Pretty sure the Democrats would not have done either the ridiculous tariffs or the stupid Iran war. They wouldn't have passed anything like the BBB. Nor would they have tried to scare all the immigrants out of the country.

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ericmay 12 hours ago | parent [-]

> Pretty sure the Democrats would not have done either the ridiculous tariffs

They may not have gone with that specific approach, but the direction was the same. Instead of tariffs the Biden Administration's BBB bill gave money to corporations instead. Two directionally aligned approaches there.

The rest of the comments (immigration policy or Iran) are irrelevant to this specific topic IMO

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amanaplanacanal 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Directional alignment but completely different policy. Trying to claim they are the same is nonsense.

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amanaplanacanal 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You don't think those two things have any effect on the economy?

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ericmay 12 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure they have an effect but are they economic policies? If you want to take the approach that everything is an economic policy I guess we could do that, but I think it's a bit limiting.

I guess also, what's the goal of economic policy? Does your economy matter much if you can't defend it, for example? If you have no industrial base does that matter?

Under sequential administrations all the way up and until at least the end of Mr. Obama's second term we had, broadly speaking, the same economic policy and we lost a lot of jobs under that regime, lost manufacturing capabilities, and more. People were really unhappy with that scheme which was supported by both Republican and Democratic administrations. Maybe we should examine our policies even if there are temporary changes that are unfavorable. Should we be long-term oriented or short-term oriented?

It's a very complicated topic of course, but I think just "grr mad at Trump" is not only immature but just wrong and leads to no meaningful analysis of what our economic policies have been, the results, and what changes may produce.

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amanaplanacanal 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Immigration is clearly economic policy. It was partially justified on immigrants taking American's jobs.

The war isn't strictly economic policy, but everybody could see it would have a bad effect on the economy, which is why everybody else was smart enough not to do it.

	▲	ericmay 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Immigration is clearly economic policy. Sure but it's not strictly an economic policy. If you want to just talk about the economics of immigration I'd be happy to discuss that. I think there are pros and cons to many different approaches. > The war isn't strictly economic policy, but everybody could see it would have a bad effect on the economy, which is why everybody else was smart enough not to do it. Similarly Europe and the United States could have been economically smart and unsanctioned Russian gas and let them take over Ukraine. Sometimes economic policy is trumped by other considerations.