Economics Thread

nsacpi said:
The dissent (by 2 Republican appointed and 2 Democratic appointed judges) is interesting and in my mind has a certain amount of logic. I don't think the trade deficits are an emergency. But that is not for me to decide. That is for the president to decide. And the country elected a president who believes that a deficit in say toasters or sneakers is an emergency. The fact that the country has been running such deficits for a long time and that previous presidents didn't consider them to be an emergency is irrelevant. The current president thinks they are an emergency.

I don't think any of us would dispute a president can decide it is an emergency if we started running very large deficits in food with a country that was an adversary. So why shouldn't he be able to decide a deficit in toasters and sneakers is also an emergency. He's the guy the country elected to make these determinations. I think there will some, maybe even a majority, on the Supreme Court who will agree with the reasoning in the dissent. It is not the role of the courts to protect us from bad policy.
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I think the real question for me is how what Mike Johnson is doing is Constitutional. Not a single vote has been tallied on Trump’s toaster emergency, despite the law stating it triggers a priority vote in Congress. If you can make a rule as the majority party that allows you to just table any and all votes on a power being usurped by the Executive Branch, then the system of checks and balances has broken down. Even if it were able to be approved by a simple majority vote, then at least every American is getting their representation in Congress. Allowing Trump to just do their jobs for them without making anybody do so on the record is feckless leadership and should be illegal.
 
mqt said:
I think the real question for me is how what Mike Johnson is doing is Constitutional. Not a single vote has been tallied on Trump’s toaster emergency, despite the law stating it triggers a priority vote in Congress. If you can make a rule as the majority party that allows you to just table any and all votes on a power being usurped by the Executive Branch, then the system of checks and balances has broken down. Even if it were able to be approved by a simple majority vote, then at least every American is getting their representation in Congress. Allowing Trump to just do their jobs for them without making anybody do so on the record is feckless leadership and should be illegal.
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The system of checks and balances is pretty ingenious and has worked well for a long time. But it is not foolproof. It has broken down in the past and is breaking down now.
 
did the constitutional system of checks and balances break down during reconstruction

ChatGPT said:​

That’s a really good historical question. The short answer is: the constitutional system of checks and balances did not collapse outright during Reconstruction, but it was severely strained and tested in unprecedented ways.

Here’s how:

1.​

  • After the Civil War, President Andrew Johnson (who succeeded Lincoln) pushed for rapid, lenient readmission of Southern states.
  • Congress, led by Radical Republicans, wanted stronger guarantees of civil rights for freedpeople and more stringent terms for Southern reentry.
  • The result was a direct constitutional showdown:
    • Johnson vetoed major Reconstruction Acts.
    • Congress repeatedly overrode his vetoes—something rare before that time.
    • Congress even passed the Tenure of Office Act (1867) to limit Johnson’s ability to fire officials without Senate approval, triggering the impeachment crisis.

2.​

  • The House impeached Johnson for violating the Tenure of Office Act.
  • The Senate fell one vote short of removing him.
  • This was a dramatic test of checks and balances: the system worked mechanically (Congress checked the President, and the Senate restrained the House’s more radical move), but it showed how fragile things were.

3.​

  • The Court at first tried to assert itself. In Ex parte Milligan (1866) it limited military trials where civil courts functioned.
  • But when Congress feared the Court might strike down Reconstruction Acts, it reduced the Court’s size to prevent Johnson from appointing justices.
  • In Ex parte McCardle (1869) the Court avoided a direct challenge by ruling it had no jurisdiction—effectively bowing to Congress.
  • This showed how judicial review was muted during Reconstruction.

4.​

  • Reconstruction massively expanded federal power over the states—through the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, federal military occupation, and civil rights legislation.
  • Southern states resisted through “Black Codes” and later violent paramilitary groups. The federal system survived, but only by federal dominance, not equal balance.

Conclusion​

  • Checks and balances did not formally break down: the branches still functioned and counteracted each other.
  • But the period revealed how political will, not just constitutional design, determines whether the system holds.
  • In practice, Congress dominated, the presidency was weakened, and the judiciary was cautious.
  • The deeper failure was not so much constitutional breakdown as the failure to enforce rights for freedpeople once Northern political will faded after 1877.
 
The courts have carved out a policy of deference on national security issues. I think that's what Bessent was referencing in a rather inarticulate way.
 
Jaw said:
I’m a little older than you, so I have memories of the time before free trade. We had places like malls, and Wal Mart, Toys r Us, Sears, Montgomery Ward…I never encountered that either. Everything known to man was available within a short drive from my backwater Appalachian hollow.
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Propaganda comes in all forms. The libertarians froth from the mouth with it.
 
nsacpi said:
The courts have carved out a policy of deference on national security issues. I think that's what Bessent was referencing in a rather inarticulate way.
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Yeah trump will have to drop the tariffs in response to wars and it will easily be overturned by the SC.
 
As long as you support free trade in its current form you simply can’t be upset at our welfare state. You either pick one or admit that you really don’t care about those thst can’t keep up.
 
chop2chip said:
I don’t fundamentally disagree with this. I’m open to arguments that our government should play a role to encourage certain industries to on shore in the name of national defense.

But I only sometimes hear that argument and it’s often drowned out by Bessent and Trump patting themselves on the back for collecting record tariff revenue and lack of honesty around consumer prices. Tariffs are a tax on consumers. They drive inflation. That inflation isn’t just on “luxury goods” like hammers.

Aces states this often, but Maga (and this administration) are constantly making contradicting arguments.

And we need to stop shaming people for being pissed that prices go up. Trump in large part was elected because of inflation. The burden to make the case for a new tax falls squarely on those who are unilaterally imposing them.
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This isn’t inflation as inflation is a one way exchange. The idea of tariffs is there is give and take and it’s distributed amongst all classes of people and not just asset holders.
 
thethe said:
This isn’t inflation as inflation is a one way exchange. The idea of tariffs is there is give and take and it’s distributed amongst all classes of people and not just asset holders.
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Further, inflation wouldn’t have been so debilitating if wages for middle class rose with it.

Right now majority of Americans aren’t really feeling any price increases because real wages are going up which is entirely consistent with trumps first term.
 
thethe said:
Further, inflation wouldn’t have been so debilitating if wages for middle class rose with it.

Right now majority of Americans aren’t really feeling any price increases because real wages are going up which is entirely consistent with trumps first term.
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What specific policy implemented in 2025 has resulted in higher wages, and why?
 
thethe said:
This isn’t inflation as inflation is a one way exchange. The idea of tariffs is there is give and take and it’s distributed amongst all classes of people and not just asset holders.
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It’s higher prices which y’all sometimes acknowledge but often times don’t.

It’s usually “lol sorry you have to pay $25 for a hammer instead of $20”
 
thethe said:
This isn’t inflation as inflation is a one way exchange. The idea of tariffs is there is give and take and it’s distributed amongst all classes of people and not just asset holders.
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The other type inflation we will see in the coming years is the titanic size whole blown in the budget from BBB (which to be fair… already was the size of quite a few titanics)
 
chop2chip said:
It’s higher prices which y’all sometimes acknowledge but often times don’t.

It’s usually “lol sorry you have to pay $25 for a hammer instead of $20”
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Go look back at what I’ve posted for a long time. It’s never that teh consumer won’t pay higher prices.

But why whine about our welfare state? That’s the trade off on free trade that we see today.

Aren’t you effectively doing the same thing that you’re accusing us of?
 
chop2chip said:
The other type inflation we will see in the coming years is the titanic size whole blown in the budget from BBB (which to be fair… already was the size of quite a few titanics)
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That’s if the appropriated spend turns into actual spend.
Government doesn’t have a good reputation for that but let’s not act like the prognosticators of these things have good records either.
 
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