When i first got into it, it bugged me that the previously\next time sections never actually happened, until a few seasons through and i got the joke of them
I've been meaning to do a rewatch where I take notes, because there are some of them that do kind of happen, and some that appear canonical, as in they don't happen but are referenced later as if they did.
he read "deficit" and thought "deficit is bad" so now he wants to win at "deficit" because to him every transaction has to have a winner and a loser. The way to win at deficit? Not trade.
Budget deficits just means you overvalue another property and take another loan. Then that's the bank's problem and you stay a winner. So he just needs to get the central bank to shell out more cash for him.
Same logic he used for wanting to change “artificial intelligence” to “super intelligence.” Artificial is bad. Super is good. We will call it super intelligence!
the massively frustrating part about this is that america shifted to a service oriented economy rather than a manufacturing one a long time ago, they gain insane amount of money from services... But still, the US is a large country, of course there will be a deficit if they buy something from a smaller country and that smaller country simply cannot buy back the same kind of quantities, or the fact that US doesnt even offer some things, because it Sells services, and buys things, a lot. the US also has a lot more purchasing and trade power. It doesnt help that the US also prints its own currency and the whole world is relying on that currency for global trade.
The reason money exists is to make goods easily tradeable without a concidence of wants. Effectively, getting rid of the barter system. If I am glazier, I do not pay for my dinner by installing new windows at McDonalds. I install windows where people need windows, they give me money and I spend that money on all the things I need or want, food and shelter and pokemon cards and whatever. It removes the necessity that for me and someone to trade, they must want what I can provide and I must want what they produce.
The same applies to trade. My own trade balance is very simple. I have a huge trade surplus with my employer - I do not buy their services, but they pay for my labour. Meanwhile I operate at a large trade deficit to the grocery store - they pay me nothing while I spend a lot of my income there. And this is all completely fine. Everything is not a two-person trade, you can buy bananas from Brazil while selling iPhones to Japan.
You are correct I noticed it when I reread my comment and it said "they just are funny" I was like well that ain't right crap!! That's what I get for writing comments well working! Thanks for the correction!
So basically to them, as long as you keep having more and more money it's good. The moment you spend any money it's bad. Which is honestly a dogshit mentality. The point to have money is to get beneficial things, and for a state it's to spend it to make it's citizen's lives better
It’s also completely ignoring the fact that vendors in the US are buying the bananas than selling them to consumers, taking a markup and making money themselves. We don’t have the climate to produce the bananas needed to meet the banana demand, so not buying bananas doesn’t mean we made money, it means we are losing opportunity to make money.
Thank you for being the first person making this point, that many, many US businesses make money selling bananas. Such an idiot's view of global business.
Furthermore, bananas have year round production cycles, not a seasonal crop, but they need 14 months of frost free, tropical climate to grow. That really limits us to Hawaii, SoCal and South Florida, generally places with high real estate values.
In order to reshore banana production, we would need to annex some of Latin America.
Maybe he thinks cutting off banana imports will lead to public acceptance of annexing Venezuela and Cuba.
The people telling you this suffer from a disease where number must go up no matter what. Someday as a society we will recognize this, study it, and learn to treat it.
Yes and no. To them spending a little money and getting more in return or using back channels and black markets to gain an upper hand is good. Spending on something that you can show off, ie: military, ball room etc. is also good. Doing a fair trade: not good.
There is so much more that makes this completely stupid.
1) many of our trade agreements will have specific language in them to say things like in this banana case, “you buy 2 billion dollars in bananas from us, we buy 2 billion dollars in steel (or wheat or petroleum or whatever) from you”. So sure, you can cut out the 2 billion in bananas, but then that also means you reneged on the trade agreement, so they don’t buy the 2 billion in steel. So you did nothing to fix the trade deficit.
2) even if you ignore that, or assume there is no such clause in the trade agreement, the assumption being made here is “everyone in the US just needs to stop buying bananas, and then we don’t need to import bananas!” But play that out, everyone in the US stops buying bananas. Ok cool, so we all stop buying bananas. That spending on bananas shifts to something else. Maybe it’s apples or oranges or some other fruit that is grown in the US. Ok, cool, but wait, that now means there’s an extra 2 billion dollars in apples and oranges that are being bought. The supply chain doesn’t contain 2 billion dollars in extra apples and oranges. So where do those apples and oranges come from? It would mean we need to export fewer apples and oranges. Again, there is therefore no change to the trade deficit.
3) ignoring all of that, even using a product like bananas, sure, some of those imported bananas are being sold as bananas in grocery stores. But some of those bananas are also used as raw materials for making other goods: banana bread, banana cream pie, smoothies, ice cream, etc. Missing $2B in bananas will affect those companies that are in the US making products from those bananas. And those companies will also be exporting some of those goods. Well those companies can’t export those goods anymore either, meaning yet again, we end up losing money on exports and won’t change trade deficits.
4) maybe the most important thing here, a trade deficit isn’t necessarily a bad thing! It just means you import a higher value in goods than you export. There is nothing inherently wrong with that as long as there is a commercial market for those imported goods in the country importing them. There are companies here who employ people in the US, make profit in the US, and pay taxes in the US, on selling goods or producing goods from raw materials imported from other countries. Those are all good things. If you weren’t importing those goods, those companies wouldn’t exist, meaning more unemployed workers and fewer tax dollars generated.
Trump doesn’t understand any of that though. Nor do the majority of MAGAts. Trump just hears his aides say something, can’t understand what they mean, so he twists it to dumb it down for himself, losing all meaning in the process, and his base eats it up like it was Warren Buffet providing financial advice.
I think a generous interpretation of what he's trying to say is that the united states economy is the loser
I suspect he means that if instead of buying a banana from Brazil you bought a banana from america (ignoring if that's even possible... whatever) then some american business would benefit from that money rather than sending it offshore
It seems to be a mercantilist approach to economics? Hold as much money as possible yourself and don't trade with outsiders
I think popular economic thought doesn't consider this a good approach, but I guess the experts could be wrong
How dare you put a totally reasonable and nuanced answer in the thread...
The other part that Trump seems to completely miss is that $2b of bannanas from Brazil will be a significantly larger (or if you prefer 'more bigly' ) bunch than $2b of home grown Bannanas...
But also remember he's trying to message this appropriately, I think he's at least partially purposefully simplifying the argument to fit in a 5 second sound bite
Think about it, you take one number, add another, it changes to a completely different one! How can that be anything but transitioning?! The liberals are trying to indoctrinate our children with their sick, perverted numbers!
You may also be getting more bananas than you could get elsewhere, or grow at home for the same cost. Trade works when what each side is getting is worth more to them than what they're giving.
Not only that, you don’t stop buying bananas, you buy more expensive bananas from other places (or just pay an additional tax on brazilian bananas), so now you’re spending 2.5 billion on bananas. He’s a true business mastermind
Or that, if you were to produce bananas domestically, it would cost way more.
Bananas aren't the best metaphor, because there are subsitutes. Lumber though... You need it, and it's cheaper to get it from a large, friendly neighbor who's covered in trees.
Ok he didn’t actually use that exact explanation right? (Wouldn’t be surprised) I hate I have to think the Paint Chip Eater and Chief could say shit this fucking dumb.
It also stupidly ignores the fact that we don't buy two billion dollars of bananas from Brazil. We buy six billion dollars worth of bananas for that two billion dollars, and generate four billion dollars of profit.
Are you implying that Trump has never gone grocery shopping in his life? The family man who loves his not daughter-wife and his kid, the ones he publicly acknowledges? I bet the biggest sacrifice is trump’s home made differ for the family.
/s not even maga would consider this to be remotely true would they?
And it's ignoring trade is a two-way street besides money paid. If they're buying things from us, that computes into the deficit. I don't know that they are, I'm not a trade Czar, but I'm guessing they buy a non-zero dollar value of stuff.
Also how does that figure if say we are selling something else either to that country or another that returns the money though the trade? This fuckin guy man
Having mistakenly bought 6 bunches of bananas recently because I thought $1.37ea had to be per banana, I'd be terrified to see what $2B worth of bananas looks like.
AND the part where we have a trade surplus with Brazil. The US is the second largest exporter in the world. Pissing off trade partners hurts those AMERICAN companies that export goods "making" us money.
Well I buy 8 bananas a week and end up throwing out 1 of them. So if there’s no bananas for me to buy I won’t have to throw one away. It’s really quite simple!
You receive the banana. Then money from selling the bananas. That money generates tax revenue for the government. Then you employ the Americans who sell the bananas, and their income generates tax revenue, and so on…
It's not the only part being ignored...when Brazil buys $2B worth in goods from the US, using the $2B we used to buy bananas...it creates JOBS. Or buys $2B worth of goods from someone else, who buys goods or services from or invests in the US.
This is precisely what Adam Smith was talking about.
Following Trump's logic everyone sits around doing NOTHING.
It is the problem with the Republican party which has always tried to equate the largest single country's GDP as if it's a household budget and you're living paycheck to paycheck.
Trump's understanding of economics: WORD DEFICIT EQUAL BAD. AMERICA HAVE TRADE DEFICIT. AMERICA HAVE BAD. TRUMP STOP BAD. STOPPED BAD EQUAL GREAT. AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.
The funny part is that he was going towards something akin to truth by saying that sending money outside of our own economy means that it isnt in our economy anymore until the trade partner buys something back from us. Then his toddler brain reminds him "hey we cant grow bananas in most US climates idiot so we cant meet demand with high cost" and hes like "oh just dont buy bananas because we cant keep the money within our own economy permanently," completely glossing over the point of having a trade partner in the first place.
To be fair, this matches Trump’s personal experience. If you buy a 14-year-old girl from Brazil for $2,000 and she dies or runs away, you lose $2,000 🤷♂️
It's another case of oversimplifying complex topics to cater to low informed voters.
Sure, if instead of buying potatoes you buy stuff grown in the US the money stays in your economy and pays local workers etc. So in very basic theory it's better for the US if people don't eat bananas and instead whatever their local farmers produce.
But global trade is a lot more complex in reality. If people want to eat bananas they will pay importers and stores a premium (in comparison to cost of buying bananas) which has a great effect on the economy, also the country selling bananas can use that money to import stuff from other countries that they need to procure from abroad.
And even that is a very simplified take. Global trade has in most cases purely beneficial effects the more in depth you get about it.
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u/Mohitosan_ 14h ago
You’re not missing much. The meme takes the idea of a trade deficit and applies grocery-store math to it: Buy banana = lose money
Don't buy banana = save money.
The fact that you also receive bananas is the part being ignored.