What Will Go Wrong Hardest, Fastest?

It's hard to keep track of the firehose of sewage the Trump administration has already started pumping out in its first few days. From civil rights to cybersecurity, the administration has been taking a wrecking ball to the American governmental project, with consequences that will likely reverberate for years, if not decades.

But I don't want to wait that long. I'm curious: which of Trump's endeavors are likely to blow up hardest, fastest, in a way that is noticeable to the broader public?

For example, take the cancellation of scheduled funding meetings at the National Institute of Health. This is a terrible thing, that will needlessly obstruct critical medical research. But while it's certainly noticeable to the doctors and scientists on the inside, the public impact of it won't be felt for a long time. It's not like there's a cancer cure that was scheduled to come out tomorrow that now is being shelved.

Ditto Pete Hegseth likely getting confirmed as Secretary of Defense. It is very bad that an alcoholic sexual predator is overseeing America's military, but we're not going to lose Buffalo to a Canadian invasion in the short-term. The fallout -- in terms of military readiness, efficiency, professionalism, and so on -- will occur over a longer timescale.

By contrast, the myriad governmental hiring freezes Trump has announced do seem to be breaking out of containment, insofar as they are kneecapping many people who in many cases were all set to move long distances to start a new job, only to have it abruptly pulled out from under them. I'm already seeing a few "leopards ate my face" posts by Trump supporters who are sure that Trump couldn't possibly have meant to do exactly what he said he was going to do.

Tariffs are another good candidate for something that will immediately, dramatically, and noticeably impact American pocketbooks -- especially if they set off another bout of inflation.

But maybe there's something else that will explode harder, faster, and stronger than I anticipate. I would say I can't wait to find out, but I suspect my preferences will have little to say on the matter.

Raises and Inflation

I'm embarrassed to admit that it was alarmingly late in life that I realized that part of the reason workers get (and expect) raises each year is to account for inflation.

In my head, for most of my life, I associated a raise solely with being rewarded for performance and/or seniority. As you advance in your career, you (hopefully) become more effective, take on more responsibilities, develop additional competencies, etc.. That makes you more valuable to your employer, and so in turn, you get more money. It would of course be possible that in bad economic times one's employer might not have the money to give you a raise. But the raise you do get is meant to be an advancement -- it improves you vis-a-vis your position in the year before. By the end of my career, assuming I stay on the same professional arc I'm on now, I should be making more money than at the start of it.

This is one function of a raise. But because of inflation, it's not the only or even initial function. At the outset, a raise is not about advancing you economically compared to the prior year, it's about maintaining parity. Not getting a raise isn't career stagnation, it's actively losing money. If throughout your career you only get a raise equivalent to that year's inflation rate, you've basically never gotten a raise at all.

I'm not realizing anything that isn't obvious. That said, it's been noted that the view that raises are earned based on merit while inflation is imposed is actually a pretty common one amongst American workers, so I wasn't entirely alone on it as an unreflective intuition. The mental uncoupling of wage growth from inflation, in turn, probably causes all manner of misshapen beliefs about the state of the economy and what constitutes reasonable wage growth -- particularly if one (rightly!) thinks that one's real, not just nominal, salary should increase as one gains experience and seniority.

Fear of a Good Economy

The following is one of the posts where I don't actually know anything about the subject matter, but I'm going to exercise my God-given right as an internet-denizen to opine anyway.

The Fed raised interest rates again yesterday, putting rates at their highest level in decades. It also left the door open for yet another hike later in the year. The rationale is that there is a continued need to combat inflation. But inflation rates are down significantly. The Fed's stated inflation target of 2% would be quite low by historical standards -- not absurdly low, but well below average. And on the whole, it feels like we were already at mission accomplished.

So why did we need another rate hike? I can't help but feel as if the Fed's rate decisions aren't directly about inflation, but about fear that the economy is running better than expected. Now to be clear, I don't mean this in some sort of conspiratorial "the rabble are getting too much of the pie and as guardians of capital we can't have that" sort of way. Rather, it seems as if the Fed simply won't believe it's truly gotten inflation under control unless we see significant slackening of economic growth. Inflation has been lowered, but the Fed doesn't trust the resilience of that accomplishment unless and until there's an economic downturn to "confirm" the effect.

It doesn't strike me as a good thing that "the economy is still purring along" gets translated as "whelp, better crank those rates higher." Even if the Fed eventually starts believing its own lyin' eyes on inflation, the lagging effects of potentially gratuitous rate hates could end up doing significant unnecessary damage a year from now. That would be very much not good, for a host of reasons (not the least of which being "badly timed economic slide + likely fascist on the ballot" has not augured well for democracy, historically speaking).

But again -- I actually don't know anything about this, so this is me talking completely out of my own behind. Buyer beware.