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Comment by standardUser | Hacker News Reader

Trump's primary economic policies are to start the mother of all trade wars and conduct mass deportations, which would have a devastating impact on the domestic economy in general and American consumer spending in particular. The only reason markets are so excited is because they don't believe Trump will actually do either of those things, at least not to the extreme degree he has repeatedly threatened.

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Why do you think they would go up at all?

Because they know for certain that Republican control means tax cuts remain and more tax cuts will come. It's the only priority Republicans routinely deliver on.

Though the cuts are only permanent if you're rich or a corporation, if you're poor they expire--or rather, they choose to pass a law that also raises your back up again later when you won't expect it and might blame a different set of politicians. It's the gift that keeps on taking.

Unless you're talking about the SALT cap, which was set to expire... but maybe now not so much.

>It's the only priority Republicans routinely deliver on.

would that mean that the only priority Democrats routinely deliver on is tax increases? or are Democrats also delivering on other promises which are not being undone?

The record is mixed overall for both parties and you are free to research it. But when Republicans take power, they pass tax cuts and those cuts usually favor the wealthy and corporations overwhelmingly. Tax cuts don't first require tax increases.

contrary to what you say, and in practice if you look at the history of tax cuts, you will see that cuts are balanced by a history of tax increases, and progressive tax increases require regressive tax cuts to balance the accounts, it's simple arithmetic.

but don't lose sight of the fact that with or without the cuts, the rich pay most of the taxes

In 2021, the top 50% of earners contributed 97.7% of federal income tax revenue. The top 5% of earners — people with incomes $252,840 and above — collectively paid over $1.4 trillion in income taxes, or about 66% of the national total.

My take would be they are pricing in the likely currency expansion that Trump and his ilk will perform. Last time before the pandemic the money supply increased roughly 16% over four years.

Basically they're pricing in cheap money.

I'm guessing we'll have good stocks for a while, and then probably a bailout because of god knows what this time.

And in four years your money will be worth half again, so try to double your salary and savings. Hope I'm wrong but you know what they say about planning for the worst.

You seem rather optimistic actually.

Then we can elect a Democrat and blame the inflation on them! It's a beautiful cycle.

The president doesn't control the money supply. Though it's possible that they're banking on Trump being able to change that, as he has threatened to do.

Since the two terms before oversaw a 27% and 26% increase, why would we expect that? At most, the slope is roughly the same since 2009 to 2020, so if you factor out COVID, at best they'd see it as the baseline.

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