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I think people keep saying crap like this: Prices can absolutely come down without killing the economy. It's done by doing smart things that republicans were making talking points:

* Drill for oil, lower the price of gas, prices at the store come down.

* Stop the wars that make for unstable access for gas.

* Create pipelines so that instead of "flaring" Natural gas, we transport it cheaply to be used for electricity generation

* Change the tariff structure so that American goods are worth something against Chinese imports that raises the value of the dollar which lowers the cost of goods

* Stop the insane energy policies that raise gas prices by 45 cents per gallon (in CA for example) for 0.0001% change in climate

NONE of these were democrat talking points.

>Drill for oil

Current admin did this at record rates

>Stop the wars that make for unstable access for gas

The US is a net exporter of energy so the instability is helpful

>Create pipelines

We have already entered the late stage hydrocarbon era. Massive imminent domain projects for a decade or two of utility are I advised

>Change the tariff

We cannot go to a pre-globalization time. Alea iacta est. The only way for tariffs to work against BRICS would be a unilateral tariff which would affect all American commerce.

What countries aren't using tariffs? Biden used tariffs. Biden kept Trump tariffs. I paid a tariff for my BMW. Germany was probably pretty happy about that. I liked their product enough, so I was happy, too.

Go read some Peter Navarro. He explains desperately how important it is to be protectionist (to a limited extent) with certain industries. Especially if they link to security and health of the nation. You do not want a hostile nation to make all of your pharmaceuticals. You do not want them to hold you hostage over your lack and their surplus of steel. This is basic, basic stuff.

And the whole point is that other countries are not engaging in fair trade practices. If they aren't engaging in fair trade, then they can't engage in this fabled myth of "free trade". This is literally the Trump trade doctrine. He has spelled it out and acted on it. If the CCP hadn't manipulated the price of steel to wipe out American steel producers, they wouldn't be subject to extreme tariffs. Simple, simple stuff.

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> Stop the insane energy policies that raise gas prices by 45 cents per gallon (in CA for example) for 0.0001% change in climate

You mean the gas taxes that fund road maintenance? That tax is a tyranny imposed by how much we rely on cars, not by climate change.

It's funny how other states must use magic wands to fix their roads, obviously since the gas prices are not jacked up as high elsewhere.
I don’t understand the sarcasm. Comparable states like Texas and New York charge far more in tolls than California. Many states have far fewer roads (with less usage), or they underfund their road maintenance, don’t repair them, and then rely on federal funds to make emergency repairs after something critical breaks.
The tolls are 1. Used to fix toll lanes, much more prevalent now than in the past 2. Payments to private companies who siphon the proceeds out of the area they services

Gas tax is much better in this regard, but all of these are pretty extortionary.

Last I checked I think 60% was getting siphoned off to an LLC and only 40% of the toll was for the road.
Not only that, tolls suck for privacy (de facto installation of ALPR cameras, database presumptively controlled by a private company selling the data to anyone with money), are a regressive tax on the poor, and are often used to implement "taxation without representation" by sticking the tolls near a state border to extract rents from people not eligible to vote against them.

New York has even taken to explicitly charging higher rates to out of state residents, which is of questionable constitutionality.

I would like to be able to say that in Europe, tolls are managed by the state, but they aren't.
But think about all the poor politicians who would miss out on their kickbacks.
Driving is a privilege. You can walk on the walking road, thingy.
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Underlying the sarcasm is the assertion that California is not fiscally responsible with its budget. Understand now?
California has the worst roads of any state I've driven in. San Fran and San Jose, rank among the top 10 in the country of the worst roads. Whatever they are using it for, isn't for road maintenance.
Agreed. Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Washington, Florida..... visited all of them in the last 12 months during various seasons.... they ALL have significantly better roads than California. HOW!!!!!! HOW!
California has the second highest total lane miles by state[0] and it has the highest number of registered vehicles of any state, by a big margin.[1]

Being a such a populous big state with only tiny, regional public transportation systems means everyone and their cousin drives everywhere, all the time. That's how.

[0]https://blog.cubitplanning.com/2010/02/road-miles-by-state/

[1]https://www.bts.gov/browse-statistical-products-and-data/sta...

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I've lived in California for 30+ years now and what I've observed is that we spend huge amounts of money on infrastructure and a lot of the spend seems to be absolute waste. For example, there is no realistic reason for high speed rail to cost what it does per mile; I am certain that a very close inspection of the process would uncover huge amounts of waste, padding, and theft. On top of that, people have been able to limit development using enivronmental rules and other legal methods to slow down things that are truly needed.

I'm sure somebody has written a book already about how ostensibly wealthy societies can fail at basic infrastructure that they previously mastered, driven by greed and complacency and other socioeconomic factors. I think this has happened over and over again (Rome, and many other societies).

Oil production is at all time highs (AFAIL). Further, drilling locally for oil does not directly reduce local prices. It is still shipped abroad to the highest bidder. That is ignoring the refinement issues that not all oil is equal and needs to be refined.

'Just' stop wars short of surrendering is easy to say. No evidence Republicans actually could deliver or prevent. Just talk.

The tariffs were largely kept in place between Biden and Trump. The criticism here would apply equally to both but also ignores trade wars.

The pipeline bit is perhaps viable, but a drop in the bucket (with respect to at least the keystone XL [1])

[1] https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-895299166310

"Even if the Keystone XL pipeline had been completed, the amount of oil it was designed to transport would have been a drop in the bucket for U.S. demand, experts noted. The U.S. used nearly 20 million barrels of oil a day last year, while global consumption of oil was near 100 million barrels. The pipeline would have contributed less than 1% to the world supply of oil, according to AP reporting.

“The total volume of additional supply is negligible in a market that uses 100 million barrels of oil every day,”"

I think the way I am interpreting the parent comments is that whether or not these Republican promises are true or viable is beside the point.

The right still has them as talking points, where the left has failed miserably. Talking about any potential solutions seems to have enticed American voters more than trying to sweep it under the rug.

> Just' stop wars short of surrendering is easy to say

Also easy to observe that it would be better than conducting wars and surrendering anyway.

Conventional oil drilling peaked in the 70s exactly as predicted in peak oil. It was made up for with fracking, except fracking has always lost money.
> * Drill for oil, lower the price of gas, prices at the store come down.

Strategically and economically stupid. Buy oil when everyone has it, sell oil when everyone else has ran out.

> * Stop the wars that make for unstable access for gas.

The US military is the largest socialist jobs program in the world and is the single greatest creator of skilled labor for our economy.

> * Change the tariff structure so that American goods are worth something against Chinese imports that raises the value of the dollar which lowers the cost of goods

Lets say you make widgets for $9 and sell them to me for $10 (a healthy 10% profit). The government comes along and tells you there is a $2 tariff on widgets. Are you going to sell me widgets at $8 (a $1 loss) or raise the price to $12? Tariffs are a tax on goods paid by the buyer and a way to de-incentivize overseas production. But here is the problem - do you want to make 39 cents an hour sewing soccer balls or do you want to pay 10x for that soccer ball so that an American can have a livable wage doing the sewing for you?

The "American Dream" is exploitation of cheap overseas labor because of our superior economic position. Regardless of how you feel about that morally, Trump's economic plan is to try and figure out how to on-shore the lowest paid factory jobs.

> The US military is the largest socialist jobs program in the world and is the single greatest creator of skilled labor for our economy.

This sounds an awful lot like the broken window fallacy. Wars are destructive and any amount spent on that destruction is lost from the economy no matter how many people you hire in the process. Surely funding schools would be a more direct way of creating skilled labour.

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> Trump's economic plan is to try and figure out how to on-shore the lowest paid factory jobs.

Not necessarily. Tariffs are a limited tax, in this case maxing out at 100%. Making soccer balls from China cost twice as much is not going to bridge the gap between viable and non-viable for onshore production. It really only bridges the gap where the off vs on shore savings are much closer, which tends to apply to more complex manufacturing processes, which incorporate more automation in the process, as cost gaps between developed and undeveloped countries tend to be greatest in the cost of labor. Automation is often cheaper in more developed countries, in fact.

Onshoring those kinds of jobs/infrastructure would provide a range of national security and economic benefits.

I genuinely don't understand how tariffs have become so poorly understood and divisive. Every argument about them I see framed seems either highly biased or pure misinformation, from both sides. They are not free tax money, but they also can have benefits for low and middle class people.

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You didn't cover the global supply chain.