will lead to prosperity"
* funny enough, after writing this whole spiel, I looked it up to see if I got the Yogi Berra quote right (I didn't), but what did I find? An article about this exact topic (Krugman's predictions): https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/12/predict...
You can do that: Life is too short to do a whole bunch of research just to check anything you hear, so you have to judge statements using known imprecise and dangerously oversimplified mechanisms such as 'well, this guy has been wrong so often, lets just assume also wrong here'. But _if_ you do that, you should know you're using really bad guidelines, and you should definitely NOT spread that around and start using it as a logical argument. You, personally, aren't going to bother checking the truth of a statement if it comes from a source you consider exceedingly dubious. Fine. But don't tell others it's a load of horsepuckey because X said it. At best, state that X's personal assurances it is true aren't worth anything.
The right move would be to not click it on HN and not comment on it. If you care enough to comment, why not just check the statements or argue based on them?
Tariffs were very much not a bluff during his first term. They were very real. And they started pushing prices upwards in 2019 - then COVID hit and we forgot all about that.
Secondly, the USMCA (NAFTA's successor) was fairly unremarkable from the US perspective beyond some concessions made by Canada around agriculture (specifically its Dairy industry). The US dairy industry is only $110B, roughly 1/30th the size of Apple. It mostly just modernized NAFTA.
I mention this because I do not think the Trump administration has much acumen for cutting deals.
It is truly astounding how many people voted for the man and now sit back dumbfounded as Trump does exactly what he said he would do.
Trump is too lazy to actually want to do anything so ambitious. This time around he ceeded power to those who have that ambition, mostly to keep himself out of prison.
Sadly, it worked
However, he is at his core a salesman (conman if you wish) and he has said so many other things that he never intended or even had the capability to do.
For example, lock her up. Did he even try? He rung that bell so loudly to get all the votes of those who hated Clinton. Then once in office, nothing. Just bluster to get attention.
Part of his success is that he just says what people want to hear. You need to have a deeper understanding of him than most voters care to learn to figure out what he is actually planning.
The things people seem upset about are mostly objectives that he has not achieved. Which, duh, his promised actions had zero chance of achieving those. But that's what I'm seeing.
Earlier this year he had an article: "Donald Trump Wants You to Die"
No nuance, debate about policies and tradeoffs you would expect from an economist. Just childish screaming into the abyss.
> No nuance, debate about policies and tradeoffs you would expect from an economist. Just childish screaming into the abyss.
Maybe Trump's critics are trying to fight fire with fire?
If you believed the press, the Muller Report was going to be a smoking gun, destined to reshape the political landscape for a generation and there was nothing Trump could do to stop it.
It’s 2025 now and I’m only going to trust what I read in a sworn deposition, and even then I need to see who took the oath.
He's pure idealism. I am NOT saying he's wrong; I'm saying nothing he says ever has practical impact.
Because in a couple of months a historically epic amount of shit is gonna hit the fucking fan.
So we must begin to ask ourselves: in the 1364 days left of the Trump administration, how much damage can he do? And what can those of us who want to save the country do to minimize the damage?
Why did you pick that particular passage? Do you agree with it, or disagree with it (why)? What makes it particularly relevant or important to emphasize? Etc.
It wasn't an "era" thing; the GOP had no intention of impeaching him until the tide turned on him.
GuinansEyebrows•9mo ago
Ugh. Paul Krugman is SOOOO clever. Ha Ha. I hate this.
> Ler [sic] me be clear: Trump hitting the wall this early is a good thing for the survival of U.S. democracy. Consolidation of one-party rule looks a lot less likely today than it did a few weeks ago.
This misplaced smarmy confidences of the neoliberal middle and upper class are one of the reasons we are where we are right now. This resting on laurels while our entire government is being torn apart and reshaped by people who hate people and love money is not something that will just go away because some of those people are... dumb or something? Why can't we accept that the Daily Show/Twitter-style "dunk politics" do not work to the favor of the majority of Americans?