But I’d like to point out that Secretary of the Treasury is right after Secretary of State in importance, 5th in succession to be President. I’d wager mucho dinero that less than half of the general population are even aware that Scott Bessent is a gay man, whose partner was right there at his confirmation hearing. And imho “Team Maga” couldn’t care less; they just care that he’s great at his job.
But somehow, everybody in the universe knows that Pete I Ain’t Never Acccomplished Nuttin’ Noteworthy Buttigieg is a Very Importan Person…because he’s Gay, Gay, Gay!!!
Buttigieg was so terrible! When faced with a shortage of air traffic controllers dude just used a sad voice and said there was nothing he could do. And that it took months and months to train controllers, and we were screwed till then.
Sec Duffy got to work after just 2 months on the job. And has increased hiring by 30% and cut 5 months of wait time for training for new controllers.
I’m hype to see how Pres Trump’s threat of secondary tariffs on Russian oil buyers influence Putin. And does it matter to Putin that the US is Selling weapons to the EU vs giving them to Ukraine?
Theoretically, the Ukraine war could turn into a money maker for the US and a money loser for Russia.
How many failed predictions does Paul Krugman need to make before people stop reading him? According to this article, foreign exporters seem to be eating the bulk of the tariffs, which isn’t shocking given the attractiveness of the US market.
Economists haven’t been factoring “Exporter Markups” into their various models and graphs.
Low or no tariffs are supposed to make imported goods cheaper. But that model breaks down if foreign exporters “shoot the angles” and take a piece for themselves.
A real, concrete example of other nations “screwing us.” Just like critics of free trade always said.
I don’t know much about the world of economics academia, except for the spectacular wrongness of Paul Krugman over the years.
I actually just started a new book for glue-eaters like me; Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. It begins with the radical idea that even though smashing a window generates economic activity to repair said window, the economy is better off when people don’t smash windows in the first place.
I’m not sure if it covers tariffs, but I’m only 30 pages in and it’s only a 200 page book.
Have you tried hiring illegal aliens to drive 80,000 lbs down the highway? Keeping paper log books and skirting DOT regulations? Avoiding scales? In-house lot lizards?
One of my hopes for the Trump Administration is to get a good movie with a truck-driving main character like we had in the 80’s. Over The Top, Big Trouble in Little China, Smokey and the Bandit, Convoy, Maximum Overdrive, Every Which Way But Loose, Breaker Breaker!, Space Truckers, all classics in a truck-driving genre that’s due for an update.
Maybe we’ll get a film adaptation of Joe Biden’s time as a big rig driver, with a flashback to when he fought corn pop at the pool and the time he saw two homos kissing on the sidewalk back in the 1950’s and his dad explained DEI to him. Starring Morgan Freeman as Joe Biden.