Except it wasn't $12B to farmers. Farmers have been squeezed by monopolies on both the supplier (seed, equipment, etc) side AND the buyer side (there is often only a single buyer of grain in an area, for example) to the point that most large scale American farms are struggling to make any profit, and service their sizeable debts. The $12B will immediately be transferred to these monopolies, it will not go to farmers.

you probably don't go all in, but try to find real assets that are not _too_ strongly correlated and are likely to have durable long term value. The most compelling answers I've heard are things like desirable real estate, commodities, or futures/contracts like water rights. Even then its not no equities, just a much lower allocation to minimize down side while still capturing some of the exuberant growth

Gold performed well in the 1970s - 1980s stagflation. That's why gold has gone up so much in the last few years - because people expect stagflation.

Real estate preserved value. However, I'm not sure that it will this time because population growth is not as strong as before.

Invest outside the US or bet on de-dollarisation (e.g. central banks everywhere buying gold). Just make sure you're not left holding dollars.

Aswath Damodaran (https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/) from Stern School of Business at NYU says; 'Something bad is coming': Aswath Damodaran is ditching diversification, eyeing hard assets - https://www.businesstoday.in/markets/stocks/story/something-...

Also see books/papers/etc. under the "Writing" section of his webpage for insights.

Maybe gold? Crypto? Other economies like China or India?

I think, from an economic standpoint, there’s plenty of non-democratic countries that do this all the time and some of them do quite well. It’s more the end of an Experiment than the start of one.

>Trump's declaring that he'll be involved with deciding who WB-Discovery-HBO can be sold to.

This needs to be developed into a The Apprentice-style show where aspirants truckle before the king as they make their pitches.

Pretty much any metric of global economic activity is at All time high.

I know this isn't your point, but probably everyone.

Political freedom is usually prized by "brainy immigrants" - especially those who were likely to travel to the USA.

The problem isn't just the $100,000 fee (not insignificant) but the risks associated with being an immigrant with restricted political freedom in an increasingly authoritarian nation[1].

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-orders...

I'm not through the article but reached that point - I believe the author may be alluding to ICE and fear of persecution rather than changes to H1B or other visas.

I may be incorrect but that was my impression in part because no one, in my experience, takes seriously the premise that H1B is a "brainy immigrant" visa

Where does it say it’s about the visa fees?

The US became less attractive for becoming an authoritarian state that is a threat to its own people because of people like RFK Jr. or ICE raids based on racial profiles.

The H-1B Visa Program and Its Impact on the U.S. Economy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45309740