Talking of farming, are there any numbers on if AcreTrader or other similar companies has been buying up farmland, and if so how JD Vance’s investment has been performing?
Double-plus-good upvote for your very good question. Tanking smaller players and putting more assets within the grap of current & future American Oligarchs seems to be the underlying playbook right now. This is 1991 Russia.
Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac going public? An opportunity for billionaires to own the mortgages that will default as the economy [intentionally] continues to tank leading to defaults and transfer of the homes and properties backing the mortgages as collateral to the oligarch class.
Considering how much harm he did to farmers in his first term, and they overwhelmingly voted for him again in 2020 and 2024, I’d say they apparently prefer this over the alternative. I don’t expect this to change anything.
Americans don't vote for policies, they vote for personalities. It literally doesn't matter to them if Trump bankrupts them, as long as they get to support the "tough guy" billionaire.
> literally doesn't matter to them if X bankrupts them
If that were true, you'd not see economy as the top or one of the top issues. Perhaps some marginal short term economical concerns can be offset by personality/perceived cultural improvements, but not to the point of bankruptcy or even close.
"It's the economy, stupid" was Clinton's slogan after all.
> If that were true, you'd not see economy as the top or one of the top issues.
Polls also show that Republicans rate economic conditions as positive when there's a Republican in office, and negative when there's a Democrat in office regardless of the actual state of the economy. (The effect is much weaker among Democrats.)
This means that people care about the economy, but are terrible at knowing whether the economy is actually doing well or not, and certainly not educated enough to understand the impact that particular policies have on the economy.
The conclusion is that when there's a Democrat in office, Republicans are told by the Republican news media that the economy is bad; and when there's a Republican in office, Republicans are told by the Republican news media that the economy is good.
Find a conservative-leaning group on Facebook or reddit and see the resistance you get when you try to explain that Trump's tariffs are an inflationary tax on Americans. Political opinions have no bearing on reality, especially in the context of economic policy.
Doesn’t matter what they think about the economy at large in abstract terms; sure they may be right or wrong about that, but I definitely question all those who say people don’t know how they are supposed to feel about their individual economic condition. This is straight from central planning and social engineering BS. I would not underestimate human instinct.
> Doesn’t matter what they think about the economy at large in abstract terms;
It totally does. If they say what they care most about is the economy, but they interpret the economy through the lens of whether their political party is in power, then their actions will be radically different than a theoretically objective voter.
If voters say that their top concern is X, but they act like they are willing to compromise on X for the sake of Y, then we should interpret that as Y actually being their top priority.
I think you are misinterpreting what the voters mean by "economy." It refers to the incomes and expenses and economic opportunities of themselves and their family and friends. It does not mean macroeconomic metrics. I do not believe an individual no matter how dumb can be that easily fooled on those micro metrics; not in the short to medium term.
If your claim were true, the polls would show that Americans' view of the economy is broadly aligned and non-partisan: when inflation goes up, it goes up for everyone. But that's not what polls show. When people are asked about "the economy," the repeat what they've been told, not what they've experienced. Polls repeatedly show a strong partisan bias in evaluating the economy, inflation, and unemployment (as well as crime and other factors). Are you telling me that Republicans actually experience a different economy than Democrats, or should we just go with the obvious conclusion?
Yes, it might be very well be true that predominantly Republican population experience economy differently than the average Democrat population. They do different jobs, live in different geographic locations with varying density and urbanization and have different employment rates/seasonality. Inflation is not a single number and depending on what your life looks like may impact you differently.
P.S. nothing about your conclusion is obvious. Everything cited seems to be referring to one specific period (COVID/Biden era inflation) with no historical analysis, in which case the parties in charge had every attempt to portray their loss as "economy was good but perceived by idiots who didn't know better" so I'll take the analyses with a grain of salt from clearly partisan hacks.
Okay, so you're going to go with the classic "I will disregard all evidence that I don't like by making unsubstantiated claims of bias".
It's not hard to find research that supports conclusions based on polling from different time periods. [1]
Fact is most people don't have enough data points in their personal lives to make any kind of conclusion about the state of the economy. They haven't gotten a raise in two years and their cousin Dale got laid off last week, but no one would extrapolate that to mean the economy is bad.
> They do different jobs, live in different geographic locations with varying density and urbanization
Yes, but they don't typically all swap locations with each other when a new administration takes power. Nevertheless their opinions do swap.
> economy was good but perceived by idiots who didn't know better
> Dude, I literally linked to FEC contributions. "Unsubstantiated" my ass.
That's not evidence of bias, unless, you think that anyone who makes a political contribution is unable to perform accurate research or do their job. Would you casually dismiss the work of a cop or a professor just because they made a donation? If you find a flaw in the research method, let me know.
You're literally looking for any reason to justify your a priori decision to ignore research you don't like. That makes you the partisan hack, not the researcher.
Before Trump, a lot fewer. There is a well known phenomenon of GOP governors in deep blue states (e.g. Christie in NJ, Schwarzenegger in CA, Baker in MA, Scott in VT). This is a lot rarer in deep red states. There are a lot more red states than blue ones, but it's still harder (not impossible) to find recent democratic governors of those states. Senators are a bit more proportional, mind you.
Trump has sort of killed this phenomenon - partly because his brand has rubbed off on other Republicans, and partly because they have been running more extreme candidates even in blue states. Before Trump, though, it was not even close.
I don't know any Democrats who avoid voting Republican because they consider it a "sin." The Democrats I know avoid voting Republican because they think that Republican policies are bad for the country.
I also see Democrats perfectly happy to see Democrats justly convicted of crimes. The Republican approach is to defend members of your "team" at all costs, no matter how guilty they are. The cult of personality is much strong on the Republican side.
All Ds I know pre-Hamas invasion were pretty much the same and would never vote out of party lines, but they wouldn’t say it that way. Rs say it more explicitly. All Ds pretend to be “independent” but they will find a way to rationalize their D. Both bases are quite sticky. There are events like Hamas that suddenly make a change in specific subgroups.
The average American loves this Right up until they lose their farms, their distilleries, tourism-based jobs and everything else.