Summary

Gruber dissects a Bernie Sanders tweet attacking Tim Cook and Apple for 'unavoidable' price hikes, first exposing Sanders's factually wrong claim that Apple spent $310 billion on stock buybacks — the actual figure was $89 billion, per Apple's SEC filing. Gruber then pivots from the arithmetic error to a deeper logical inconsistency: Sanders previously argued Trump's tariffs 'will raise prices' as self-evident harm, but now demands Apple absorb rising RAM and SSD costs rather than pass them on. The logical framework Sanders applies to component costs depends entirely on whether he approves of the political cause behind those costs. Gruber draws an explicit parallel to Trump's demand that Walmart 'eat the tariffs,' calling both tweets the same species of economically illiterate populist posturing. The post concludes that ideologues on both sides substitute anger for coherent economic reasoning.

Key Insight

Sanders and Trump commit identical economic fallacies — demanding companies absorb costs when politically convenient while ignoring that the same logic applies universally — revealing ideology trumping coherence on both ends of the spectrum.

Spicy Quotes (click to share)

• 7

  Someone who doesn't consider the common sense of those numbers probably shouldn't be spouting off on anything related to economics.

• 6

  Even Karl Marx might excuse them for raising prices on their products this year, because they'd be in a $200 billion hole they needed to dig out of.

• 5

  But such concerns, obvious to anyone who's taken an Econ 101 course in college, seldom stop ideologues.

• 5

  What you cannot do is hold a philosophically consistent logically coherent view where your answer is contingent on what the 'something happens' is that caused component prices to rise.

• 8

  Sanders's tweet is better punctuated and capitalized, but it's the same illogic.

• 7

  Zero economic sense, 100 percent ideological wishful thinking. Yelling angrily doesn't make your argument any more compelling or coherent.

Tone

critical, sharp, contemptuous