Money moves for the new world?

21

<pretends he hasn’t been super involved in political discussions the past week or ten>

I’ll wade in. First, a disclaimer. I don’t want to in any way diminish or disregard anyone’s fear or concern. A significant membership of the Trump electorate wants those worst fears to become reality. Trump absolutely has associations with people that want those worst case scenarios to become real.

That being said, I appreciate what Isaac Suul, founder and lead author of the Tangled Newsletter has to say about this. To very quickly paraphrase, our country and in particular the united states part of the government still has a lot more checks and balances. 23 Democratic governors. Nearly half of the legislative branch of the government. State run elections. It’s much more likely that we have elections in 2026 and 2028 than not. And a better than even chance Democrats take back the legislative branch of the government in 2026 (and the executive branch in 2028…) He has a lot more research and is a vastly better writer than me, but I also realize it’s ~$50 to get a subscription, so if someone wants to read excerpts, I could share them. (As an aside… if Trump tried to become a third term president and ran in 2028, I could definitely see a repeat if not escalation of the 2020 / Jan. 6, 2021 shit show! Personally I’m half expecting and half hoping his mental and/or physical health is so far gone by then it won’t be an issue. Obviously we’ll be worried about how popular Vance is with MAGA by then.)

Neither Isaac or I are saying it’s impossible that the worst variations on what we’ve heard will come to pass, but the worst are unlikely.

I won’t speak for Isaac here, but personally I feel that some of the same reasons Trump got elected (not all) are quite related to some of the worst things we’ve read about Trump. That is - while conservative media diminishes Trump’s worst traits and amplifies what conservative voters fear about liberals, liberal media amplifies Trump’s worst traits and liberals worst fears. This is not a classic “both sides are equally bad” argument. That’s horse shit. If there weren’t hundreds of examples already… but we can easily look at how the elected candidates each handled losing in 2020… and then 2024. Whoa. Big differences. These things are not the same.

But I do think that someone like Isaac or works hard to parse very polarized news, social media, etc. to arrive at fact-based conclusions has good reasons to assuage some of our worst fears (though certainly not all that we worry about.)

I hope this isn’t offensive, and it’s just one opinion but I offer it only with the hope to assuage concerns, if slightly.

All that being said, in this thread, I also think some things will move quite slowly. Tariffs might happen pretty quickly spring 2025, and I suspect by 2025 Q4 we might see some clear signs of economic upheaval when consumer spending has changed significantly. Abolishing agencies will take more time. Government is still largely slow to act despite their best and worst intentions.

12 Likes
22

it is helpful to read your commentary. i checked out tangle, as well (the free post about trump’s win), but i am not sure how one discusses the differences between democrats and republicans and the potential impact of the next administration without discussing climate change.

the culture war stuff, well i think it’s likely he will just continue to say disgusting shit more than he actually does it (which is horrible in its own way and moves the overton window in terms of what’s permissible to say and do to vulnerable citizens).

but the climate change stuff will be very concrete indeed — he is going to pull out of paris again, deregulate like crazy, and drill baby drill. all of this as we already face climate discontinuity in many places. i’m less concerned about the political discourse than i am about its impact on real people and the real world. my sense is that, whatever they can get away with that will cause their wealth to increase, they will do. and many of those things will cause unpredictability and discontinuity to rise.

idk. it’s good to let a more moderate view of how things might play out into my brain, but i’m not sure i believe it.

7 Likes
23

Thank you for the Tangled link.

3 Likes
24

Overall definitely agree. I mean even Democrats, politically, for the most part, are not pushing anywhere near hard enough (though our 2-party system and populism movement don’t give them the room they need to be properly progressive), and climate change is on a very bad trajectory for humans and “quality of life” (and life) regardless. But to actively reverse efforts to slow climate change is horrifying. Denial of reality is a very dangerous.

6 Likes
25

Tangled was recently featured on This American Life:

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/845/a-small-thing

2 Likes
26

I’d appreciate input on Social Security strategizing. I’m about to turn 62 in a few days. I was planning to wait until at least 65 or 67 to take SS but now I’m thinking, fuck it, take it now & get something for as long as I can. SS is not the major part of my retirement planning but it’s part of the overall picture for me. Thoughts?

6 Likes
27

My take:

If you’re guaranteed to live to be older than 82 and absolutely want to get the most money from Social Security possible, put it off as long as possible.

If you’re at peak earnings, and remaining working will push you over a bend point, put it off as long as possible.

If you’re not earning credits, or the ones you earn won’t materially improve your social security earnings, the sooner you take it, the longer you get paid social security, and the less you need to spend other investments which are probably growing faster than the annual increase you’d get from S.S.

If all things were equal, taking S.S. at 62 pays you more up through about when you turn 81/82 at which point the higher payouts of taking it later catch up and overtake.

Still, this tool is really helpful overall - https://opensocialsecurity.com/

5 Likes
28

are you concerned about the analysis of how trump’s economic plans could bankrupt SS within 6 years?

i am concerned about that, too. i mean, killing social security would be extremely unpopular — like maybe the least popular thing they could do — but truly who knows how far they will go?

i’d be tempted to take what i can get now, but i am pretty pessimistic about what trump is going to try/accomplish.

3 Likes
29

Yes I am aware of all of this. In normal times, that all applies. My concern is with the Heritage Foundation’s stated intention to gut Social Security, and whether it makes more sense for me to get what I can now, since if they are successful there may be not Social Security for me to take later on, if I wait.

4 Likes
30

Right, that’s kind of what I’m thinking too. Just start drawing, before it’s gone.

1 Like
31

So I did it. I submitted my application for retirement benefits. Age 62 was not when I wanted to apply but it feels like waiting to find out what these assholes have planned could be a mistake. How dare they mess with people’s financial security this way.

12 Likes
32

I hate this so much. I hope this decision gives you some peace, though!

6 Likes
33

It does. Following my sign-up on the SS site, I went over to Twitter & deactivated my account. Migrating to the Musk-free BlueSky, where there seems to be a sense of hope as good people find each other.

7 Likes
34

I wanted to respond here to @neovonretorch — thank you, really, for sharing your perspective. Reading your thoughts and reading through the Tangle piece just following the election has really helped me access some blue sky in my mind about all this stuff.

For so long, I have been feeling for like everyone who votes for Trump is basically a Nazi who hates women and brown people and immigrants and trans people, but I’m opening my mind to the fact that maybe that’s not true. Yes, a lot of his followers truly are disgusting. But most of them probably are not. They don’t feel like I do about a lot of issues, but they aren’t necessarily evil. And I kinda was feeling like they were.

There are a few things I read that stuck out. One is that Kamala was always saying “we have much more in common than this divisive rhetoric,” and though many people couldn’t hear that, I think it’s true. The other thing was from a woman who ran a bunch of focus groups during the election, and when she asked participants “Do you think Trump is an authoritarian?” the number one answer was “What’s an authoritarian?” The last thing was the fact that when you describe the candidates’ policies to voters without saying which candidate they came from, people really liked Harris’s policies much better than Trump’s.

Now there are a couple of ways to look at this information. One is with anger and frustration, like who are these dumb fucks who don’t pay attention to what the candidates are proposing and don’t even know what an authoritarian is? Are they just dumb? Or are they actually evil?

The other is to see that this is fundamentally a problem of communication — a SERIOUS problem made worse by social media and online radicalization and targeted disinformation and many other factors. But that is a very different problem than 100 million Americans being seemingly evil and/or too stupid to live.

I don’t know if I’m making any sense, and it’s not like I am going out the street offering free hugs for Trumpies … I still do not trust their judgement! But at least I feel like I’m out of the deadlock in my brain where I felt sure that millions of people have a hole where their soul should be. I feel some fresh air around this, while it doesn’t give me any answers, I’m finding I can at least tolerate the questions without getting into my default us-against-them mode.

So thanks for that. I truly appreciate it.

19 Likes
35

Good! I’ve been off social media for the most part since a day or two after the election. I still check Instagram messages, because that’s where some of my friends contact me. But it has been very very good for me to not be experiencing anyone else’s hot takes. They are not that hot! And I would rather have some time to think my own thoughts.

6 Likes
36

I’m feeling the same. I signed up for the free Tangled newsletter for now, I think it will be good for me to read.

6 Likes
37

You are making sense! I have many pro Trump relatives and I don’t think they’re evil, just misguided about what would actually make America great.

6 Likes
38

Y’all are such nicer people than me.

I’m still over here like, voted for Trump? BASURA

12 Likes
39

i get it. there is a big part of me that feels like that, too. i do not have any trump supporters in my life! i cut them all out last time!

trying to see it in a different way is not me being nice. it’s more that … i feel like if we are calling them trash and they are calling us trash, then how do we ever move forward?

8 Likes
40

We throw them out.

5 Likes