Degrowth

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Discussions about degrowth and all sorts of related topics. This includes UBI, economic democracy, the economics of green technologies, enviromental legislation and many more intressting economic topics.

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MrMakabar@slrpnk.net

Donald Trump Versus Barbie | Can the Administration retain public support for a trade policy that could force Americans to buy less stuff? (www.newyorker.com)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net to c/degrowth@slrpnk.net

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“Trump, degrowther,” the leftist journalist Doug Henwood commented online last week. He was being facetious, of course (...) Making personal sacrifices, short-term or otherwise, is foreign to Trump’s nature. And yet, for political reasons, he has been driven to ask Americans to accept some limits on their shopaholic tendencies.

“What he is doing is fairly unprecedented: explicitly saying that he is willing to pay an economic price in terms of growth in order to protect something else that he thinks is valuable and important,” Daniel Susskind, an economics professor at King’s College London who is the author of the 2024 book “Growth: A History and a Reckoning,” told me in an e-mail. “Until now, Trump has tended to deny that tariffs come with any sort of price attached.”

What Trump thinks is important is very different from what everybody on slrpnk thinks is important, I'm sure. But just the idea of a mainstream American politician saying "we don't need to buy all that stuff" makes me feel strangely positive?

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[–] klemptor@startrek.website 8 points 8 months ago

the idea of a mainstream American politician saying "we don't need to buy all that stuff" makes me feel strangely positive

He's only saying that because he's chronically unable to admit when his idiotic ideas don't pan out the way he expected. He's also wildly out of touch with the average American household's finances. People have seen their grocery bills skyrocket and their 401ks take a nosedive. The concern will be "am I able to pay my mortgage and afford groceries this month?", not "how many dolls can I buy my kid?"

It's insulting. He fundamentally doesn't understand that people are struggling financially and his tariffs will make it measurably worse. He's famously bereft of empathy and doesn't know what it means to struggle, and will probably never bother to really learn.

And I agree that we could all embrace a more conscientious mode of consumption, but please don't kid yourself into thinking that's what Trump is saying. He's the king of conspicuous overconsumption; moderation isn't in his personal lexicon.