Politics It's the economy, stupid! Gas, healthcare, & chickens!

[Phatguysrule]

 

[Chris Craig]

https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Agricultural_Prices/pricesb.php

I recently saw a YouTube video of people bragging that soybean prices were still pretty solid... How is this guy going bankrupt if soybean prices are still pretty solid? And a bunch of people in the comments were saying the same thing that they were soybean farmers and doing fine.

It looks like prices were about $11.25 at the end of 2024 and are now about $9.50 to $9.75...

Which doesn't seem like a terrible price historically...

This guy's been in the business 40 years... Is he just making excuses? Or are we really hurting due to China not buying our soybeans? Not sure what to believe...

Maybe they were bots? Fake accounts?Trying to sell the line.

Sounded like we were gonna get hit pretty bad from China buying soybeans elsewhere.

 

[Phatguysrule]

Maybe they were bots? Fake accounts?Trying to sell the line.

Sounded like we were gonna get hit pretty bad from China buying soybeans elsewhere.

True. And maybe the USDA is lying about the numbers? I wouldn't put it past the Trump admin...

Though, if they were lying you would think they would make the numbers look better... And knowing Trump the lies would be in sharpie...

 

[Phatguysrule]

Taxes Beat Tariffs for Cutting the National Debt​

A new study from the Pentagon’s favorite consulting firm, RAND Corporation, found that raising taxes on corporations could reduce the federal deficit better than Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff regime.

A recent study from the Pentagon’s favorite consulting firm found that raising taxes — particularly on corporations — could dramatically reduce the federal deficit and safeguard the economy better than President Donald Trump’s inflationary and chaotic tariff policies.

While the European Union suspended its trade deal with the United States over the future of Greenland’s sovereignty, Trump boasted to political leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week that sweeping tariffs, implemented by his administration in 2025, “radically reduced” the US trade deficit.

Throughout the last year, the president has argued that tariffs will “lower our debt, which is a national security thing” and pay for, well, everything — even repeatedly claiming that increased tariffs may soon eliminate the need for federal income taxes.

But researchers at the defense-focused RAND Corporation, a leading Washington, DC, think tank and top policy adviser to the Pentagon, recently determined there are potentially more effective ways than tariffs to balance America’s books and reverse the US budget deficit — which they previously deemed a national security concern. While Trump’s aggressive tariffs may dramatically increase revenue, they stifle economic growth by spiking production costs while lowering consumption rates, researchers conclude.

“These adverse impacts on economic activity can impair the government’s ability to raise future revenues from all tax channels,” they contend. The Congressional Budget Office, Congress’s economic research arm, finds that Trump’s aggressive tariff regime, if it lasts, could reduce the budget deficit by $3 trillion, including interest obligations, over the next eleven years. But this barely makes a dent in the US government’s debt burden. Baseline projections estimate the federal government will pay roughly $53 trillion in interest payments alone in the next thirty years, coming to represent a 156 percent debt-to-GDP ratio by 2055.

What’s more, as was highlighted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, Trump’s One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act alone could increase the national debt by an estimated $3.4 trillion over the next decade — meaning tariff revenues won’t even fully cover the Trump administration’s own contributions to the deficit so far.


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[Road Ratt]

 

[Phatguysrule]