Posted on 11/18/2025 9:22:41 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Notionally, Americans have never been better off. The ructions in tech stocks over the past few weeks cannot detract from the fact that the US economy has been outgunning other developed economies all century.
The overall graph of real disposable income for Americans continues to trend upward, almost as if the sharp dip during the pandemic had not happened. That is certainly not true everywhere: in many countries, Covid has been followed by stagnation in GDP and wages. Yet, for all the wealth generated, many Americans simply do not feel that they are living in a thriving country. On the things that really matter, such as basic living costs, citizens at the lower end of the income scale feel their wages are increasingly inadequate.
They are not imagining it. Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show, for example, that the cost of staple goods in New York City – where a Democratic socialist has just been elected mayor – has outstripped wages since 2021. Rent, food, recreation: all are less affordable now than four years ago, and there has certainly been no relief in the past 12 months. Just about the only basic service which has not outstripped wages in New York is healthcare, but that may soon change.
A surge in global food and energy prices afflicted the entire world after the pandemic as supply chains recovered from disruption; in the US, which has unashamedly championed a policy of national energy security over cuts to carbon emissions, and done so under several different presidents, the effect was very much less drastic than in climate-change-driven Europe.
Donald Trump has made driving down energy prices one of the core missions of his presidency. Yet some of the blame for higher prices can be laid at Trump’s door. His imposition of increasingly higher tariffs on most imports has raised extra tax revenue without a direct cost to US citizens, but not without an indirect cost, which is inflation running at 3 percent over the past 12 months. Nor have tariff wars achieved their principal objective: to preserve industrial jobs. While the US economy continues to create jobs at an impressive rate, manufacturing is the exception in having shed 78,000 payrolled jobs in the year to August. On the other hand – and ironically, given the President’s efforts to shrink federal government – the overall number of government jobs has increased by 138,000.
On the back of the rising cost of living came a six-week government shutdown. It is one thing to champion smaller government, quite another to provoke a situation where, for example, planes cannot take off because air traffic controllers are not being paid. However great the waste that needs to be trimmed, government needs to function. Again, Trump should not take the entire blame for the shutdown – Democratic posturing was arguably more responsible. But many will see him at fault whether he likes it or not. When you advocate combative politics, you must expect the other side to play the same game.
Trump may want to wave away the victory of a left-wing mayoral candidate in a liberal-minded city full of Democrat activists – even if it is his own city. His political heartland lies elsewhere, in the Rust Belt and in Midwestern states. But he would be ill-advised to dismiss a mayoral election which was won and lost over the cost of living – and well-advised to pay close attention to the easy Democratic victories on November 3. In Virginia and New Jersey, as in New York, candidates campaigned on “affordability” and were handsomely rewarded with large majorities. The greatest argument for capitalism is that it works in practice, not just in the minds of idealists. But ordinary people in ordinary jobs must be able to imagine a world in which it is possible for them to be able to better themselves with their monthly paychecks. If they are to be retained as supporters of capitalism, there must be a means by which they can acquire capital. If voters feel they are going backward, then the vaulting success of the stock market or the tech sector can feel like an insult.
The rising cost of living is not an argument for confiscatory socialist policies such as wealth taxes, nor for interventionist measures such as rent controls. These have been tried in many countries and have failed every time.
But there is another failed interventionist policy which is partly responsible for the pain that is being felt by many households: punitive tariffs on imported goods. And while Trump’s proposal for a $2,000 tariff “dividend” for every American (excluding high-net worth individuals) might help mitigate the pain, it’s unlikely to prove popular in the long term if American manufacturing does not start to thrive dramatically.
The President has proved wrong all those who predicted economic Armageddon. The economy has continued to grow. But he seems largely to have ignored the fact that manufacturing businesses are themselves consumers of imported materials and components. Place punitive tariffs on those and you drive up their costs.
The arguments between free traders and protectionists have become old and stale. But it’s foolish for the Trump administration to pretend that it can impose radically high “surcharges,” as it prefers to call them, on imports without hurting American businesses and consumers. As Bridget Phetasy notes, the Biden administration made the great mistake of insisting to voters that inflation was “transitory” when it was not. It would be a grave mistake for Trump 2.0 to repeat the error.
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The economy is pretty bad and not getting much better overall.
Self abort...
Home Depot is a bellwether for the economy, as the company’s performance is directly tied to residential real estate and U.S. consumer activity. I’ve been looking at Home Depot’s stocks for some time.
The news wasn’t great. Home Depot’s earnings fell short of estimates, though revenue came in ahead of expectations. The company’s outlook and management commentary sparked the most worries, sending shares down 6% today.
Home Depot Chief Financial Officer Richard McPhail said that the company had expected the ongoing decline in mortgage rates to spur folks to fix up homes they were selling or buying.
But the rebound never materialized.
This tells me that folks are pulling back on spending on home improvement. And Home Depot (the fifth-largest U.S. retailer by revenue) doesn’t know how or when that trend will change.
This isn’t an encouraging sign if you’re looking for a read on the U.S. economy and consumers.
We're overdue for a recession. Unfortunately, we'll have to hold on until January 20, 2029.
Talking about inflation, there’s a trend that many people have not caught up with yet... Electricity prices are climbing everywhere, but states packed with AI data centers are taking the biggest hit. Virginia, California, Illinois, Texas, and Ohio all saw power costs jump roughly 6% this year.
One large data-center campus now uses as much electricity as the entire population of San Francisco and demand could grow 20% per year through the end of the decade.
President Trump probably does not have enough time left in his term or support in Congress to make the required changes. That would require a 40% reduction in Federal spending plus substantial changes to the tax code, plus changes to thousands of other regulations and restrictive laws.
Oddly enough, taxes need to be reduced. Spending needs to be reduced even more so.
We are going to hit the wall before enough of these changes can be made. That is in the next two to three years. Persistent failures of treasury bond auctions and a steep jump in interest rates is how we hit that wall. After that, there is repudiation of government debts and/or hyperinflation. You can fill in the blanks for what follows next. Nobody knows.
Democrats and even Republicans will fight at every turn to prevent changes of any consequence. Both Democrats and Republicans are trying to hang on to a system of grift and corruption that is no longer sustainable. The parasites are overwhelming the host. Politicians will all be swept away in the economic crisis that has built up over many decades of "kicking the can down the road".
The political leaders know this. They are grabbing as much swag as they can before it ends. Maybe some of them can get away clean. Most of them will not get away, but they all feel like they could be one of the lucky ones.
The best chance to turn things in a good direction will be to block the Democrats from winning fraudulent elections wherever that can be done. The Trump administration must cut off all funding to the networks of NGOs and Foundations which support election fraud. They must also reduce the Civil Service workforce.
Very substantial cuts must be made to Medicaid and smaller cuts to Medicare. That is the only pot of money large enough to make any real difference to the Federal deficit. In fact, it is a big enough pot to end deficit spending if it is controlled. That requires breaking the power of health insurance companies, hospital corporations, and pharmaceutical corporations using enforcement of Robinson-Patman laws, Clayton antitrust laws, and Sherman antitrust laws. About 100 corporate executives in jail and stripped of all personal assets ought to do it.
Healthcare pricing is based on misdirection and fraud in direct violation of existing laws. It is a system of concealing how much things cost and who is paying for them.
Healthcare corporations own well over half of Congress on both parties through massive and sustained campaign donations. That is why healthcare costs are 22% of the national economy now and are still rising. That is why this problem never gets fixed. It is time to change the situation.
A very distant chance of a good direction might come from winning a couple of wars. Ukraine is probably not one of those wars, but if Russia does prevail there, they will have paid more for a victory that it was worth. Wars are coming in many places. We will need to pick our fights very carefully.
Electricity and Health Insurance rates are skyrocketing. Go to any big box store and notice how bare the inventory is. Almost anything you want, you need to order. Go to any city and try to park and look at the exorbitant fees.
And despite the gaslighting about groceries, beef is at least 20 Dollars a pound for any decent cut.
Interest rates are high, real estate is dead.
Try to get something done at your house, windows, etc.
Parts are super slow to order and it takes forever.
Everywhere you go is shorthanded.
The economy is not good. The fake it and cheerleading is not going to save us at midterms.
In the last month or so, we’ve had the ballroom project, a weeklong trip around the world, visiting the British Royals, Netanyahu visiting, the ISIS leader visiting on the Marines Birthday, Bin-Sawzall here all day today, and the Pfizer CEO. He’s spent a lot of energy trying to hide the Epstein files, and attacking Massie and MTG. He’s rattling the saber at Venezuela and bombing motorboats.
He hasn’t lifted a finger to make life better for blue collar America. He needs to wake up or the midterms will be sickening.
If they win the house, it’ll be impeachment 14 months from now.
Fantastic post. And food for thought about how to place yourself personally, because it’s obvious the remedies you list are simply not in the cards...they will not make those changes and we all know it.
He has controlled it. Under FJB it was up to 9%. With Trump it’s down to 3% and less on most items.
It’s not inflation it’s currency debasement. Secondly it can’t be stopped as long as we spend more then the tax revenue brings in.
Also, this has been a rather quiet calamity/hurricane season.
That's 3% on top of a 20% Inflation/cost of living boost over the last 4 years by “official govt. numbers”...(more like 25%-28% if using 1980 official govt. # calculations), and wages up only 18.5% over that time. PDJT's improved 3% (+3% for 2026, etc.) is not going to cut it for the 2026 midterms. People vote based on their “personal economy” usually.
Consumer sentiment/expectations:
https://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/charts.html
“Self abort...”
__________
What is it with your repeated calls for people to commit suicide?
Utterly disgusting.
Anti tariff globalist BS. Don’t bother reading.
TDSers are getting desperate and posting nonsense.
Ah, no.
The bottom 60% of our workforce has lost massive buying power over the past 40 years.
The billionaires? They’re fine.
All of these deficit chicken hawks are mostly anti tariff, which is stupid and hypocritical.
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