r/WallStreetbetsELITE 8d ago

MEME Didn't see this coming

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u/ZaphodsOtherHead 8d ago

You guys think this trade war shit is bad (it is), wait until the long-term consequences of destroying America's research institutions starts being felt.

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u/ImaginationNo1928 8d ago edited 8d ago

100%. And the social support systems for the vulnerable that are vanishing.

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u/ZaphodsOtherHead 8d ago

Yeah, letting people slip through the cracks is a huge drain on productivity. You can claw that back eventually though if you change your mind later (just start funding those systems again). The damage to America's research institutions might very well be irreversible though. There's a network effect with premier research institutions and you can't overcome it even with huge investment. Look at Germany in the 1930s. They had the best research institutions in the world. Then the Nazis destroyed them and Germany has never recovered that excellence. We're seeing *historical, irreversible* damage to the long-term American economy right now. The American economy is built on R&D, and once that edge is gone, it's gone forever.

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u/ImaginationNo1928 8d ago

True. I hope midterm elections add some friction to the downfall and in 2028 we cut the losses and start healing asap and allies acknowledge that the majority of the US was betrayed and welcome us back. That’s a lot of wishful thinking at this point. Also agree the research edge is disappearing fast.

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u/alexgduarte 8d ago

Majority of your allies did that after 2020. We were willing to let whatever happened in 2016 be just a blip. However, you voted for him again, in an even more convincing way, given he won the popular vote as well. So no, we won’t accept you back as if nothing happened. EU approved a $800B defence investment plan with 0 going to the US. I’m sure Lockheed Martin will be happy with that. F-35 will be sold less and less and I imagine we won’t even touch the F-47. Gg 🙃

PS: We not touching F-47 means it will be a super expensive plane and is actually one of the reasons why the best fighter jet ever made — the F-22 — became reduced to about 200 units — no economy of scale, ergo, too expensive.

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u/ImaginationNo1928 7d ago edited 7d ago

I hear you. And I would probably do the same if I was a European. But one thing I’m sure of is that even Trump voters did not vote for him betraying his allies and enforcing tariffs like this. I haven’t seen stats on Trump buyers remorse but anecdotally and as a wild ass guess I think at least half of his voters have or soon will regret their vote. This level of madness was not what we as a country voted for or support, and I believe something sinister that we don’t know exactly what it is at play here. So although it was stupid to vote a felon into the office, I don’t think people voted for this Trump 2.0 at least when it comes to foreign policy and economy.

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u/Fractal_loop 7d ago

Trump voters wanted this and got it.

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u/ImaginationNo1928 7d ago

Not all of them for sure. I personally know a few who have freaked out over his Canada/Greenland stance and tariffs. And online you can see people starting to question what’s going on. And yes there are Trump voters out there that will cheer him on all the way head on to the Darwinian wall.

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u/DaSemicolon 5d ago

Maybe they should have trusted the media and other people’s judgements instead of whatever/whoever they did trust

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u/Suavecore_ 7d ago

Did you talk to them the next day about the same topic after they watched Fox news though?

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u/itrogash 5d ago

All I've seen from Trump voters say about these events is that it "ruins their optics" and "gives left ammunition". They don't disapprove of Trump's actions, just worry that it makes them look bad. And it will definitely not dissuade them from voting for him again.

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u/Bernkastel96 7d ago

And at the end of the day, all of them will vote him for a third term so all of their posturing or dislike right now doesn't mean anything

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u/Robj2 6d ago

Look at the farmers who got screwed by tariffs in the Cheeto's first term. They voted for him again and he's already screwed them again.

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u/MNLyrec 7d ago

Yeah that’s the problem. I would reluctantly accept them if they started showing genuine remorse and changed their voting habits. Thank God i got out of my state when i did; I’m afraid i wouldn’t have had the backbone or the moral compass to change if i stayed. But like…. they don’t. They’ll just vote for him again. When he passes an eo that lets him run for a third term.

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u/NeedNameGenerator 7d ago

I don't know how it is in the real world, but I wouldn't take reddit as a good barometer of how things really are. The true test are all special elections and such, where we see how people actually vote.

Reddit, Twitter et al are astroturfed to hell and back by literally every entity known to man. Countries, institutions, special interests, corporations...

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u/puzzlingphoenix 5d ago

Many are too stupid and ignorant to even read the bills flying right now. I know many people who will tell you that Trump was giving them tax cuts just because that’s what Trump said himself. If I ask them to view the tax plan which gives tax cuts to the rich and RAISES their taxes, they will refuse to look or tell me “well that’s not what Trump said” or any sort of mental gymnastics to decide that the official writing is not reality. So many of these people are very deluded, or unintelligent and lost. As much as their ignorance is dangerous and should not be ignored, it’s not true to say that all of these people voted for these things because frankly they still do not believe it to be true in the first place.

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u/FifeDog43 5d ago

I promise you less than 1% of Trump voters regret their vote. Most of those people were affected in some direct way, such as losing a federal job or having their husband deported to a concentration camp in El Salvador. Even then lots of them don't regret their vote. We're talking about the dumbest, most entitled, most hateful, and most brainwashed population of idiots on earth.

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u/ImaginationNo1928 5d ago

Yeah the lack of information or intellect is real. I have extended family who voted for Trump and were supporting tariffs to make it “fair” and after I poked I realized they didn’t know how tariffs work and thought for example China or Canada will pay the tariffs 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

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u/PeachScary413 7d ago

He literally said that he was gonna introduce tariffs on day one?

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u/ImaginationNo1928 7d ago

Yeah, but he didn’t talk about tariffs or the Canada/Greenland bs before the elections day.

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u/PiersPlays 7d ago

Yes he talked about tarrifs but no he didn't talk about tarrifs?

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u/ImaginationNo1928 7d ago

He didn’t talk about tariffs till after people voted for him. Why is this so hard to understand?

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u/Robj2 6d ago

What's sinister is that we re-elected, not a toddler but an Eric Cartman who has lost what little mental capacity he had left in 2016 and now is out to extort and get revenge and whose hero is............Hitler.
We (the US) deserve everything we get. And like Mencken said, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

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u/ImaginationNo1928 6d ago

Mostly agree. What I was trying to highlight is that even (a good chunk of) Trump supporters are surprised by the outcome. It was a weird election with Biden being virtually brain dead, Trump’s assassination attempt reeling up conspiracy theorists more, Musk doubling down with his base and $, global inflation impacting US which is hard to explain for avg trumpster, southern border madness and Harris saying she would not change one thing from Biden’s time, Russia aka Trump aka Fox misinformation propaganda getting better and better etc etc. But at a grand scale yeah, 100% as a nation we fucked up. This is now the Darwin Effect in play.

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u/Robj2 6d ago

Yeah.

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u/alexgduarte 4d ago

Trump voters wanted this. If not, where the fuck are they protesting? Trump voters were warned that every ally was fearing a Trump presidency, Clinton said in 2016 Putin would eat him for breakfast. Harris literally told he’d sell off Ukraine. But those fuckers sure wanted to oWn tHe LiBs. Hope it was worth it

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u/Internal_Prompt_ 7d ago

It’s hard to come back from electing a nazi twice

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u/alexgduarte 4d ago

Yeah. Americans are dumb as fuck. Literally you had generals, which tend to be hard conservatives, telling “pls don’t vote for him he’s a fucking fascist and we stopped him in his first term but we can’t do nothing for his second because he’ll just get his people onboard”

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u/atanoxian 7d ago

Yeah. We just showed you all we're unreliable, unstable, and unfit to address the problems that crop up at home, which in this case, is the rise of the facist MAGA party. There is no going back to what was after this. We won't be feeling the effects of all our allies pulling American made goods from the shelves right now, but we will soon. It's insane to witness such a fast free-fall from grace, we're no longer the super power we were 6 months ago. Even then, I think that's debatable. MAGA should have been addressed back in 2012 when the FBI labeled alt-right groups as a domestic threat with the potential to destroy America from the inside.

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u/alexgduarte 4d ago

Yap :/ I’m actually sad. I’ve never seen this, don’t think it has ever happened this suddenly. Furthermore, with all the cuts in R&D, the US will lose its tech advantage… what an own goal Soviet Union collapsed because they were broke, the US is going to collapse because Kamala is a woman of colour. Wow

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u/Nice-Analysis8044 8d ago

I've got this theory that the only way rest-of-world will forgive the United States for this is if there emerges conclusive evidence that Musk/Trump won through tampering with election machines, but I haven't run that theory by anyone else yet

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u/queso_dog 8d ago

I think we need the entire Super Smash Bros. Ultimate roster to show up and do their thing before we should even discuss forgiveness.

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u/Artistic-Monitor-211 7d ago

I still think that wouldnt repair any of the damage done to global relations. I think the only way we see them restored to the state they were before Trump is if we pass legislature that actually limits what the president can do before they need to run it by congress. That way 1 person can't just decided to swap sides again

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u/NeedNameGenerator 7d ago

But it's not just Trump. He's being enabled by the entire Republican Congress, plus the spineless corporate Democrats.

The US is cooked on global relations and China is going to fill in that hole.

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u/alexgduarte 4d ago

China hit jackpot, Trump handed them a big path towards topping the US.

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u/alexgduarte 4d ago

Or you actually go out in numbers and protest, which, so far, you haven’t. Literally you can go on strike and paralyse the country. ICE can ignore his illegal orders, etc. no one is doing shit

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u/MNLyrec 7d ago

I don’t blame you guys at all but i do hope that some places offer sanctuary to the US citizens when those bridge burns are finalized… cuz like us queer folx are eating major sand here

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u/alexgduarte 4d ago

LGBTQ+, minorities, anyone Trump targets will always find an ally in us. Same way we’ve accepted Russians that fled Putin

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u/routinemage 7d ago

There is evidence that suggests that the last election was not fair, though it is difficult to conclusively say that the election was rigged.

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u/PiersPlays 7d ago

The biggest clue is that Trump is happily eating shit from Elon. The only way that happens is if he's convinced Elon can take away his Presidency.

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u/Heebmeat 7d ago

So if no one buys American jets what happens when they just get sold to Russia ?

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u/alexgduarte 4d ago

As if Russia could afford them

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u/Reld720 8d ago

The Democrats are going to run a historically bad midterm campaign bro.

They don't like doing their jobs at the best of times. Imagine what they'll do when they're the only viable option.

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u/unread1701 7d ago

China already spends more than America on research.

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u/PeachScary413 7d ago

Lmao this is the second time you voted in Captain Cheeto, and he told you well in advance what he was gonna do...

The trust is Joever and everyone is looking around for alternatives.

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u/Minimum_Principle_63 7d ago

Mighty bold of you to believe we are having elections after the midterms.

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u/ImaginationNo1928 7d ago

True and wishful thinking

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u/ConfidentPilot1729 7d ago

Are supply chains are going to disappear. Once this are gone, it will be extremely hard to get back.

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u/LegOfLamb89 8d ago

Also over 5k German scientists went to America and Russia. The last of that generation is has been gone from the work force for at least 20 years, and we're definitely feeling the effects 

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u/Prophet_of_Fire 8d ago

But but but the TRANS(genic) mice! We don't need to research anything with TRANS in it. Next on the chopping block is TRANSport and TRANS-fats

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u/qts34643 7d ago

Yeah, don't forget how the Russians were once leading in research as well.

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u/BleednHeartCapitlist 7d ago

If research project are interrupted midway through many will have to be restarted … some projects have been going for 10-15 years. You can’t get that time back and the results are ruined. Not only are the not getting funded but alllllllll the money spent before will be completely wasted

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u/Psilocybin-Cubensis 7d ago

Don’t forget brain drain as well. The educated usually don’t prefer fascism over democracy.

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u/eir_skuld 7d ago

lots and lots of crime

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u/stenlis 7d ago

And former allies weaning off of American weapons systems in the coming decades.

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u/ThrowRA-James 7d ago

And when people have nothing they have nothing to lose. Do they think desperate people won’t turn to crime? Who are they going to go after? Rich people.

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u/Eagle-Enthusiast 7d ago

It is critical to understand that our already poor social structures are largely to blame for our ridiculous levels of gun violence compared to any other country. People don’t kill each other when they live in societies that care more about each other and want to take care of each other.

As we all know, that is not the American Way.

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u/Dnoxl 7d ago

Eventually there will be alot less people dependent on it (once they die due to being neglected by the government responsible for them)

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u/grungegoth 8d ago

And education replaced by indoctrination

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u/DreadingAnt 7d ago

This...has been going on around 3 decades now. Creationism being taught first? I mean, what is this 1643?

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u/grungegoth 7d ago

Seems to be gaining speed though.

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u/DreadingAnt 6d ago

Not really, not that much has changed. The problem is, the people learning 30 years ago are stupid adults now, and there's too many of them.

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u/UrsusRenata 7d ago

Honestly, Indoctrination isn’t new to America.

Which robber-baron-politician was it who said education should be just good enough to send us to factories and to war? We’ve all been saying the pledge of allegiance in school, singing the national anthem at sports, displaying our aesthetically ugly flags on our homes and schools, listening to Lee Greenwood during the July 4th fireworks, etc.

We just happened to have a decade or two where we thought we humans had progressed out of it.

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u/froginbog 7d ago

What we’re seeing now is new. Taking books out of schools, eliminating exhibits at the Smithsonian …

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u/10000Didgeridoos 7d ago

It's less to me this (schools teaching right wing crazy bullshit), as it is that the axis of Fox News/AM talk radio evolved to now also social media and podcasts to have a 24/7 megaphone of bullshit that these idiots think is gospel and mainline it all day, every day.

Schools have limited time and reach to get misinformation into kids heads, but all of the above is available to all ages at all hours of the day.

They have convinced Trumptards that any media source with doesn't unequivocally say EVERY SINGLE THING REPUBLICANS AND TRUMP DO IS THE BEST PERFECT THING is therefore "liberal biased". You could have a news website that sucks Trump's dick on every single other thing, but if you post one article saying tariffs are bad, you are now automatically the radical woke DEI left or whatever buzzword they've moved onto is.

Because it's a cult.

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u/random-lurker-456 8d ago

That's just par for the course in their "Butterfly Revolution" - they are not tearing down the economy they are tearing down entire western civilization. They are systematically pushing America into isolation from allies and neighbors so they can establish a fascist state without the world helping the resistance.

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u/haminthefryingpan 8d ago

Also long term effects of cutting public education to the bone

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u/SwordfishOk504 8d ago

America will never recover from Trump. This is the beginning of the end.

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u/abigfatape 8d ago

this is genuinely getting to the point of america falling apart, they've already hit the nazi gestapo point of the evolution that's 3 steps away from world war

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u/Virtual_Knee_4905 8d ago

I mean, the education system being on the back burner for decades got him voted in so....

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u/ZaphodsOtherHead 8d ago

That's correct and important, but I want to emphasize that I'm not just talking about education. Yes, universities provide education, but I'm talking about research. The US has been succesful to a large extent because it attracts people who are already educated to do research there. It has the best research institutions in the world. That will not last at this rate, because the republicans are quickly destroying them.

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u/Virtual_Knee_4905 7d ago

100% agree. I'm pointing out that it's not a bug, but a feature for the people who want to strip our countries education.

Feels like we are fast tracking the dark ages.

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u/Available_Ad4135 8d ago

Wait for the actual wars.

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u/promonalg 8d ago

It has already started and picking up steam... Boycotting US products from various countries and the need for higher op approval to even send email to Canadian research partners are already causing stuff to be delayed..

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u/DarshanaBaishya 8d ago

I'm Asian, I wanted to go to America this year for doing research in evolutionary biology (got accepted into a lot of good universities too) but after seeing the condition of the country, I'm ready to sacrifice my dream. I'd rather do research in my own country or somewhere else, but never America.

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u/Surprise_Creative 7d ago edited 7d ago

And alienating literally all your dear allies at the same time, in a world that is - in case you didn't know - already very hateful towards Americans.

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u/Philip_Raven 7d ago

it will actually be very good in the future because dumber and ignorant population is easier to manipulate and fear monger.

you start with cutting education budgets to lower the number of future smart people, and followup with canceling research institutions to also get rid of the smart people already existing by forcing them to move due to the "brain drain" that you've caused.

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u/saig22 7d ago

Big US companies are usually well implanted in the EU, I believe they'll easily relocate most of their R&D facilities there and hire US scientists who fled the US. So the US economy had a path to recover, for the public research however it will be harder. However, while the US is slowing down, China is blasting forward so there's that. They're already leading the batteries, EV, and Solar Panels market (probably many more I don't know about). They're catching up on AI, they're making some impressive smartphones, they're the best at drones too. If they stop with the CCP dictatorship and become a democracy, they'll easily become the new world leaders.

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u/Japparbyn 7d ago

There is always a bull market somewhere 🚀 Porch Group CRUSHES Earnings & Soars 70%+! What’s Fueling This Massive Rally? stop being so bearish

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u/Quintevion 7d ago

Wait until the US annexes Greenland and gets blocked like Russia

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u/Quentin__Tarantulino 7d ago

Surely China is also destroying its research institutions and not building more…right?

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u/gonzo_1971 7d ago

Not just this, but the erosion of the America's soft power around the world will have massive consequences for decades. We are threatening our neighbors and long time allies seemingly for no actual reason. America's ability to guarantee protection due to our massive military and our diplomatic endeavors were a big factor in trade and our long time allies will no longer trust America to uphold those guarantees since we can just elect some fucking dip shit every four years who will fuck It all up.

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u/Wulfsmagic 7d ago

Also the reducing of population due to the defunding of health organizations like WHO and the CDC.

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u/BleednHeartCapitlist 7d ago

If research project are interrupted midway through many will have to be restarted … some projects have been going for 10-15 years. You can’t get that time back and the results are ruined. Not only are the not getting funded but alllllllll the money spent before will be completely wasted

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u/10000Didgeridoos 7d ago

And military equipment sales for the massive "defense" industry here.

All this GDP produced from selling weapons, tanks, planes, etc. to every other Western ally is not going to come back because they can never trust the US won't just possibly again elect another idiot who starts nerfing it or disabling it as leverage. They aren't going to buy F35s reliant on US companies for repairs and upkeep, they will buy European next gen planes instead.

and the cutting edge researchers developing money making products here won't come back, knowing they are just 4 years away from the idiotic and brainwashed US public electing another guy who will demonize them and chase them out as soon as he takes power.

And these fucking idiots don't get this. They think they can just bully the world and the domestic public into getting whatever they want, with zero consequences because in their minds it's all so great no one will ever say no and has no other options. When the reality is, it will result in America turning into the husk of Pride Rock after Scar took it over and chased off all the other animals.

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u/wonder_bear 7d ago

I bet companies that do medical research are tripling down on their R&D now. Seems like an easy way to make a lot of money in the near future with all these institutional cuts.

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u/Downdownbytheriver 7d ago

Most of the good stuff came from military research like DARPA, but most of the scientists who work at DARPA trained and got their PhDs in American academic research institutes.

I’m hopeful that the lag phase will be long and course correctable during the next presidential terms ahead.

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u/StoxAway 7d ago

This is so true. The last 20 years of shit stems from Reaganomics, we're gonna be repeating that but with compound interest.

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u/Positive_Chip6198 7d ago

Also reversing the policies that made the us so effective at brain-draining other countries, the reverse is going to happen now.

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u/HuntingTools 7d ago

destroy research, cause massive irreplaceable brain drain

destroy tourism by disappearing international students for speech, going through people's phones for wrongthink at TSA, etc, cause countries to issue travel warnings

destroy tourist sites by defunding and selling off the national parks

kill all the social support programs, causing massive productivity loss from the working class

destroy US dollar hegemony by starting trade wars with every single ally, while befriending international pariahs

destroy US military hegemony by alienating all allies and limiting our force projection, causing allies to stop buying from our MIC for fear of sabotage

I see nothing that would cause my stocks to lose value here

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u/hopbow 7d ago

I'm excited to see how the gutting of anti malaria programs will impact us

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u/AndrewSouthern729 6d ago

Yeah this is going to be catastrophic and for absolutely no reason.

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u/strawfire71 6d ago

Or the fact the rest of the world will never trust the US to elect another narcissistic idiot.

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u/jennyfromthedocks 6d ago

The impending brain drain

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u/Potential_Status_728 5d ago

I thought you guys would learn after Reagan, lmao

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u/SignoreBanana 5d ago

Or gutting its middle class entirely (notably, the financial engine of the country)

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u/anjowoq 5d ago

And replacing junior software engineers with AI despite AI not being up to the task. You'll have a generation without real world experience and everyone else will pass up Silicon Valley and the like.

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u/andy897221 4d ago

This probably come from a non-academia, do you know how toxic the workplace of academia is? Glad someone is finally doing something.

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u/chestofpoop 4d ago

Fuck man. Been thinking this all day. Like a dying business selling a product that's been replaced and not thinking to put money into developing/innovation. It's been the big oil model all along.