There’s in general no way this can work long-term. When nations cooperate, they both benefit. If you’re the only nation not cooperating with everyone else, then everyone else will surpass you until you’re North Korea levels of yesteryear.
Looking at this through the lens of “how can the oligarchs benefit”, it makes complete sense - Strip all government assistance, remove social nets, add tariffs that will basically kill most small businesses (think also farms, mom and pop shops, etc). Lead to depression, billionaires swoop in and buy up land/homes/business for pennies on the dollar (or just basically crush small businesses to get them out of the way). One couldn’t design a better way to fuck over everyone and enrich the oligarchs
There’s in general no way this can work long-term. When nations cooperate, they both benefit. If you’re the only nation not cooperating with everyone else, then everyone else will surpass you until you’re North Korea levels of yesteryear.
My macroecon book, which was written by a guy from the Bush administration, hit us over the head with that concept.
It’s strange to thing that he’d be considered a pariah by his party’s leadership now.
Looking at this through the lens of “how can the oligarchs benefit”, it makes complete sense - Strip all government assistance, remove social nets, add tariffs that will basically kill most small businesses (think also farms, mom and pop shops, etc). Lead to depression, billionaires swoop in and buy up land/homes/business for pennies on the dollar (or just basically crush small businesses to get them out of the way). One couldn’t design a better way to fuck over everyone and enrich the oligarchs
Yup, a fire sale for oligarchs.