Thinksgiving

The Unavoidable Unaffordable Mr. Trump

A Thanksgiving thought: America has always had an affordability crisis. It’s the magic of this place and, at times (like Black Friday), the plague of it. People want things. That’s why they come here. They aspire to more than they have. Bigger, shinier things are preferred. They don’t notice that some of the things they can afford now—flat-screen tvs, electric gadgets, loaded pickup trucks—were pricier ten years ago. A basic rule of life: When prices stay the same, they are diminishing. Even a low level of inflation, mixed with advanced productivity, assures that. So all this talk, by both parties, that they’re going to “bring prices down” is stupid politics, an unkempt promise, bound to fail. The price might come down for this or that grocery item, but across the board “affordability” cuts aren’t likely to happen, short of a Depression. It is a trap that Trump, normally a savant about avoiding such things, has walked into. He’s not going to bring prices down. If he manages to stabilize them, it will be a major victory…that few will notice. Indeed, a year after his election, prices have gone up, the wrong battles have been fought, his presidency is in the midst of a significant enfizzlement, with a multitude of real challenges—challenges without easy solutions, challenges that can’t be finessed or avoided—on the immediate horizon.

“Affordability” is about a lot more than bananas and coffee, of course. There are three major sectors that are becoming way more expensive—health insurance, electricity and housing—that break against the Neoliberal laissez-faire regime that Republicans profess to admire. All three require structural reforms, and intelligent government intervention, if they can be solved at all. This is an opportunity for Democrats, if they’re not stupid about it. Trump has been stupid about all three. I could, and sometimes have, written thousands of words about each, but I’ll just sketch out a general direction here:

1. Health Care—The actual answer is that we may well have to spend more on health to keep everyone minimally happy. There is a way to bring prices down, or maybe just stabilize them, but people probably won’t like it. In fact, it already exists: managed care. Medicare Advantage is the model. These are private, for-profit plans—about a third of the Medicare marketplace—that offer more services, like drugs and eyeglasses, at the cost (never stated) of less generous care. In many MedAdvantage plans doctors are paid salaries rather than fee-for-service. This is a double-edged sword: unnecessary tests and procedures are avoided, but some necessary procedures are bypassed as well. Doctors hate haggling with the insurance companies that offer the plans. (There is a family doctor shortage in the country, by the way, but I suspect it will be rectified by having nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants do most of the non-emergency work in “concierge”-style practices). The left’s solution is to abolish insurance companies and have the state pay for everything. This makes sense, in theory. You eliminate the profit-taking middleman. You use the extra money to take care of people. In theory. In practice, you replace the competence that defines the profit motive with indolence. I don’t see either party approaching this issue honestly.

2. Electricity—Trump has blown this sector, totally. He sees the future in the past: fossil fuels. But the immediate future is, all of the above. There need to be major new initiatives in renewables, of course, but also nuclear, geothermal, hydro (with accompanying desalinization plants). Trump is a divider, so he sees profit in a national campaign of immigration pogroms. If he were a uniter—an actual patriot—he would bring us together behind a Manhattan Project to build an electric grid appropriate for the 21st century (not a ballroom appropriate for the 18th). That, plus an all-of-the-above production strategy would produce lots of good-paying jobs. It is incomprehensible that he hasn’t done this; sort of like Biden not closing the southern border.

3. Housing—This has something in common with energy affordability. In order to get anything done, a mountain of regulations will have to be shredded…and a great many dilatory legal strategies, especially those involving environmentalism, are going to have to be tossed out by a free-enterprising Supreme Court. Or you can do what Governor Josh Shapiro did when I-95 collapsed: ignore the regs and…get shit done, as he put it. The socialist public housing towers have proved disastrous, especially when the apartments are not owned by their residents, but government should be subsidizing the market with housing vouchers, lower mortgage rates in poorer neighborhoods, public-private partnerships in which the developers take the lead.

All three challenges require something Trump lacks: a taste for actual governance. Left unattended, they will surely drag Donald down—unless he can create a diversion large enough to make the Epstein obfuscation seem a mote of dust. Which probably means something like a war…or a further engagement of ICE in the streets. I sense that Trump is beginning to realize that he’s approaching a brick wall, which is probably why his language has gotten so crazy lately and his public performances more unreliable—I mean, the Zohran Mamdani love-in? The defenestration of Marjorie Taylor Greene? The call to deport naturalized American citizens from the Third World? The silly vindictive law suits against Comey and Letitia James, and now the promised investigations of six American patriots, the veterans who stated the obvious: You don’t have to obey an illegal order….at a moment when the legality of some orders is being smudged in the waters off Venezuela and in the ICEy streets back home.

On top of that, his gilt is beginning to stink. It would not surprise me if some of his most flagrant supporters are wondering why he needs a grander-than-God ballroom. (Personally, I find the cheap adornment of the Oval Office with tacky gold appurtenances not merely unnecessary but vile.)

There is one other thing: his Congressional redistricting strategy is already obsolete. He has made it so. The proposed lines in Texas were built on the assumption that the Republican Latino vote would continue to grow; in this year’s elections, it vanished. Turns out, Latinos don’t like the haphazard ICE pogroms targeted at people who look like them. Turns out, small businesses—convenience stores—in places like Charlotte took a major hit when ICE came to town. Their usual customers stayed home. I’ve not spent a minute worrying—the Democrats are so silly about this—worrying about gerrymandering. Having good ideas, and selling them strong, is the best anti-gerrymander measure.

In matters large and small, Trump’s choices have worked to serve his prejudices rather than his interests. His failures have been mitigated by his show-biz antics. Trump is still a naughty chortle—did he actually say that?—for many people. But their next health insurance and utility bills may not be very funny.