> is that for the most part average americans agree with the elite. The results of the study are driven by the fact that when elites and average americans disagree, the politicians tend to side with the elites.
The case when everyone agrees doesn’t tell you anything. It’s only when people disagree that you can find who has actual power and in this case the general public has effectively zero actual meaningful power day to day.
Systematic voter suppression plus gerrymandering etc may win you rigged elections, but ultimately voting isn’t about the system in place it’s avoidance unrest. We’re entering uncharted territory with how strongly people disagree with what the government is doing, which is where the general public actually has a say, namely by destroying the existing power structures rather than voting. It’s not even a question of insurrection, not having kids plus 60’s style dropping out at scale is ruinous.
Either one results in an immediate liquidity crisis/credit crunch and the delegitimizing/insolvency of most institutions. The beginning of the COVID pandemic was, essentially, this.
I would add in "general bank run", but I imagine that they just... wouldn't let that happen. Ironically, an emergency "injunction" against withdrawals.
> The “protests” recently were tepid and nearly all elderly liberals with nothing better to do.
They set records for size and you know it. What do you mean by 'tepid', because they didn't riot? Would you acknowledge them as more valid if they had rioted, or declared angry tones that they had to be put down immediately?
> A big chunk of the country really wants mass deportations, and for the most part, folks in the broader left don’t care much to oppose it
Absolute BS. No matter what they do, you'll cook up some reasons to delegitimitze it. But I guess you have to, the moment you cease being useful to the GOP you'll become a target.
> They set records for size and you know it. What do you mean by 'tepid', because they didn't riot?
According to whom? I'm in the D.C. metro area, and the protests are far less noticeable than the 2017 pink hat protests or the 2020 riots. They organized a bunch of small protests all around the country so more people maybe participated, but the intensity is low even in DC.
> Absolute BS. No matter what they do, you'll cook up some reasons to delegitimitze it. But I guess you have to, the moment you cease being useful to the GOP you'll become a target.
I’m just observing. The anti-Trump resistance I know in real life have retreated literally and metaphorically to a bubble in BlueSky. I was at a conference recently, steeling myself to deal with PMCs complaining about Trump, and nobody said anything. People were in a great mood. The vibe shift is real. And your second point is genuinely conspiratorial and fantastical thinking.
Different goals, they are trying to influence congress which cares a lot more about local protests than the number of people showing up to DC. Going to DC is counterproductive for that kind of thing.
People agree on most things for sensible reasons. There’s no country where people are going to be ok legalizing murder in all situations. Similarly we aren’t going to randomly convert street signs to cuneiform or other language nobody speaks etc.
> You’re overestimating how much people care about any of this stuff. I’m in a blue state and I hear almost nothing about it other than from some overly empathetic people on facebook. The “protests” recently were tepid and nearly all elderly liberals with nothing better to do.
> A big chunk of the country really wants mass deportations, and for the most part, folks in the broader left don’t care much to oppose it
I’m not talking about one specific issue here but how much people in general dislike what’s happening. That includes Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.
I know multiple hard core Republicans since Gerald Ford who now dislike winning elections only slightly less than they dislike loosing them. As one put it ‘Democrats do a better job of fucking balancing the budget, what I am doing?’
> I know multiple hard core Republicans since Gerald Ford who now dislike winning elections only slightly less than they dislike loosing them. As one put it ‘Democrats do a better job of fucking balancing the budget, what I am doing?’
And I know multiple "blue by default" democrats who voted for Trump. My Muslim immigrant mom posted approvingly today about this Supreme Court decision, because she doesn't like that the courts have stymied Trump's agenda.
The GOP hasn’t been fiscally conservative since Coolidge. By the 1980s republicans paid lip service to the concept but couldn’t actually cut spending because they needed the FDR Catholic vote. Now with Trump, he doesn’t even need the lip service. If Gerald Ford Republicans are upset about what's happened to the party, they have only their own immigration policy to blame. The Trump GOP is the politically viable conservative party given our current demographics.
Trump is “still paying lip service to it” DODGE was a shit show but the sentiment still exists within the party it’s politicians ignoring what the base wants.
“The Tea Party movement focuses on a significant reduction in the size and scope of the government.” It resulted in a wave of Republicans getting elected who then completely ignored why they were there effectively killing the movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement
> Now with Trump, he doesn’t even need the lip service.
He was speaking to Tea party events back in 2016, today he’s done with elections.
Trump did DOGE to get Elon on board. He wasn’t even talking about the budget deficit until then. And it wasn’t on his platform: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform. In retrospect, the Tea Party’s popularity was probably because it was anti-Obama and his brand of government managerialism, not because of promises to balance the budget.
Any actual fiscal responsibility would be met with massive backlash and will never happen. In the America we live in today, the only way to be a viable political party is to buy votes from relevant groups, like Trump did to win Nevada with No Taxes on Tips.
> He wasn’t even talking about the budget deficit until then
His platform required it.
#6 “LARGE TAX CUTS FOR WORKERS, AND NO TAX ON TIPS!” needs smaller government. So it’s the same old platform with a different emphasis.
Or did you think he was suggesting extreme taxes on companies or wealthy people? Deficit spending runs into #3 “END INFLATION”, and he explicitly stated to “PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE WITH NO CUTS, INCLUDING NO CHANGES TO THE RETIREMENT AGE”
Obviously the option to not even attempt large tax cut exists, but assuming the attempt was made while also trying to lower inflation the math requires less spending or major new taxes on who exactly?
> His platform required it... Or did you think he was suggesting extreme taxes on companies or wealthy people?
No, I figured he was proposing deficit spending, just like every GOP President in my lifetime. Trump's platform is like that of every third world politician that promises voters everything they want without anything they don't, and America is a third world country now.
Ahh you simply misunderstood then. Heavy deficit spending eventually = inflation, ie why it spiked during COVID and why inflation was higher at the end of Trump’s first presidency than the start of his second.
He’s been surprisingly consistent in at least make token efforts to do what he said he was aiming to do.
You’re conflating two different points: what’s true in reality, and what voters thought they were voting for. Trump’s platform is aimed at people who don’t understand that deficit spending leads to inflation. (It didn’t under Reagan or Bush.) Or, alternatively, they thought there was trillions of dollars of fat in the budget that could be cut without affecting services they want.
It’s like how Democrats think you can balance the budget and expand social spending by “taxing the rich a little bit more” (hand gesture). Counting on Americans to be innumerate is winning politics.
Things are kept vague so people can create their own narratives. But in 2024 he continued to used terms like “Drain the Swamp” that directly refer to downsizing government. So your argument is basically he had no intention of carrying though when he’s doing exactly what he said he would. Perhaps you may want to rethink what exactly you are basing that assumption on.
As to Democrats it’s not a hand wavy standpoint. Historically, taxing companies and wealthy represented a much larger fraction of the overall tax burden. ~Half of federal revenue came from companies in the 1950’s today it’s vastly lower. Changing that means lower taxes on yourself and or much lower deficits.
> But in 2024 he continued to used terms like “Drain the Swamp” that directly refer to downsizing government.
In this context, "drain the swamp" refers to downsizing the Democrat-voting civil service. It's chiefly an objection to the fact that, even when a Republican wins, the actual government is controlled by people who hate Republicans and try to undermine the elected administration's policies.
RCP has Trump at 45% approve, 51% disapprove, which is where Obama was for much of his second term. Biden was significantly below that for all but two short periods after 2021. So if people voted for Trump thinking he'd cut Social Security and Medicare and now are disappointed about it, it's not showing up in the polling.
> As to Democrats it’s not a hand wavy standpoint.
You could double the federal tax burden on everyone from Facebook program managers up to Mark Zuckerberg and not come close to closing the deficit, much less making room for universal healthcare and free college. But "we'll have generous government services and the rich people will pay for it" is the same sort of innumerate fantasy as "we'll build a wall and Mexico will pay for it."
Every European country today pays for its welfare state with heavy, broad-based taxes on the top 60%. If you're telling people that you can have a European-style welfare state without European-style middle classes taxes, then you're in RFK Jr. anti-vaxxer levels of denying reality.
> ~Half of federal revenue came from companies in the 1950’s today it’s vastly lower.
It was never more than about 30%, during World War II and immediately thereafter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_taxation_in_the_Uni.... It was back below 20% by the mid 1960s. But it's 2025, not 1955. The U.S. doesn't have the leverage to tax trans-national corporations the way it did when Europe's economy was obliterated by World War II.
The massive reduction of corporate income tax as a source of tax revenue has happened across the entire developed world.
> The total income of people in the top 1% that year was $3.3 trillion, and they paid $560 billion in income taxes
3.3 trillion * actually paying the current top tax 37% is an additional ~700 billion in revenue or roughly half the nominal deficit. I don’t think making the effective tax rate 37% vs nominally 37% is particularly unpalatable. (We can also quibble about the income definition used but that’s a separate issue.)
So 50% from wealthy + 50% from companies doesn’t seem ludicrous on the surface.
However actually balancing the books nominally means inflation on the 37T national debt is effectively paid off each year. That 700 ish billion @2% in ‘hidden’ revenue meaning just from wealthy tax payers we are breaking even in real terms. Debt then shrinks with growth in the overall economy.
> It was never more than about 30%
Corporate income taxes are only one category. Companies pay tariffs and fees etc. Ultimately all taxes are coming from individuals or organizations which is a meaningful distinction due to foreign stock ownership. When created half of payroll tax came from companies as essentially a tax on workers the other half reduced employe paychecks. Every time they increased the rate the same thing happened where employe paychecks shrank by half the increase.
Excluding 1/2 of payroll from corporate taxation actually makes the reduction in their tax burden much larger. This is really bad for the US population because of foreign owners.
> The massive reduction of corporate income tax as a source of tax revenue has happened across the entire developed world.
Lobbying works. However, companies do still pay quite a bit in taxes and can be forced to pay significantly more. Asian countries for example get about double from corporate income tax vs OECD. It’s a political choice not some impossible goal. https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/global-revenue-statist...
The case when everyone agrees doesn’t tell you anything. It’s only when people disagree that you can find who has actual power and in this case the general public has effectively zero actual meaningful power day to day.
Systematic voter suppression plus gerrymandering etc may win you rigged elections, but ultimately voting isn’t about the system in place it’s avoidance unrest. We’re entering uncharted territory with how strongly people disagree with what the government is doing, which is where the general public actually has a say, namely by destroying the existing power structures rather than voting. It’s not even a question of insurrection, not having kids plus 60’s style dropping out at scale is ruinous.