GreatSquare

Byung Chul Han called it "excessive positivity" in Burnout Society. We are too smart to be obedient these days so instead we are oppressed by our own drive for achievement, praise, clout. Each individual is their own brand in competition with other individuals. Eventually it leads to exhaustion, depression and burnout.

The only question i have is whether they are really so dumb that they believe giving tax breaks to oligarchs and applying some tariffs is sufficient to bring industry back

Investment goes where money is so it has some attraction. Probably industry will come back but to a limited degree because the supply chains have not been built AND you have to train workers up. These typically take years to establish especially for stuff like cars and chips.

In the meantime the pain of inflation is going to bite even harder for regular people.

This is probably the only opportunity for regular Americans to organise and get those jobs/wages and make sure to rip off some capitalists who are high on Trump juice. The domestic market is protected by tariffs. Get the bag. Take as much share of profits from the capitalists as possible. Get the employee healthcare and max it out etc.

When those industries go belly up in a few years, those opportunities will be gone.

Reindustrialization takes rebuilding the human capital base, it takes investing into education, infrastructure, healthcare, housing…none of which are getting any better, in fact they’re only getting worse.

That's not the style of investing Trump is probably thinking about. He's all business so it will be business investments in terms of subsidies, tax incentives and government contracts.

"Human capital" == "handouts" in Trumpland.

I think Trump is similar to other austerity conservative economists hence the cutting of the "fat" : Radio Free Something, VOA, USAID etc etc (even military spending). The idea is to cut a lot of services which will reduce government spending, then juice the industrialists with tax breaks and subsidies. The supposed resulting growth will then help pay the debt off.

Rich people pay for their own stuff. They don't use government education and healthcare. And they don't consume VOA. Hence someone like Trump can basically ditch it easily when looking to cut costs. Even if he was told it's for propaganda, he wouldn't give a fuck about cutting it. It's not important to him. Same with President Musk.

Honestly the EU could do a lot of stuff if they had their own interests in mind.

They could sell EUV lithography machines to China while there's still a market for it.

They could invest in building their renewables even quicker so their energy costs can come down and they can afford to manufacture stuff in the future.

I think they won't do that though. Warms my heart to see Europe go down the drain due to their own subjugation to America. Screw them for their geopolitical shenanigans.

Imagine if the EU spent a fraction of the money burned on Ukraine doing this stuff for the past three years.

It's a good idea but I think the EU would still be faced with Trump tariffs reducing their competitive edge in their big export market. They already are struggling with rapid deindustrialization due to high energy costs. It all spells long recession.

I don't see Twitter, Google etc pulling out of the EU any time but I guess it's possible.

The EU are just going to fold. Their retaliation is not meaningful. They are economically weak.

The trade surplus they had with America is eventually going to be invested back into the US to restore their manufacturing. They're going to just pray it all turns a profit. It kills their own manufacturing jobs but they don't give a shit really. The capitalists survive and that's all they care about.

🧚 Your wish is granted!

You can't accelerate beyond terminal velocity and when the wings have already come off, Trump can move the joystick whichever direction he likes and it's largely irrelevant. The economic problems are fundamental and Trump tariffs are meant to SOLVE them but they won't.

American goods are too expensive. How can America service its debt? Other countries aren't going to buy American stuff. In most cases they're already dealing with inflation AND their own currencies are falling.

Which part of Canada?

I would investigate government grants that target creating municipal assets. Then form whatever sort of "gardening association" is able to apply.

I.e. do whatever that Valemount Learning Society did in your link.

Rising cost of living also forces people to let go of their assets such as homes and businesses as workers and small businesses start defaulting on their debt. Oligarchs, insulated by their massive capital reserves, swoop in to acquire these assets at a fraction of the cost. David Harvey referred to this process as accumulation by dispossession.

Yep. IMHO assets aren't going to fall in price actually. Because rich people will sink their spare money into property. Property can dip in price in the short term but it bounces back. Rich people want land which creates the demand and increases the price. They will buy it all if allowed.

Australia is a good example of this. People thought because they managed to hold onto their assets, which are rising in value faster than the cost of living, that they are getting wealthier. Unfortunately when their kids get old enough to want to buy a home, it's often way out of reach of their kids' salary. Then they have to borrow against their asset to support their kids purchase.

I believe most Australians and Americans will not do the only real long term solution: Take assets from the rich class. Give/sell cheap those assets to the working class. They don't have the stomach to take assets from the rich. You can't let rich people accumulate assets. If working class people are too broke to buy a home, then the country is broke.

they could even sue people running stuff like DeepSeek as a service based in US.

"Time to set up my servers in Mexico."

Severely damage.

My guess is the big crash will probably be caused by a significant event in the financial sector like the 2008 financial crisis. You never know though.

We might delay the crunch by simply appeasing Trump for now, but ultimately everyone needs a basic mutual aid strategy for bank runs and layoffs - and the only long-term solution is a thorough reconsideration of how to light the coming swell of revolutionary potential our aristocratic unions and parties sure won’t.

I think you nailed it. Canada will get crunched and any exports to US are going to lose profitability with 25% tariffs in place. Demand will fall eventually because Americans aren't an infinite source of money.

You don't need accelerationism when Trump is president. The Canadian car factories are going to feel the pressure. They never gave a shit about diversifying away from the US market so the layoffs will be coming.

Revolutionary potential? Possibly. When there's mass layoffs you kinda need mass employment to address it.

If Canada had any brains they would trade with Europe. But they are too stupid and gutless to do that.

Over time they will wake up and be angry about particular policies but radicalizing implies they would shift a lot further politically. I don't think the majority of Americans will do that.

Us Lemmygradders would have to take far smaller, more realistic steps to build any sort of popular political power in America or anywhere in the West.

I'm in Australia and even collective bargaining from unions generates a lot of resentment when it is powerful enough to disrupt everyday life. e.g. our Sydney train drivers had a big strike recently. There's no solidarity with them from most of the public.