No one hates the “both sides” argument by itself… they hate lazy arguments. This one is resignation wrapped in pseudo-neutrality. Post-WWII America hit 106%, Japan peaked over 260% … neither had runaway inflation. Policy choices and productive investment matter far more than arbitrary debt thresholds. Reducing GDP growth entirely to energy production is wrong. Since 1990, U.S. energy use per GDP dollar dropped 60% while the economy grew. Productivity gains, innovation, and structural shifts toward services drive modern growth. And of course, energy is important for tomorrow, but we are abandoning the future of energy technology to China. Healthcare reform doesn’t require mass layoffs. Germany and France spend 40–50% less per capita while covering everyone … by eliminating waste and negotiating prices, not cutting workers. Universal coverage actually requires more healthcare workers. If you mean cutting administrators wastes, that’s often a goal of reform. “No amount of policies will fix this” is an escape hatch. If debt is your biggest concern, the 1990s proved federal budgets can be balanced through policy. We’ve seen it work. Historically, presidents avoid direct market manipulation. Now we’re seeing massive tariffs with selective political relief … a shock to global systems. Past experiments like Nixon’s wage freezes or Trump’s earlier tariffs pale compared to this scope and timing. This is the most sweeping real-time experiment in global market manipulation ever attempted … hitting multiple economies while supply chains remain fragile from COVID. If executed perfectly, maybe damage stays contained. If not, stagflation could be mild compared to what’s coming. We survived one black swan inflation event with COVID. Now we're creating another deliberately. That's not "both sides failing" … it's one person's policy choice creating measurable risk while you use the both-sides argument to defend it.
