Matisyahu's Blog

I’ve been watching the news regarding Trump’s tariff announcement and once again I ask – how the hell did the US get to the situation where so much power is concentrated in the hands of one man? both parties have allowed more and more power to consolidate in the hands of one person and then act surprised when, after having a run of responsible presidents, that the populace decide to vote for someone like Trump resulting in what we see today. It reminds me of what a conservative commentator said regarding the Patriot Act and how much power it gives one person – as the commentator says, you may get a good run of responsible presidents but you don’t write legislation on the assumption that you’ll always have a responsible person in the White House.

The other thing that frustrates me is when someone complains about something but ultimately they’re the source of the very thing they’re complaining about. Hearing US politicians complain about ‘currency manipulation’ yet who has an official policy called ‘the strong dollar policy’? last time I checked China didn’t force the US to adopt such a policy – that is a policy that they themselves decided to adopt. No one forced the US to tie healthcare to employment and force their businesses to pay for the healthcare of their employees thus imposing a huge cost burden on the back of businesses – something businesses in countries that have single payer healthcare and drug price negotiations don’t have to deal with. No one forced the US to adopt the system of unemployment insurance (or as we call it in New Zealand – “unemployment benefit”) to adopt a state by state system that taxed businesses payroll and then when a business has to lay off workers that their payroll tax is jacked up to add insult to injury. No one forced the US to create a multilayer mess of bureaucracy rather than having one set of regulations at the federal level – it is the US citizens who have convinced themselves layers of bureaucracy is actually ‘democracy close to the people’ rather than decision that balkanised the country resulting in a race to the bottom as each region competes to attract businesses and retain them (with the working class carrying the brunt of the consequences that come from such a policy in the form of public services being cut).

You made policy choices and now you’re dealing with the consequences that come from those policy choices – China or whatever the bogyman of the moment happens to be isn’t the cause of the ‘decline of the US’ that you’re trying to blame on someone else but yourself. Rather than looking outside of the US for the source of your problems the effort would be better spent purchasing a mirror and having a look at what is reflected back. As I’ve said in the past, decline of the US is either going to happen one of two ways: 1) A respectable exit from the world stage while acknowledging new powers are emerging and that the US is interested in not viewing those new emerging powers as enemies but potential friends and allies or 2) Will try to hold onto relevance by fighting on the way down in the belief that those glory days of the past can be revived, by talking about an ahistorical rose tinted retelling of a nation’s past that only they (as the strong man) can revive (see Trump). I was hoping that it would be the option (1) but it appears when you have a largely ignorant population it isn’t surprising that (2) was chosen by a population sucked into the promises made by one man claiming to be the only one that can fix it (but never asking the obvious follow up question that if it were so easy then why wasn’t it ‘fixed’ sooner?).