What just happened in November 2024?

It's a few days after the 2024 US presidential election, and I'm distraught. Instead of a well qualified candidate who aimed to make life better for all people by expanding healthcare and fighting climate change, we elected a narcissistic self centered person who will sow chaos and suffering.

Of course, I've read a lot in the last few days, and this particular article stuck out to me: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/07/us-progressive-election-trump-maga

Let's go through the issues...

Deporting 10 million people is logistically incredibly difficult. Simply finding all of those people, physically transporting them to another country, and processing them through the legal system are three very difficult activities that will require a huge amount of money that us US citizens will have to come up with. Mexico is not going to pay us take take a million people into it's country. And who is going to do this work? I do realize that there are a number of younger men that look forward to doing this work, but we're probably talking 100,000 people that need to be active full time participants in this for there to be a remote chance of deporting so many people. Will that be active duty military people going door to door asking to search homes? This is an area where I fully expect the new administration to put a lot of effort, and likely separate many families in the process. Plus, as a downstream effect, this is going to definitely increase grocery prices. First generation immigrants play a big role in food production, and who is going to replace them? See this infographic: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/content/essential-role-immigrants-us-food-supply-chain

Stopping the wars in Ukraine and the middle east will not happen in 24 hours. I presume that he will take whatever current deal Russia offers, and try to force Ukraine to agree to it, and I'm sure the deal will be so bad that Ukraine won't accept it. In the middle east, I presume that he will simply send Israel more weapons to kill more people, and do nothing to actual sign any peace treaty. Which likely means that Israel will bully it's enemies until one of them strikes back in a show of modest force, and the whole thing will escalate again. Then there is China and Taiwan, I don't think that will be a quiet part of the world for the next four years. Let's not forget the whole continent of Africa, although unfortunately, we will as a country essentially ignore the whole range of challenges they are sure to face the next four years.

He ran on rolling back EPA regulations, and as 2024 is expected to be the hottest year on record, with several hurricanes that wrecked destruction across Florida and North Carolina, I can only expect the next four hurricane seasons to be worse. I expect wild fires to be bad as well. 2020 and 2021 were bad years but the last three were not so bad here in Colorado. I expect that in the next four years there will definitely be some very large very destructive wild fires. Global warming is real. Sea level rise is real. Trying to roll back the already inadequate incentives to mitigate climate change is a recipe for further destruction. A category 5 hurricane is going to hit Miami (and Mar-a-Lago) some day. There will be 20 foot above sea level storm surges, maybe 25 feet or more like we saw with Hurricane Katrina. There will be tornados, crops will die, people will get asthma. Honestly, this issue is becoming what I view as potentially the single most important issue since the most lives and the most money is at stake. No one is really pushing for this, but I think we need to start a Climate Corp. in this country like the Peace Corp or Ameri Corp to do climate change prevention and mitigation actives, as well as go into destroyed areas after natural disasters and help clean up. It's something that we could use a lot of strong people for since it's going to be hard work. 

Women's healthcare is under attack. More mothers will die from sepsis in preventable miscarriage care. Contraception will be under attack, and women will go into poverty raising children, which doesn't help most children to grow up in poverty. Couples that want to use IVF to have children, will not be able to do that in some places. We need to trust women to make the decisions that are best for them. Thinking that a bunch of politicians and business people can make the best decisions for women's health is ridiculous! I used to be a solidly pro-life anti-abortion white male, but I now realize that's ridiculous. I'm still very pro-life, but a law about abortion being illegal doesn't make the world more welcoming for unborn babies, policies that give women all the resources that they need for their health and the health of babies does make the world more welcoming for fetuses. I'll give an example, when a women wants to have a baby, gets pregnant, has a miscarriage, and the doctors don't operate until it's too late and she has to have her uterus removed, she can no longer have a baby. You have just stopped that woman from having the baby she wants.

Tariffs are an interesting one, because we do actually have a number of existing tariffs, mostly started by the President around 2018, which Biden kept during his administration, and contributed to inflation the last few years. In other words, there is actually a small price win here by removing some tariffs, but in all likelihood there will be more tariffs, which will lead to more price increases, one estimate I saw was expected to increase costs for the average household $2,500 per year. But I suppose this is what people voted for, so we'll just get to wait and see what happens.

Taxes are another interesting area, the Tax Cuts and Jobs act of 2017 lowered taxes quite a bit, and they expire in 2025... hahahaha. I'll explain, this seemed to be a change election, people weren't happy with the party in control of the White House or the legislative branch because of prices and perceived safety, so they voted for change. However, when it comes to taxes, the last four years we have actually been living with taxes that I think are already too low that expire soon and revert to their higher levels. So there will be a small battle to simply keep these current taxation levels, and a larger battle to reduce taxes. In other words, I think it's unlikely to see dramatic change where taxes are concerned, and it's possible, although very unlikely that they actually go up if legislation cannot be passed to keep the current taxation levels.

The national deficit and national debt are interesting ones too. One particular campaigner for the winning party seemed to be excited to cut national spending by $2 Trillion a year, and I don't see how that happens without at least touching Social Security. Infographic here: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59727 In other words, I do think we need to do something to get closer to a balanced budget, and I like taxing the rich as a start, like adding a "high" tax bracket for incomes over $10 million per year of like 49% where there are no deductions or lower tax rates for capital gains. It would apply to a tiny portion of people and generate a fair amount of revenue. Another item to address is Social Security taxes and benefits, and while the fixes are pretty easy actually, I doubt that they will be implemented the next four years, which makes them a little more difficult to implement in 2029 to 2032.

So where does that leave us? In something of a wait and see mode. Will Project 2025 come to fruition? What policies will actually be enacted remain to be seen. Will new higher tariffs, government spending cuts, and mass deportation make the stock market go up? I think it's probably fair to say, 'okay, make America great, here is your chance.' I'll try to have an open mind and hope I am surprised by the shared prosperity that we enjoy in the years to come.

As a Christian I take a lot of comfort in my faith in God, and yet, Christians carried out parts of the Holocaust and owned slaves for centuries. There is no guarantee of an easy life in the Bible, on the contrary, there can be a lot of hardship that is foreshadowed.