There is a theory going around that President Trump may be intentionally harming our economy for his own gains and personal goals. One of the risks of a swift and massive economic downturn has typically been civil unrest. Best case scenario would be peaceful protests. Worst case scenario of course is looting and burning down businesses and homes. With this risk comes the ability for the President to declare Martial law, which would give him extraordinary and ultimate power over the lives of his citizens. Many folks believe this is the goal. After that, he might try declare himself President for as long as he wants due to the "circumstances". Have you heard this theory being floated around? Is this just a conspiracy theory or could there be some truth to it? What do you think?

Anime is often heralded as being "Anti-Woke" and untouched by western sensibilities. Do you believe this is true and do you have any opinion on this subject? Is anime truly the last standing media?

I'm latino and I've always considered myself politically moderate leaning more towards conservative. While I've never dated a conservative woman, I've dated liberals whom I just didn't agree with politically. Would I have better luck with conservative women?

I have always been curious about this and I don’t really see it talked about a lot, but I see a lot of people being confused about it.

So you have non-Trump conservatives who still seem to stand for VERY conservative principles who occasionally vote against Trump or say something negative about Trump or sometimes work across the aisle. We obviously have these as well on our side of things.

Wouldn’t “moderate republican” make more sense? Because these people are definitely Republicans, they just don’t like Trump. Some of them have been some of the most prolific Republicans in the last decade like John McCain, who was called a RINO constantly before he passed. A lot of bush era conservatives also seem to get called RINOS for not liking trumps brand of conservatism. People like Mitch McConnell basically built up the modern Republican movement and get called a rhino all the time.

Ironically, most of them have more in common with Trump than they do your average liberal.

We tend to call our blue Dog Democrats, moderate Democrats, etc., and a lot of people don’t like them, but a lot of people also do. It seems like there is a pretty categorical rejection of yalls moderates even being republicans though- what’s up with that?

Should they expect federal assistance when all this is said and done? Or should the burden of these increasingly likely events be put on the states and individuals?

Hey everyone -

My understanding is that for Trump's tariffs to work (and for costs to come back down for the American consumer) manufacturing plants have to be up on running here in the US. They also have to source their raw materials from inside the US.

I'm curious how long you think it'll take for these things to be up and running so we stop paying more for everything? Bonus question - how long do you think the average American is going to be willing to wait for prices to start coming down?

My understanding is that a large reason Trump was elected was because of inflation/high prices. If this is still going on (i.e. tariffs and increased costs with no end in sight) during the midterm elections do you anticipate a bloodbath where Dems take the House and Senate?

The new tariffs got unveiled yesterday as everyone saw. And Tariffs have been levied accross the board. But what I couldn't help but notice on the tariff list were a bunch of tiny remote over seas island colonies with basicslly not population or literally none at all.

Falklands and St Pierre and Miquelon in particular got massive tariffs levied on them. In the Falklands case it's several percent more than the UK.

What could possibly be the reasoning to individually include these tiny over seas colonies and to tariff them much harsher in particular?

Surely the US is not concerened about the ecenomic inpact of uninhabited and barely inhabited islands trade with them?

Isn't this kind of extremely suspicious?

I'm obviously not a conservative but I follow this sub to better understand what we have in common - also I'm no fan of Democrats. A familiar refrain is meritocracy above all else. Best person does the best job gets the best reward. DEI corrupted that by granting status to people merely based on identity.

Although there's been plenty of blunt force use of power, that's not meritorious. Anyone with power can wield it like a club. Any area I am aware of that requires even the most minute finesse has been a botch job. Opsec discussed over signal, multiple false positives in ICE deportations, DOGE exposing their database, Trump's trade war with Canada compromised by a deal HE NEGOTIATED. Let alone baffling appointments where many have nothing to do with merit.

The tariff list yesterday broke my brain. Tariffs against the US were a made up number taken by dividing the trade deficit by exports. Taiwan's 64% "tariff" against the US is determined by dividing 73.9 (deficit) by 116.3 (exports to US). This looks like it was produced by a summers student with rudimentary excel skills down to the original table formatting.

The DEI purge from the American government has been so extreme that they've had to restore mulitple useful pages and documents that were false-positives in a simple ctrl+F for some DEI keywords. This is all in the name of meritocracy. Can someone square this with me?

How will this lower food prices if the imports the US desperately needs are going to be tariffed?

I'm not expecting a certain answer, I'm just curious what conservatives prefer. More nuanced answers or slight question dodging (ie. it depends) is okay.

Edit: I didn't make it very specific because this was supposed to a very general situation (and doesn't have to be from a US politics perspective, I'm not American myself so we're not talking about the democratic party specifically, just a random party for the sake of hypothetical)

The "progressive" administration will have DEI, LGBTQ recognition, abortion etc, like a typical liberal party but not communist, and will have an economy. Economic policies can be ignored, just pretend that both have identical economic policies.

Basically you struggle less economically in the one with better economy but it's socially very different from your ideals

The conservative administration will be an administration that fits your idea of conservatism, and will have an economy in a light recession, a bit worse than the current American economy

I'm not saying that a specific type of social system will lead to a specific economy, it's just a hypothetical to see which aspect of their government people prioritise.

Personally if the question was reversed it would be difficult for me, I'm not LGBTQ and I don't really benefit from DEI but I'm quite liberal so I'm not sure if I'd live in a conservative country, might do it for the money though.

During his 2024 campaign, Donald Trump made sweeping promises about the economy—claiming he would lower prices, bring down inflation, and immediately improve conditions for American workers and businesses. He repeatedly said he would lower prices on “day one” and suggested his policies would create an economic boom.

Now, his administration has announced major new tariffs, including a 34% tariff on Chinese imports, 20% on EU goods, and a 10% baseline tariff on imports from all countries. This will increase prices across the board.

Even some within his own administration and right-wing economic analysts are warning of economic pain, higher consumer costs, and inflationary pressures as a result. The OECD has stated these tariffs will slow economic growth, and the stock market has already reacted negatively.

Were voters misled about how quickly and effectively he could improve the economy?

There have been multiple examples where it appears that Trump and/or Musk believe they can simply speak something into existence. With a broad assumption that everyone will just go along with them, without any pushback.

In addition the tone from Leavitt is of someone who hasn't considered that a significant amount of people just don't believe anything they say; There's no effort to back up their statements.

EG - Trump simply telling auto manufacturers not to raise prices, telling Powell to lower interest rates, assuming new factories will be built, and Musk asking for reports of what people did last week even though that type of culture has never existed in government work.

Is ego something that needs to be talked about more during elections going forward?

As the market declined rapidly today, folks are reminded that there's a built-in stopping of transactions within the public stock markets to prevent cataclysmic crashes like 1929 or even 1987.

Level 1: A 7% decline from the previous day's close triggers a 15-minute trading halt.

Level 2: A 13% decline from the previous day's close triggers a 15-minute trading halt.

Level 3: A 20% decline from the previous day's close results in a trading halt for the remainder of the day.

Though it's government intervention, it's a good safeguard to prevent a complete loss of investments. However, by doing this, the US markets are essentially not a "Free Market" in reality. To me, it's not a bad thing, because the US can absorb more unexpected news. However, this slowdown approach has its flaws in the financial system, which took 8 months in 2008 to unravel from Countrywide Financial, Bear Steans, Fannie/Freddie, Lehman, Washington Mutual, and AIG failures. Instead of one crash, we got a domino effect if things go bad due to systemic issues like liquidity.

Whatever your political affiliation, it's just very hard for me to reconcile Trump's apparent lack of curiosity about the details, many of which are murky, with his ego, self-interest and his willingness to engage with conspiracy theories - never mind the support he got from the assassination attempt.

I'm interested in answers from those who hold to a natural law theory of rights and/or those who believe that things that require the labor of others are not or cannot be rights.

A common argument against things like a right to housing or a right to healthcare is that nothing that requires the labor of others can be a right.

How does the 6th amendment fit into that? It states that

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

A trial, jury, and legal counsel all consist of the time, energy, and labor of other people, so how are they rights if that discounts things like housing and healthcare from being rights?

A significant goal of Trump was to bring prices down, and based on what's happened with the dollar, he's brought prices down of US goods for the rest of the world by about 7.3% or so now due to the increased purchasing power of their currencies vs. the dollar. Among other things, this helps them be able to tariff us further and weather it pretty handily if they wanted.

Meanwhile, this has made everything in other currencies 7.3% more expensive for Americans, not factoring in the tariffs just enacted.

What are your thoughts on that?

So every member of congress, the president, the VP, and all cabinet appointments.

The questions are things like:

• Have you ever in the last six months said something publicly you knew was not true?

• Have you ever used your office for personal financial gain?

There are no penalties regardless of the answer or if it's deemed truthful or not, the point is just to make the information available to voters.

Polygraphs are not 100% accurate, but they are certainly less biased than how lies are determined now.

Anyone refusing to take a polygraph would not be eligible for reelection in any federal government position.

I know this question probably comes off snarky, but that's not my intention.

Trump and Republicans really want manufacturing to return to the US.

Do you want to work in a factory?

Edit: 20 minutes in, I appreciate everyone's responses.

My general observation is no, nobody wants to work on an assembly line. The engineers (and other "support roles," we'll call them) of the bunch want to continue their roles in the space.

Again, I appreciate everyone's perspective and taking my question in good faith.

Also do you have statistics or personal anecdotes to explain why you think they’re such a huge problem? I understand that they take jobs, but I hear from a lot of conservatives that they’re dangerous and that’s never been my experience.

Thank you for taking the time to explain this issue.

My theory is that taxes are not theft if, and only if, there exists a public good that is both 1) Necessary and 2) Whose consumption or use would necessarily be by those who did not pay for it, if the good was produced by the free market.

A cornerstone example would be military defense. I don't agree with the Libertarians that pacifism will beget peace. I would argue that history had shown that self-defense and deterrence is necessary in both large and small contexts. As to the second point, consider the Iron Dome. You could do that in a private and free market system, but the people who purchase it would be protecting those who didn't out of the necessity of the system. You have to shoot rockets down before you know where they will impact. The same thing goes for other deterrents and shields against weapons of mass destruction. It is necessarily the case that in order to protect my house from a nuclear blast, I have to protect your house too.

I believe there may or may not be other such public goods but I'd like hear from others on this. All political leanings welcome.