Trump’s 2024 election win partly relied on complaints over inflation, like skyrocketing egg prices. However, his tariff-focused strategy to protect American businesses may raise costs further by limiting foreign competition. This will lead to even higher prices for staples—eggs, bread, meat—undermining his anti-inflation stance. This convoluted approach bolsters arguments for socialism or communism, where essentials are subsidized or free, ensuring affordability. While tariffs appeal to nationalist voters, they risk alienating those demanding lower grocery bills. Can tariffs curb inflation, or do they invite radical economic alternatives?
Trump’s Tariffs Make the Case for Communism
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The TMI Show" talk show. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Ted may still think Russia is communist, being the romantic Russophile he is, #ted’sworld. Ted, where do you stand on “Doctor Zhivago?:
I’m genuinely surprised at the oversimplification presented in this cartoon. Even Homer nods.
What we have isn’t “capitalism.” At least not in the true sense. It’s kind of like how what we have isn’t “democracy” either. It’s representational government. Okay, it isn’t really that either. It’s more like, “you are manipulated into getting only two real choices, and both of those people represent the tiny fraction of a fraction of the people who are hyperwealthy.”
As a result, health care isn’t free. College isn’t free. The middle class is dying.
However, even under “perfect” capitalism college (or eggs) wouldn’t be “free.” It’s that the hyperwealthy wouldn’t exist. Their lobbyists who write the bills that permit the hyperwealthy to hoard their fortunes — built in large part by crushing true capitalism and by keeping workers in poverty — wouldn’t exist.
I doubt if eggs would be free in a communist system but it would be expected that profits from the sale of the bananas would go to the workers who grew the bananas. Said workers might set the banana prices (and profits) lower than those of corporate bananas producers, e.g. the cuddly United Fruit Co., since the communist workers would no doubt realize that most of their customers were workers like themselves who were making things the banana producers needed/wanted.
No such consideration of “the other” is allowable/tolerated under the monumental hoax of capitalism that assures us that the sum of individual maximization of avarice is a smoothly operating society. They never quite officially define the guaranteed “efficient distribution of resources” at all, much less reveal the reality of the “obsessive intention to distribute ALL of the resources that can be begged, borrowed or stolen (preferably) into the accounts of the fewest possible psychopathological monsters.”