My 401k has risen 2.3% in 2017. That’s more than the S&P, if you can believe it. There’s a tendency to credit the administration for financial market gains and for overall economic gains that have led to gains in the stock market. Maybe that’s out of respect for the policies of the President or, in this case, the deals the President-Elect. Maybe there’s no correlation, but we all try to find some way to guarantee that we’ll be fine in the future, and to say that, with Trump’s election and my 401k doing really well, he must be doing something right is a dangerous proposal.
The fact is he may have signaled that businesses will cut costs (taxes, wages, environmental, legal, etc.), but that doesn’t mean he’s a good guy. There are certain areas, and you’ll see this if you check other posts, where I’m okay with Trump, even though this makes me nauseous, but the idea that I could make money off of his policies of Made in America or essentially taxing globalization is just false. I’m happy to make the money, and whether I’d have access to it today or can’t access it until April in the year after I turn 70.5 doesn’t make a difference. I’m happy with his Taiwan call, and I’m happy with what he’s proposed against China’s disgusting actions, and I’m happy with some of his comments about needing to be stronger militarily for one reason. When someone claims to be your enemy and to want to attack you, you need to respond. There’s this precedent of responding with sanctions first, and that can be fine, but we’re past that with a very small handful of countries, and frankly, even where sanctions haven’t been exhausted, we’re past that with a couple countries, as well. Therefore, regardless of what it looks like and what the Trump legacy looks like–I don’t think Trump cares about his legacy–it’s good that Trump wants to butt heads with countries that already have plans to butt heads with us. “You might not be interested in war, but war might be interested in you” is a quote from someone I’d rather not cite, but it’s famous and something with which I objectively agree.
So, again, I’m happy to have the money that perhaps Trump’s actions have helped me earn. If I had access to that money, I would have received, after tax, two months rent, in just the first 11 days of the year. So, that’s good for me. However, there are a million reasons to hate Trump, and that’s why I’m writing this blog, one reason at a time.
First of all, Trump can give me money and cut expenses everywhere outside business growth, and then I’ll, for example, have to spend more on bottled water because the environment gets worse because he cuts funding for the EPA. If a Brita filter costs $10 and needs to be replaced every three months, that’s $40 a year. A 24-pack of bottled water from Costco (inexpensive example) costs maybe $5, but I drink several bottles of water per day. I drink about 1.5 gallons a day on average, across all seasons and workout days versus rest days, etc. That’s 192 ounces. A 24-pack is 384 ounces. Therefore, I’d go through that in two days, which is more than $900 a year. So, I don’t see how helping me in the stock market and making clean water a luxury item, among lotion for skincare due to unhealthy shower water and other necessary products, is financially a good idea.
Second of all, Trump’s bad relations with other countries, whether approaches with which I agree or relations with countries that aren’t harming us in the first place, will require every citizen to fix what he’s done. In some cases, I’m okay with that. I’m writing a book about Chinese people and how great they are, despite what they’re government is doing, but in other cases, I don’t think it’s feasible for all of us to make every citizen in NATO countries feel welcome in America and trust Americans and like our government, etc once Trump decides they can all piss off cuz they’re not American. Frankly, we’ll have to fix that. So, once again, he can bring all the jobs back to America, and this can help me in the stock market, but we’ll just have to pay for it elsewhere.
Third of all, we’ve been here before. This is reversing globalization, and while I understand we’ve, in some cases, outsourced our jobs to the wrong place(s), Trump isn’t taking that position. He’s not saying let’s bring jobs back from the bad places. He’s saying let’s bring them back regardless of where they are now, and that’s just undoing globalization. It’s going to have to be redone. We’re going to have establish good relations again. The world knows about globalization and will do it without us while we enjoy Made in America products while every other country enjoys comparative advantage (credit to my econ professors) with each other, and when we ask them if we can get in on that, they’ll say we left and ask why they should let us back in. Tell me how that won’t cost you? Globalization is a good idea, and maybe, like most things we try for the first time in our lives, we didn’t get it exactly right. Leaving the globalized world and making everything here and charging high tariffs and making us all rich in America might help my 401k, but I’ll have to spend plenty of money travelling to so many countries building personal relationships and begging for each person to accept my apology on behalf of Trump because of how much they’ll hate us by then. In fact, that’s my biggest issue, people hating an entire population because of some false theory that we all agree with what our government is doing. We don’t agree, but other countries will treat Americans based on their view of our government, and each individual is going to have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in their lifetime flying around the world being an informal diplomat in attempt to change overseas perceptions that were tainted by Trump.
Just saying let’s pull out and everything we buy has to be made here is ridiculous, and don’t get me started about the products made here that are creating a million jobs because of Ma Yun, the CEO of Alibaba. Seriously? You don’t like globalization and you hate what China is doing to us, but you want the Chinese government to help you get a million jobs back in America? They’re going to be the managers of those American employees. We used to send middle managers to China, and now you’re allowing them to send managers here to manage low-wage workers in America? You know they won’t authorize raises and bonus and health coverage, etc. They’ll probably bring in their own workers like they do everywhere else in the world. Sure, if I own their stock, I might make some money, but it’ll be more costly when I have to pay for surgery to fix an infection they caused by shattering my leg after breaking into my home to try to warn me against writing bad things about them on the Internet, or at that point, on their Internet. Excuse me, 互联网 to use the only legal term for Internet at that time.
What else? Oh right. Let’s back up and assume Americans will have control over this country, which I think we will and for a long time, job creation with Chinese characteristics aside (which I admit is a very small domestic issue at the moment), only white people will have jobs. So, when there’s so many issues that involve non-white people in this country, who will pay for that? Will store prices come down because the average person can’t pay as much as before? It’s possible, but unlikely. Will the next president be faced with a crisis of a very high homeless population and non-white people (not saying minority because it barely is) with huge medical problems and educational shortcomings? Yes, and how will this next president pay for it? They’ll have to tax or do something that costs us.
Sure, give me a lot money now and I’ll be able to invest it for longer than if you take some today and give me a lot of money later, but frankly, don’t give me money and then raise costs elsewhere. That’s corporate bullshit 101, and now it’s exactly how our President is going to run our country and, by extension, some other countries via binding requirements that he’ll push on other countries through his policies. I don’t need someone to give me money so I can live on a private island as far from others as possible. I want this country to do well, and making me or a handful of people wealthy by cutting taxes or environmental protection or cutting the country out of the rest of the world, creating globalization ex America, is the wrong method. It’ll fail. Plan and simple. It’ll fail.
In short, being selfish, which on this level means nationalist, might reduce costs and might make each citizen a lot of money, but we’ve already lived in a world where each country was separate, and we attempted to globalize because we knew and still know that that’s best in so many ways I think my fingers would fall off before I could type them all, and now we’re gonna go back to being totally separate? That’s not fixing anything. That’s running away, and I, for one, don’t run away from a challenge.