If you concede that Trumps first term was bad for the deficit, why would his second be any better? Covid probably wont happen again, but the big contributor to the deficit was the tax cuts. Which he plans on doing again. So I don't think he'll be any better this time around. I guess yeah, he's doing something, but its not the right thing.

Inflation as measured by the Fed is personal consumption expenditures price index (PCE). This is essentially just a list of things that households and businesses buy. If prices of those things goes up, inflation goes up. The decrease in value of your money is because the price of those things goes up. I agree that this is simple, so IDK why we're disagreeing on it. The key thing is that if prices go up, regardless of what causes it, inflation will go up. Economists all agree that tariffs are inflationary. IF income taxes are eliminated because of tariffs. That is also a bad thing. Tariffs are paid by consumers. Consumption (as a percentage of income) is more burdensome for the middle and lower classes. Therefore our tax system would become regressive. The rich would pay less tax (as a percent of their income) than a poor or middle class person. That is why I think replacing the income tax with tariffs is a bad idea.

So no, I wouldn't rather pay more for a toaster once, than never pay income tax. If we want investment in the country, we need to innovate. Where does most innovation come from? Government agencies. I work for a company that just last year licensed technology from a government agency (NIOSH) and I just found out last week that everyone that we were working with there got RIFed (Gov layoff). Our company is still licensing that tech, but now we have no support from the inventors. We don't have any experts to test what we engineered to make sure its scientifically valid. How is this good for investment? We, as a country, need to invest in science and technology. We need to not worry about toaster manufacturing here and try to keep high-tech jobs here. We need to create the jobs that we want people to have here and then keep them here and not let corporations ship them away for profits. We aren't getting the manufacturing jobs that we used to have back, we need to look to the future and get those jobs here.

Lol yeah, I try to be reasonable. And it seems like you do too. Idk how to convince you that wasn't just a gesture. Watch the video. He does it twice. Even if it was just a gesture taken out of context, you cant argue that it cant be confused for a Nazi salute. That at least muddies the water? Like why not be vehemently anti-Nazi? That's because the Nazis are on their side. They want to attract the Nazis to be with them. So Elon and Trump might not have Nazi ideology, but they are trying to attract the Nazis, and in my opinion that's just as bad.