Money and the election

Re my contention that “this election is a dirty old golf ball being hit again and again and again into a Gullah graveyard,” Warren Buffett on financial markets is surprisingly germane:

As they say in poker, “If you’ve been in the game 30 minutes and you don’t know who the patsy is, you’re the patsy.”

In this case, if you’re a paisa in the Rio Grande Valley, or you’re a Black man in North Philly, or you’re, uhhhhh, Louis Farrakhan, or you’re a working-poor white woman in Milwaukee, or… what the fuck ever!—if you voted for Donald fucking Trump, whoever you are, and you think your vote for Donald Trump means that you’ve secured yourself a wealthier future, or you’ve sent a message to out-of-touch elites, or you’ve had to hold your nose to do it because he’s noxious to you but you’ve managed to prevent the Democrats from imposing their radical agenda on America, or you’ve aligned yourself with a crazy and hilarious winner who just “shakes things up—and how could things get any worse?” guess what?

You’re the golf ball.

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Now that Elon Musk has continued to make clear to the world exactly who he is in ten thousand ways, I would urge people who give a damn about climate change to reconsider the position that owning shares of Tesla is somehow a good, somehow a win-win. It is not a good. Elon Musk is a bad, bad man. I’ll say it again: please don’t buy Tesla.

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Financial analysts were falling all over themselves in the run-up to the election and afterwards to gush about a (God I hate even writing such a stupid phrase, forgive me) “Trump bump” in the stock market. The profound cynicism of MoneyLand aside, this is just patently, willfully ignorant. “Record highs!” etc. etc. give me a fucking break.

You know this already, but a general reminder:

1. Short-term fluctuations in the stock market are meaningless over the long term.¹

2. The long-term benefits of the stock market inequitably reward the super-rich.²

3. The stock market performs better on average under Democratic administrations than Republican administrations.³

4. As does the economy as a whole.⁴

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Here’s what I really want to say:

Tariffs and trade wars and inflation blah-blah-blah.

Trump and the economy blah-blah-blah.

Trump’s energy policy blah-blah-blah.

Tax cuts for corporations and billionaires blah-blah-blah.

The gutting of Social Security blah-blah-blah.

“How the Trump administration may affect your finances” blah-blah-blah.

In some respects, yes, heard, this election is ALL ABOUT MONEY.

But if you don’t understand the money in this case as primarily a means of meting out suffering to already-suffering-and-marginalized people, you are missing the point.

The poor.

The elderly.

The undocumented.

The children who are inheriting a fragile climate.

Never mind the goddamn economy, the people are the point.

1. https://www.morganstanley.com/im/en-us/individual-investor/insights/articles/good-things-come-to-those-who-wait.html

2. https://inequality.org/great-divide/stock-ownership-concentration/#:~:text=Based%20on%20this%20estimate%2C%20the,dollars%20in%20stock%20market%20wealth.

3. https://www.fool.com/investing/2024/07/05/average-stock-market-return-democrat-republican-pr/

4. https://www.epi.org/press/new-report-finds-that-the-economy-performs-better-under-democratic-presidential-administrations/