If this recount was really threatening Trump ' s election , I ' m sure God Emperor would have sent some preemptive tweets by now . <| sep |> No , not at all . It suffered a series of major bankeconomic failures early in the century and a major economic setback from Ricardian dogma in the late 1920 ' s , but that widespread damage was reversed through Keynesian measures . At least it was up until neoliberals restored Ricardian dogma beginning in the late 1960 ' s . We ' ve witnessed an increasing economic diminishment of most Americans since that time up until it culminated in the Financial Crisis . That ' s just And I don ' t disagree with you . But that same Keynsian thinking is in favour of free trade , and the 20 th century was the century of global trade . And it was largely the United States that was pushing for Free Trade , often times against the will of large commercial powers like the UK which wanted to monopolize many markets abroad . It was the neoliberalLibertarian crowd who championed Free Trade in the mid 1980 ' s . Claiming that it was anyone else is disingenuous . This is itself highly disingenuous . While it is true that Neoliberals and Libertarians championed Free Trade so did almost literally everyone else aside from Marxists and hardcore Protectionists . Including the exact same Neoclassical which includes Keynsian economics that you credit for recovering the economy during the middle part of the 20 th century . You are conflating free trade with neoliberalism , when free trade is just one part of neoliberalism , and a part that almost everyone agrees on . Neoliberalism was a lot more than just calling for free trade , including calling for massive deregulation and for government to play virtually no role in the economy . Those are the primary portions of neoliberalism that set it apart from Neoclassical economics , not free trade . I hope you ' re not conflating Marxist dogma with Progressive economic policy positions because that would be intellectually disingenuous . I ' m not advocating trade isolationism or mercantilism here either , so you can take those arguments off the table as well . I ' m not . I ' m saying that pretty much every economic model but Marxist ones are massively in favour of free trade , not just neoliberal ones . Where on earth did you get that idea ? Free Trade , as it exists today , has never been U . S . trade policy for most of the 20 th century . It was put in place during Ronald Reagan ' s second term in office i . e . , mid 1980 ' s . With the exception of the brief history surrounding SmootHawley , the U . S . maintained sensible and effective trade regulations and tariffs for the vast majority of the 20 th century , but that was NOT Free Trade . It was sensibly regulated trade . No it wasn ' t , free trade has been US economic policy since around the early portion of the 20 th century when America became , by and far , the largest producer in the world . Not only that , the US was consistently struggling diplomatically with other nations to open up their trade and enact free trade policies so much so that trade competition became a major concern for war between the US and the British empire during the 20 s and 30 s as the British Empire sought to consolidate it ' s SoI and keep it away from everexpanding US markets that it could not adequately compete with . It wasn ' t until the ~ 70 s or ~ 80 s when America started losing large chunk of its relative global production as less developed nations industrialized and . well , developed , that the US started opposing free trade policies . But before that the US was very much in favour of free trade because it was the one benefiting the most from exporting goods and global free trade . And that is still the case today , albeit for entirely different reasons . You are , again , conflating free trade with neoliberalism , when free trade is a crucial aspect of neoclassical economics as well , which you just praised for how good it was . Anecdotal arguments and unfounded theories do not impress Except no one is arguing about anecdotal evidence . And you can ' t on the one hand praise Keynsian economics and then call neoclassical economics unfounded theory . And peer reviewed academic research is not anecdotal evidence . anyone who has had to live with the widespread economic consequencesYou complain about anecdotal evidence and then halfway into that sentence you use anecdotal evidence yourself . Because that is precisely what it is , anecdotal evidence based on what people with very little to no economic training think happened compared to what can actually be demonstrated to happen in the peer reviewed literature . Your argument is no different than people blaming the immigrants for economic troubles during the 19 th century or any of the other hundreds of cases of people thinking that something is the case when actual economic modelling shows that the opposite is true . The economic tone deafness you ' re displaying here is why the American people are turning on the political and business establishment in this country . You can ' t on the one hand call for sensible economics and then on the other say that we should do what uneducated people think we should do instead of what the people who actually study and build economics say we should do . You are contradicting yourself . Do you think those widely accepted economic theories will prevent the American people from revolting against the establishment if your theories keep impoverishing them and diminishing their families ? Not a chance . Sure , but that doesn ' t mean fuck all with regards to what is actually reality . Because popular opinion is not evidence of facthood . What you are arguing is that we should go along with economic bunk because people like to believe that the economic bunk is true . It ' s no more the case that their being angry about makes their opinion any less false than global warming deniers ' makes global warming false or evolution deniers ' makes evolution false . That ' s not how fact works , and even a violent revolution in favour of the contrarian option doesn ' t change what the facts actually are .