It’s a Shame We Have to Betray Our Allies, Starve the Poor, Halt Scientific Progress, Destroy the Environment, and Eliminate the Freedoms Enshrined in the Bill of Rights, but at Least My Investment Portfolio Is Also Tanking

“Mr. Trump has acknowledged, despite all his confident campaign predictions that ‘we are going to boom like we have never boomed before,’ that the United States may be headed into a recession, fueled by his economic agenda.” — New York Times. March 13, 2025

Listen, I’d love it if we could create a society that worked perfectly for everyone, but that’s not the reality we live in. In real life, you have to make choices—choices that lead to terrible outcomes for everyone.

I’m not anti-immigration. You think I relish the sight of families torn apart, my neighbors terrified to show up for work or send their kids to school for fear of an ICE raid? If I could wave a magic wand and no one would be deported, I’d do it in a heartbeat. But when I see the precipitous downward dive the stock market is taking, I know all that pain and suffering was worth it.

I don’t want trans people to have their dignity assaulted and their very existence called into question. Furthermore, it’s horrible to imply that people of color and women are the incompetent causes of every social problem. But when I go to the grocery store and pay just as much—often more!—than I did before the intensification of these attacks, by golly, I see the purpose of it all.

It’s heartbreaking to see the elimination of funding that was being used to feed hungry kids. And the disease-curing medical research we used to do! We can all agree: It would be way better if we funded such initiatives. But when I consider how much more quickly the prospect of affording a home during my lifetime has been vanishing, I feel a lot better about the uncured diseases and the dying children.

And sure, we’d all like common-sense limits put on corporations that harm the environment. I mean, drinking water that doesn’t poison me and breathing air that doesn’t launch me immediately into a fit of asthmatic coughs are two of my favorite things. But when I log in to my sinking 401(k) and realize I’ll have to delay my retirement an additional decade or so, it reminds me not to bother worrying about a future that might not even happen.

Look, it doesn’t feel great to abandon reasonable diplomacy and instead maximize our national embarrassment with each new short-sighted foreign-policy move. No one wants to cozy up to dictators, blame invaded countries for having been invaded, or launch trade wars on previously mutually beneficial allies. But when I consider that I’ll also be paying higher taxes next year, I stuff my shame deep down into a little box and forget about it. (It’s an empty box that used to hold my money.)

In an ideal world, citizens would enjoy freedom of speech. I don’t love it when people are fired or imprisoned for expressing opinions contrary to the administration’s. But then I remind myself: Global markets are also in freefall, so it’s, like, okay. Deep breath. This wasn’t all for nothing.

The last few months have been a moral catastrophe. At least there’s no economic upside.