It will probably remain legal to drive an electric car.
After all my bashing of both candidates, i have to admit that i’d hoped that Trump wouldn’t win. Could my praise for Clinton be fainter?
It’s over. And since we’re a democracy, we’ve got the government we deserve. Well, i’m being too harsh there since i don’t really think we deserve Trump even though we voted for him just like the Germans voted for Hitler, and who in hell thinks the average German deserved all that. Still, like the Germans, we’ll have to face the consequences.
I was a teenager in a simpler time, the 1950’s, that heyday of the middle class when a working man in an ordinary job could support a family and even buy a modest house for it.
A time when our income tax rate on the upper earners was either 91 or 92% for the top bracket and we had an estate tax with teeth: 77% of assets over approximately $100,000.
And yet, somehow, it was a time of unprecedented prosperity for the entire nation, not just the 1%.
We need economic policies that will lead us back to that situation, and Trump’s won’t. His tax proposals give pennies to the lower quartiles and shower riches on the top earners. For all his talk about NAFTA, American manufacturing is not coming back.
My guess is that Trump will abandon all that silly populist talk, govern as a hard line Republican, and throw his working class supporters under the bus even though his proposal to pour money into a massive upgrade of our infrastructure sure would provide a lot of jobs for them.
And his proposal to greatly reduce the overseas deployment of American military forces would be a great thing if he can pull it off.
Still, i fear the economy will tank under him and bring even more misery to the lesser quartiles, especially if he’s able to defund the Affordable Care Act and undermine Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
The silver lining is that since California’s Proposition 64 swept to victory, all of California can now sit around crosseyed stoned, looking at the autumn leaves and saying “Oh, man” at the lovely colors.
I’ve networked and found a candy man, so i’m ready.
Meanwhile, some good news is that California’s winter rains arrived unprecedently early this year, and for the first time in my memory, the fields are green at the beginning of November.
4 Comments
“We need economic policies that will lead us back to that situation,” Mostly what gave us that situation was that we & the Russians – with a lot of help from the Nazis – had completely destroyed any competition Europe could give at a time when Europe was needy needy, needy.
And Trump could easily lead us into a similar fair-the-well
Well, i was thinking of the New Deal. It never occurred to me that we’d also need WWIII to wipe out the competition again. But hey, what with the EU crumbling, rising tensions and nationalism there, and Trump’s plan to withdraw American troops…..
The 50s gave way to the 60s… are we looking to a decade of tumult ahead? I’m trying to peer into the future, to in some way prepare myself for what’s to come. As if that will be helpful? I’m not optimistic, though the art and music might be amazing. I’m reading this from the 12th floor of the building on Market Street that is the epicenter and focus of a massive DAPL protest this morning (the ArmyCorps is upstairs). From my desk I can hear drumbeats and chanting and cheering. Go them!
Oh, we’re definitely in for a decade of tumult. At least.