MAGA's true believers don't understand capitalism -- Trump will teach them a hard lesson

[marmar]

MAGA's true believers don't understand capitalism — Trump will teach them a hard lesson
Today's Republicans have swallowed so many economic myths that reality has disappeared. They face a wakeup call

By Rich Logis
Published January 26, 2025 9:00AM (EST)


(Salon) America is a nation at war with its mythologies.

For all the electoral postmortems about the desire for economic change, what’s unsurprisingly absent is what seems, to me, an obvious omission: an all-enveloping misunderstanding of American capitalism.

....(snip)....

One delusional mythology about American capitalism that has been instilled in We the People is that we somehow have a guaranteed right to prosperity; this imaginary right has been deployed by politicians who are afraid of educating their constituents about how our model of commerce actually works. Our national press has largely been lazy on this score as well.

....(snip)....

Are gas prices high? Is insurance for health care, real estate and vehicles increasing? Are supply chain constraints harming your livelihood, or your quality of life? The person in the White House has very little to do with that. Let’s recall that gas prices steadily increased during George W. Bush’s second term.

Gas was cheap in 2020 because — hello! — tens of millions of drivers weren’t driving. In fact, Trump threatened the Saudis, in the early days of the pandemic: Cut oil production, or lose U.S. military support. Why? More oil flooding the market would have driven prices still lower, and “cheap gas” does not sound like “ka-ching.” ............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/01/26/magas-true-believers-dont-understand-capitalism--will-teach-them-a-hard-lesson/

[2naSalit]

1. Connecting dots is hard...

It requires independent cognition, not a popular activity these days.

[Ocelot II]

2. The MAGA cult, not understanding capitalism, thinks presidents can control retail prices,

so they blamed Biden when eggs got expensive, and they believed Trump when he said he'd make them cheaper. Mother Nature, in the form of a bird flu virus, is saying Not so fast. And the immutable laws of capitalism will keep eggs expensive because the supply will be insufficient to satisfy the demand. Meanwhile the federal health agencies have gone dark on Trump's orders so don't expect any any help with bird flu; instead, expect more dead chickens and even fewer and more expensive eggs. Only by controlling supply can the government affect prices, but that's socialism, isn't it?

[Captain Zero]

3. I like that, "Cheap Gas does not say Ka-Ching" to American Capitalist Oil Producers

I'm going to use it on a maga who told me he only wanted $2 gas from voting for Chump.

[Johnny2X2X]

4. Vulture capitalism

What these people don't understand is that they're the targets. Under Trump, all manor of scams will be legal again. All the regulations that protect regular people from vulture capitlaist scams like subprime auto loans, payday loans, housing price fixing, online fake universities, monopoloies on apratments and trailer parks, etc etc. They simply don't get it, but they're the marks for the type of capitlism Trump is going to inflict on them.

[ScratchCat]

5. Here's a great example

One of my business partners.... has a business degree, has worked in real estate for nearly 40 years... but has no idea what causes interest rates to increase or decrease. Not kidding here. Heard him on the phone last Tuesday telling a friend ".... its going to take a while for rates to decrease..." as banks were using a "good jobs report" and wall street speculators as a reason to continue to raise interest rates for the past month plus...

I have many college educated friends who are like this. They work in fields where they should "know better", but they don't. You get nowhere with them trying to have a conversation that involves the concepts of "abject greed" or "Predatory Capitalism". They seem to only be concerned about what a portion of 13% of the country is up to.