Fuck the economy. Make my goddamn grocery bill go down. Make the fucking rent go down. I’m so sick of the rich dictating every aspect of my life while I barely get by all so they can tell me “everything’s great!”
The economy is booming because of all the money corporations are charging you for your food and rent.
Oh I’m aware.
Why do you want to hurt the economy…
Why wouldn’t you?
My job is laying off people every 6-12 months despite having immense reserves of wealth. Remind me how great the economy is?
Man, it’s so great right now. Mark Zuckerberg increased his wealth by $29 billion just yesterday! People with fat stock portfolios are coming in here to tell us we’re wrong about the economy! It’s awesome!
Ding ding! Record profits? Use a single measley lawsuit and rebrand+spin off your debt and liability, file for bankruptcy and live the American dream.
Do you set fire to them or just fire them? Your username is a little disturbing in this context…
In tech by any chance?
God I hate how insular tech workers are. Anything that happens in tech, they think happens universally.
When the economy was tanking and tech was doing great: “the economy is very fair and just, you need to work harder bootstraps blah blah”
When house prices soared: “just buy a house in the middle of nowhere for dirt cheap and keep making your big city salary like me!”
Now the economy is doing great and tech is finally experiencing a correction: “omg the sky is falling!!”
Fuck the economy. Make my goddamn grocery bill go down. Make the fucking rent go down.
These things are actually the things that make up the economy.
The problematic thing with inflation is that when people get a pay raise they think it’s not because the economy improved, it’s because they worked hard for that pay raise. Sure no one’s disputing that you worked hard, but if you worked hard and the economy didn’t improve you wouldn’t have gotten that pay raise.
And yeah food prices are high. Something about a land war in the part of Europe that produces a lot of the global grain supply may have something to do with that. That situation would be resolved sooner if the GOP stopped blocking the funding to go towards ending that situation sooner.
Real estate… yeah that’s because the rich suck. Gotta tax those bastards so they don’t keep dumping their excess wealth into real estate which drives up prices. But again, the GOP isn’t going to approve of that.
Biden has done insanely well on the economy despite the efforts of the GOP to sabotage him.
So be angry, but know who to be angry at. The guys blocking things have a majority in congress and has the filibuster in the Senate. Maybe that should change?
My anger is aimed squarely at the correct people and things. I know how this shit show works. People making minimum wage, you know the largest group of earners, hasn’t had a raise regardless of the “economy” in nearly 15 years barring a few blue states. This country grows tons of food that just gets shipped off or used for plastic so if grain production is the issue it’s a logistics issue and not a supply issue. Our government is ineffective for the average person. It’s amazingly effective for the rich and corps. There is nothing we can do about it either because voting is a performative act instead of a meaningful one. Our 2 presidential candidates are thousand year old dust factories. They’re supported by either 100 year old dust factories or younger sociopaths who are only in it for power and money. At the local level it’s meaningless because of you’re in a red area there’s no way to win and if you’re in a blue area everyone’s too busy patting each other on the back for not being red that they still don’t fucking do a good job.
The problem isn’t me being angry, it’s that more people aren’t.
Edit: I was wrong about the number of minimum wage workers.
People making minimum wage are not the largest group of earners, its actually a very tiny minority of workers that earn the minimum wage.
This person just wants to be angry. They haven’t proposed anything useful or mentioned anything possible to change. They might feel bad and not vote.
Don’t let them pull you down to their level. Even if you’re depressed about the state of things, vote anyway. The people causing the problems want you to be depressed and not vote. Vote anyway. You can still complain later.
Edit: told you
Don’t put words in my mouth. I do my civic duty. And you want a solution? Burn it to ash and rebuild it.
That is not your civic duty.
Let’s keep doing things the way we’re doing them then. I’m sure will be able to vote in change…
Typical Canadian balderdash!
So be angry, but know who to be angry at.
Lockheed Martin and company along with the politicians they own perpetuating endless war, leading us into the abyss while chasing short term profits.
Both the Gaza war and the Ukraine war are inflationary pressures and the US is pumping billions of dollars into both.
Go back to Russia
closest i’ve ever been to russia is reading crime and punishment
you’ve been convinced war = good but it doesn’t have to be that way
Says the guy shilling for a country that invaded their neighbor rofl
I’m an American citizen, not a Russian. Therefore I care about American policy because it’s the one I have a modicum of influence in.
Russia invaded Ukraine - they are the aggressor. However, it doesn’t follow from that statement that we should send billions of dollars worth of killing machines to Ukraine.
Our actions have a) funneled over $150 billion dollars worth of $$$ from public hands (our taxes) into the hands of wealthy private corporations. Go and look up how the stock price for Lockheed Martin reacted to the invasion in 2022.
b) prolonged a war which will inevitably end with Russia taking territory. This has two consequences
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like Chomsky says we are “fighting to the last Ukrainian”. We are absolutely fucking the demographics of a country for the next century if not more. The rebuilding costs will be over 3x what we’ve spent so far - and ill eat my shoe if the benevolent Western countries are going to foot the bill.
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this prolonging has caused global economic mayhem and it looks like it’s going to cost the Dems the election - bringing us Trump and a further fall into fascism.
We are sacrificing the world for $$$. Capitalism is killing itself. It’s as if we are trying to replicate the 20th century.
Hahahaha
From your own arguments, we are actually sacrificing $$$ for the world, not the other way around. I’m happy for my tax dollars to pay to rein in the aggression of Russia and maintain the independence of Ukraine. Fuck Russia. Slava Ukraine. We should be sending them more.
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Fyi, the US president cannot set prices for these things.
That said, he’s trying, using what power he does have.
No he’s not trying. He’s giving the appearance of trying just in time for 2024. Do you really think Biden is going to take on Blackrock?
Slim chance but still better than the odds of the republicans doing it.
I wouldn’t get your hopes up on substantially lower grocery bills.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/02/02/grocery-price-inflation-biden/
But there is no immediate fix for policymakers. Grocery prices remain elevated due to a mixture of labor shortages tied to the pandemic, ongoing supply chain disruptions, droughts, avian flu and other factors far beyond the administration’s control. Robust consumer demand has also fueled a shift to more expensive groceries, and consolidation in the industry gives large chains the ability to keep prices high, economic policy experts say.
“I think people are waiting for prices to return to what they call ‘normal’ — and with the exception of a few things, like eggs — we’re not going to see that. We’re going to see prices stabilize, and that’s likely it,” said Dawn Thilmany, an agricultural economist and professor at Colorado State University.
Oh what a bunch of bullshit. They’re gonna blame COVID for everything for the rest of time instead of corporate greed because the same fucking corporations have bought and paid for our entire government.
Also, greed.
Robust consumer demand has also fueled a shift to more expensive groceries
How dare people need to eat
That’s not what that says at all.
What it says is that people are feeling more flush with cash and are opting for higher end brands of food over the store brands or nicer cuts of steak or going out to a nicer restaurant instead of just hitting up McDonald’s or shoneys. This is proof that the economy is doing well.
Flush with cash, my ass. Also, mcdonalds is expensive as fuck.
my ass
is not a good source of data.
If you think mcds is expensive you clearly don’t know how to eat there and you’ve definitely not eaten anywhere with real food. I try to keep my mcds to a min but when I am working and need something I can get out of there with spending like $6 tops, $8+ if I am feeling “fancy” and grab a frozen coffee with an extra shot.
You’ve also definitely not noticed how packed even the more expensive steak houses are at pretty much all open hours. I’m talking the places where you can’t spend less than $200 for a meal for two.
I drive for a living and I can tell you for a fact (in my neck of the woods) that the economy is doing just fine, people are doing okay, not as great as they could/should be but most definitely aren’t at poverty level.
You lot need to start getting your data from sources that aren’t biased and aren’t trying to keep you pissed off so you keep reading the bullshit they call news.
The stock market hasn’t been a good indicator of the economy for decades now. What is an indicator is what I was correcting a misinterpretation of. If you want to see how the economy is doing in your area, drive around downtown or the other hotspots like music venues and restaurants in the evenings and see how packed it is.
Mcdonalds is expensive for what you get. I don’t eat at steakhouses because they’re similarly overpriced. When I go out to eat, I do so to eat things that are more difficult or time-consuming to make at home and steak is among the easiest. Anyway, the fun part about judging the economy based on how packed venues and restaurants are is that credit goes a long way until it doesn’t. Credit card debt and delinquencies are climbing.
He’s working on that too actually.
Voters don’t care about the economy as long as their cost of living situation is worse.
I suspect it’s booming because the cost of living situation is worse
Biden has called out the greed of businesses, but we’ve seen no action from the government to rein them in.
How is Biden supposed to have done anything to rein in corporate greed when he’s stuck with a Republican controlled house that refuses to even entertain the faintest notion of the slightest hint of the merest idea of reining it in?
Come on, it’s not like Republicans are against their own bipartisan immigration deal because it would be good for Biden. I’m sure they’ll work with him on the economy…
Oh.
The president needn’t do a damn thing. The People need to protest outside of Citizens United office. Its what we need to do. Tear the structure from the Earth and the occupants along with it. Cast them to Tatarus where they belong.
Citizens United
1006 Pennsylvania Ave SE
Washington, DC 20003
Office: (202) 547-5420
Fax: (202) 547-5421
info@citizensunited.orgHow is protesting in front of the office of a random right wing political group in DC going to accomplish anything? They won their court case a long time ago so they seem kind of irrelevant now.
Oh, you mean the people who got Money = free speech codified into law? You dont see how that would help? It shows we know. We know who you are and what you did. And we dont accept it.
No, I don’t see how that helps anything. They already know we know. They have been protested before and it didn’t change anything, how is it going to have any impact on anything to do it again? You could burn their office down and nothing will change, it’s just a random office belonging to a random political group. They aren’t even really relevant beyond the case they won back in the day so what’s so special about their office now?
Does that mean that bidenomics is actually the work of the republican controlled house? I don’t see how biden can get credit for a supposedly amazing economy but at the same time be powerless to do anything because of congress.
He can do some things. He can’t do others.
For example one of the big checks on corporate greed is the FTC, which is independent of the executive branch’s direct control. All he can do is nominate people to the FTC, which has to go through the legislature. At the moment, the FTC has a majority Democrat leadership, which has resulted in things like the blocking of Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot, the attempted blocking of the Albertsons-Krogers merger, the upcoming ban on noncompete clauses, and other reining in of corporate greed.
Biden can’t tell the FTC “you have to impose fines on x corporation”. All he can do is appoint the kinds of people he thinks would support fines on x corporation. And like I said, even that is subject to the legislature’s approval.
Biden can modify student loan programs, but (according to the courts) he does not have the power to wholesale forgive student loans. He’s doing what he can, but he’s not a dictator. We have 3 branches of government for a reason.
But there are things in his control where he doesn’t put up a fight at all. A great example of this is where he not only didn’t fight against border wall funding, he actually went out of his way to waive federal laws to accelerate the border wall construction: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/biden-administration-waives-federal-laws-allow-border-wall-constructio-rcna118959
Biden just doesn’t seem to put up much of a fight, whereas Trump was pushing ahead with ridiculous actions like his Muslim ban, whether or not a court would uphold it. Biden’s inaction in a number of areas are excused with “if he tried then it would be stopped.” At least try. And again, if Biden is so powerless, how can he take credit for the economy?
Did you see the headline on your own link?? “BIDEN ON BORDER WALL: ‘I HAD NO CHOICE’”
Biden’s inaction in a number of areas are excused with “if he tried then it would be stopped.”
Yes. Why the fuck do you want him to bang his head against a brick wall? That’s stupid and if you want it, you’re stupid. Things he can do, he should do. Things he can’t do, he shouldn’t waste time on.
if Biden is so powerless, how can he take credit for the economy?
Well, two things. First, like I said, he does have some measure of control over some things, and he has popular influence. But second, and more importantly, presidents always get praise or blame for the economy under them regardless of how incredibly stupid it is to believe that the president can personally make the economy good or bad. So, political reality is, if he has a good economy, he has to claim it, since if there’s a bad economy, he’ll be blamed for it.
Threaten to nationalize any business that extorts with the defense production act. Cant have good conscriptees if they are malnourished and mentally ill.
Lets get creative.
The issue with that logic is that Dems will say they can’t get anything done but fear the substantial change that Trump can bring. Like the party’s own stance is more of the same with Biden or certainty of drastic change by voting against Biden. That does not come off like the party elites think it does. I can see how that messaging can work with say the UAW or the already rich who can claim wins during the last four, but many of us really only expected him to not be Trump after the Biden win and somehow even that bar feels missed, the man has lower approval ratings than Trump ever had.
I don’t know why you’re being downloaded, you’re right here. They fear that Trump is going to be a dictator rightfully, yet Biden’s not allowed to use any power to help the people. That, for some reason, is where the line in the sand is.
Well thats just not true. His approval rating is very low for sure, but Trump has got him beat in that metric, he had substantially worse ratings. Still Biden might end with worse approval average if he continues downward in approval ratings, and that’s kinda impressive since Biden hasn’t been doing egregiously corrupt and stupid shit basically daily like Trump did. Golfing at his own resort. Putting his kids into government positions. Firing staff on grounds of “loyalty” like some mob boss. Etc etc. Biden hasn’t even been impeached, let alone twice.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_approval_rating
The rate of increase is slowing rapidly: In December, prices for food consumed at home were up by just over 1 percent, according to the Labor Department. But administration officials say Mr. Biden is keenly aware that prices remain too elevated for many families, even as key items, like gasoline and household furnishings, are now cheaper than they were at their postpandemic peak.
And yet there is a general belief across administration officials and their allies that there is little else Mr. Biden could do unilaterally to force grocery prices down quickly.
“It’s hard to figure out what the short-term policy response is in this situation,” said Bharat Ramamurti, a former economic aide to Mr. Biden and an author of a report on grocery-price inflation that the progressive Groundwork Collaborative in Washington published on Friday.
I think we can expect Biden to be loud about grocery prices and grocery store profit margins, because the price of almost everything else has stabilized or gone down. He can issue executive orders that do little to directly influence prices, but any more would require legislation, and, well, the party that controls the House wants higher prices.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/01/us/politics/biden-food-prices.html
And yet there is a general belief across administration officials and their allies that there is little else Mr. Biden could do unilaterally to force grocery prices down quickly.
I wish I could just slap the shit out of every Democrat in charge of any sort of media relations. They’re so terrible.
IT. DOES. NOT. MATTER. WHAT. YOU. DO. Good deeds do not sway voters. Spin sways voters. Media sways voters. You can literally fuck up the economy and blame your opponents for it and people will believe you if you message it right.
Democrats should work to help people not because it will win them votes but because it’s the right thing to do. Democrats need to understand that words and deeds are two entirely separate things. Deeds help people. Words sway voters. The two are not related.
“Economy” is such a bullshit term here. What they really mean is stock market. The real economy is shit. Pay is shit. Healthcare is shit. Real estate is a fat hog that needs to get slaughtered already. When will the people be treated as Too Big To Fail?
Ehh, I think the economy is doing okay. Inflation is being controlled/managed. In some cases it’s correcting itself.
Don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees. The media in this country has been really pessimistic about the economy and blaming the admin–to the point it seemed intentionally misrepresented.
This economy could have gone the other way pretty easily especially with the billions thrown into circulation during the pandemic.
If we want to credit Presidents when the economy is bad, you need to credit them when it’s good too.
If anything this admin should get credit for being stable and a source of order in all of the chaos–not the cause of it.
Ehh, I think the economy is doing okay. Inflation is being controlled/managed. In some cases it’s correcting itself.
I have to agree. Some people are still certainly struggling, of course. Homelessness is still a problem in places. Many people still live paycheck to paycheck. But the economy isn’t going to fully right itself in four years, especially with a hostile House that controls the purse strings.
Additionally, nothing has been done about greedflation (yet?). If Congress or Biden can figure out a way to force companies to stop tacitly colluding to squeeze more money from people, I would suspect more people would start to feel more optimistic about their finances (and the economy in general).
Greed will sadly have to wait…when your ship is sinking you gotta patch the holes first, then you can rebuild the troublesome parts.
The US is putting fingers in the holes of the dam right now and doing an okay job of it.
I believe it’s more like while this ship is sinking the majority are below decks with old buckets trying to desperately bail out the rising seawarer while the rich and those in power are above deck ripping off all the planks they can to build themselves a life raft, fully intent on leaving the rest of us to drown in the sinking ship.
I like the analogy!
The one below mine is better lol.
The media is owned by billionaires and/or public traded companies. Reporting is skewed to keep the populace complacent.
Don’t forget the car market as well both the used and new market has lost its fucking mind.
It’s about jobs more than the stock market. The report says over 350k net jobs added in January (more than double expected) and unemployment has been below 4% for two consecutive years (not seen since the ‘60s). Plus inflation is quickly dropping and the administration is lowering costs on things where they can, putting more money in our pockets. It’s legitimately incredible what’s happened with the US economy since the pandemic nearly guaranteed a recession, according to Fox News.
We spent THREE YEARS with media of all stripes gaslighting us about a supposed incoming recession any day now. Any day now, for three years, even when the economy was doing gangbusters. Bastards.
Whatever the fuck they’re saying on the nigntmare box means dick. I’m still poor.
The numbers for the real economy have been good too. The median wage rose faster than inflation in 2023 and unemployment has been consistently low, people are finding work and finally starting to earn more. Obviously things aren’t great for everyone but it’s going way better than anyone expected and it’s heading in a good direction rather than deteriorating further like when inflation was still out of control.
*jobs exist that don’t pay a living wage, sending workers ever deeper into poverty and despair*
media and politicians: “LoOk At AlL tHe JoBs! BoOmInG eCoNoMy!”
You get two jobs, and you get two jobs, everyone gets two jobs!
🎵you load 16 tons, waddaya get? another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don’t you call me cuz I can’t gooooooo, I owe my soul to the company store. 🎵
“I see you still have like eight hours each day you could sacrifice to your employers, what’s your excuse there?”
“That’s when I eat and sleep.”
“Ah, so greed and laziness. I see.”
The economy is only booming for the rich, anyone trying to tell us otherwise doesn’t care about our well-being. If it were doing well they wouldn’t have to keep telling us, we could see it in our everyday lives.
Gas prices are down. General cost of living is stabilized. Unemployment is extremely low and the percentage of eligible workers on the sidelines is dropping. Wages are up for the lowest income levels and continue to climb despite slowing inflation. Black households, in particular, have seen a significant narrowing of the income gap, more so than they’ve seen in many many years. The percentage of women in the workforce is up and salaries are climbing for them as well. In fact, the post-COVID recovery has been wildly successful when you compare it to post-2008 with respect to the improvements for the poorest among us, which is precisely the opposite of what you’re claiming.
Yours is purely an appeal to anecdote. The data is clear. Unfortunately, as study after study has shown, data can’t compete with vibes, and we just spent the last two years with the MSM (not to mention social media…) telling everyone a recession was around the corner.
Housing costs are sky-high. Rent is ridiculous. Good luck ever trying to own a house. And yeah, cost of living went way way up and now it’s “stabilized” there.
And to say wages are up is just laughable. I mean, yeah people are now being paid $15 an hour instead of $10, but what does that matter when food and housing costs increased more than that?
The data is skewed by the people that benefited from raising the price of everything during COVID-19 and then never brought the prices down.
The rich are richer and they are the measuring stick for the economy because they own all the news sources. It is dramatically worse for the poor now than it was 5 years ago.
Don’t let bullshit propaganda fool you.
I feel like this CONSTANTLY happens and people just eat it. Prices skyrocket. Then they stop rising or maybe even dip a little but still remain way higher than they originally were and… Problem solved! It’s stabilized! In fact prices are DROPPING! huzzah!
Makes me wonder if people are really this easily fooled or are they all just being ignored? Lol
I feel like this CONSTANTLY happens and people just eat it. Prices skyrocket. Then they stop rising or maybe even dip a little but still remain way higher than they originally were and… Problem solved!
Literally yes. Prices go up, wages go up, that’s a healthy economy. Take an economics class.
If prices ever start broadly going down, prepare for a massive economic ass fucking the likes of which you’ve never seen and clearly can’t imagine.
Yeah the economy is healthy, just not for 90% of the country.
Line go up is just a cult, nothing else.
Ideally the economy is just something you need to plan, to stay stable and anticipate environmental and population concerns. It shouldn’t need to go up or down to maintain production.
This “homelessness goes up but so does GDP so it’s okay” shit is unworkable, cruel and unsustainable and only benefits bezos et al
Christ alive you have no idea what you’re talking about. Have you ever studied economics? At all? Or are you just posting your fee fees?
Would you go into a hospital and start lecturing doctors on how their practice is bullshit? Sure, there are probably a lot of things that could be improved, but you don’t have the knowledge to speak about them. Take some courses, then come back and speak from an informed perspective.
“Planned economy” is a 12 year old’s idea of how things should be.
You’re on serious damage control and spouting derivative drivel. “Take an economics class” meanwhile people who did found that set of nomics to be non sensical, because “economics” at its core isn’t about what most people think it is. Cost and worth are two separate things, and the whims of our livelihoods is decided emotionally. Not logically.
“Planned economy” is a 12 year old’s idea of how things should be.
You might want to tell that to Walmart:
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The economy is booming, but not in all sectors. Housing is the biggest notable exception. Inflation was bad, but it’s gotten better. Pretty much everything else is doing great. Even car prices are coming down.
Lmao. Yeah the economy is great if you don’t need a place to live 🤡
Biden has done great. But capitalism is EOL and needs deprecating.
Let me know when you find a better system.
Edit: Not Russia, not China. Fuck off, tankies.
Worker-owner cooperative market economy for non-essential goods and services, planned economy for essentials and infrastructure (water, shelter, food, broadband, energy, roads, transport…)
Yeah seconded though tankies fuck off.
Socialism. Workers should collectively own the Means of Production, not just petite dictators.
Secondly, Russia is absolutely Capitalist, lmao. It’s the same system, broadly.
Secondly, Russia is absolutely Capitalist, lmao. It’s the same system, broadly.
We know that. Tankies do not.
Workers should collectively own the Means of Production
Isn’t that communism, not socialism?
Socialism with Chinese characteristics seems to have no shortage of houses
Or organs.
Mysteriously.
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Cheapest 1 bedroom rent can find is 2.3k/month.
Where though? If you’re in a historically HCOL area, then that’s hardly surprising.
I’m in an easily commutable suburb of one of the largest metro areas in the country and there are 1br apartments available in decent areas for $1000-1200ish. Not what I’d call “cheap” but a far cry from what you’re claiming.
I’ll tell that to the out of control housing, rising food costs and the worsening healthcare coverage and quality. Man! So glad these few things you mentioned are superficially better. There’s no problems now!
/s because you know someone is gonna take it literally.
If his is purely anctedote, then yours is decontextualized.
Gas prices are down.
Sure. Since a high in June of 2022. The last time gas prices were at this level was June 2021. And the time before that was October 2014. Which is to say, for about 6 years, gas prices were lower than today. And just looking at the graph, they were significantly below today’s level. Just to note, they have yet to return to the levels before the precipitous rise stating in December 2020.
There maybe, as you noted, vibes, but they ain’t wrong.
Unemployment should be looked at with, of course participation rate which has held even for the last year, and how long people have been unemployed which has been growing slightly for those unemployed for 27 weeks or more. This also doesn’t address underemployment which disporporstely effects the young and poor. Underemployment colors one’s outlook for stability in the present and future.
Thankfully, Biden and others in the administration have managed this far better than 2008 for the average citizen. Not having a recession is a good thing. I’ve lived through several. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t looming concerns. Inflation is still higher than the target and instigating further disinflation is uncharted territory.
Data, in of itself, is not enough. It needs to be contextualized to develop political and social narratives. Addressing people with condescension and dismissing their anxieties as mere vibes fails politically.
I think people are expecting all the prices to return to “normal” when that’s probably never going to happen, as a good chunk of the price increases are due to post-covid inflation
the largest driver of inflation during and after the pandemic is companies raising prices, and turning record profits.
Living is more unaffordable than ever. What even is your comment
I stopped reading at gas prices are down. They are up .40 the last week.
The data is clear
The gaslighting is all thats clear. All the data conflicts with your claim. Homelessness up to the highest level ever recorded, housing is unaffordable, food is unaffordable, wages are stagnant, income inequality is the widest ever recorded.
Looking pretty low to me. Speaking in terms of this week makes no sense to me.
It’s almost like they cherry pick data that fits their preconceived notions…
I stopped reading at gas prices are down. They are up .40 the last week.
This is just as stupid as saying because it snowed, global warning isn’t real.
No if you’re going to get the first fact blatantly wrong odds are the rest is going to be bunch of bullshit too
Gas prices are down in my area, so you’re blatantly wrong.
Checkmate, dumbass.
Good thing your area is the entire world. Oh wait. Turns out, on balance gas prices are not down. But you go ahead and live in that bubble of yours and pretend your name calling is doing something.
Good thing your area is the entire world.
OH MY GOD HE FINALLY GETS IT LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!
TIL grudgingly is a word. I’ve only ever heard begrudgingly before.
Apparently grudgingly is done with lack of interest
Begrudgingly is done with envy
TIL
Hey let me know if you guys find any extra money floating around. This economy is so good I can barely afford gas and groceries.
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Yes but have you considered that the rich are getting richer and therefore the economy is great? Doesn’t matter that us normal folks can’t afford groceries as long as stocks go up.
Just a fyi…we don’t need to take the rich more, we can literally pay for single payer now. This is what kills me, we already spend 3xs as much in healthcare than any other single payer system out there. We’re more than capable of providing that yesterday if we wanted to, but the insurance companies would shit a brick if we told them to pound sand.
There have been a quarter million layoffs at tech companies at every level for the last year or so.
Pro-tip: Tech isn’t the whole economy. Over-indexing on that one sector–and SV tech companies in particular–is incredibly myopic.
That’s not to say it doesn’t suck for people in the industry (which includes me, by the way), but tech is just one sector that’s experiencing some very specific dynamics (e.g. rising interest rates killing VC investment, overhiring during COVID, the need to goose share prices after stocks reverted to the pre-COVID mean, etc) that should not be extrapolated when considering the broader economy.
The stock market is held aloft pretty much solely because of tech.
I’ll be honest, I don’t understand your point.
What does the value of those company’s stocks (which it’s worth noting are rallying in response to those layoffs) have to do with my point that the underlying causes of the layoffs in tech cannot be extrapolated to the broader economy, and thus action in that sector should not be used as a proxy for overall economic health?
So much emphasis is placed on the stock market and yet the stock market is boosted to all-time highs thanks to a handful of tech companies. In fact, these handful of tech companies make up about 25% of the entire S&P 500 (not even counting the many other tech companies on the S&P 500 that aren’t part of this handful). With how much the stock market is talked about as evidence that the economy is doing great, tech plays an oversized role. So if tech companies are being temporarily boosted by layoffs, what do you think comes after? The AI hype cycle will hit a slump and tech stocks will eat shit, as will the broad stock market because tech makes up so much of it. Then suddenly “the economy” ain’t doing so great.
A lot of great speculation that has absolutely nothing to do with how the economy is doing right now, which is what I thought we were talking about.
Also, and I cannot emphasize this enough: the stock market is correlated with economic health but does not measure it directly. In the first half of 2023 the stock market was erratic due to rising interest rates while the real economy–measured by unemployment rates, salaries, etc–was quite healthy. Conversely, the post-2008 recovery was anemic at best for the non-rich while the stock market rallied to all time highs. There’s a reason I’ve never once mentioned the stock market while making the case that the economy is healthy.
Put another way: your predicted future slump in tech stocks does not therefore mean the economy more broadly will suffer.
And that’s assuming your prediction plays out, and that remains to be seen. After all, I’ll bet you were predicting that Facebook is on the decline, and yet they announced a truly astonishing quarter.
And again, none of this is relevant to the state of the economy right now.
Tech isn’t the whole economy.
LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK!
This has got to be an Onion headline. I mean, of course it is, but they would never in a million years admit it.
Brace for a lot of the magats claiming that faux is “too woke”/“too liberal” and claim they’ll have to watch ONAN even harder.
It was extra hilarious when they were complaining about the environmental impact of Taylor Swift’s plane. Like you admit the climate needs help, Fox?
Plus, like only her plane. How many millionaires fly in their private jet and they complain about her? Obviously they are teiggered. The bootstrap party sure likes to whine about dumb shit. Imagine if they put even half as much effort into anything productive.
It’s no different from them suddenly caring about the environment when it comes to EVs. “Mining lithium is so bad for the environment!” They post to Facebook from their lithium-battery powered cellphone.
Dangerously close to “yet you exist in society… I am very smart.”
It would be better to just go along with them when they are incidentally correct like that instance, but push towards the logical endpoint of that thought train.
Agree with them, like, “yeah, mining lithium is fucking horrible, and it is literally impossible currently without coerced labor somewhere in the supply chain. Let’s empower the regulatory bodies in countries where lithium is mined to prevent negative externalities that currently exist only because it is more profitable.”
Or “yeah it’s fucking ridiculous how much swift uses that jet. Musk too, and Bezos too. These fucks could never ride in a jet the rest of their lives and we could take flights to vacation multiple times a year for the rest of our lives and we still wouldn’t even be responsible for 1% of their emissions output. Let’s ban private jets and make these fucks ride commuter with the rest of us.”
Except I don’t think they’re incidentally correct at all. They weren’t worried about lithium at all until it was put into car batteries. Because it was never about the lithium.
Won’t matter because the following week they will be saying that a Trump economy doesn’t kick in until the 8th year.
Ask not for whom the economy booms -
For only the bell tolls for thee.
I don’t think Republicans get to complain about trickle down though
Being a republicunt is a license for hypocrisy. They can and will complain about literally everything.
Remember when unemployment went low and they complained about the plight of the poor corporations?
Probably because Fox only makes good revenues when their buffoons aren’t in charge to undermine their narratives with utter incompetence and pure greed.
Fox needs its viewers to want to start winning, not to be winning. That’s why Tucker publicly put a stop to the Biden “crime family” claims right before the 2020 election, and resumed right after it.
Their viewership does best when their claims are not falsifiable.
Imagine how much social and technological progress we could have made if half of our country wasn’t dedicated to tearing it all down at every opportunity…
It’s so fucking exhausting.
I think we’ve made enough technological progress for now. Social progress might include a better application of the technologies we’ve had for a long time though.
Social progress would be a better way to raise children without traumatizing and sleep depriving them to become passive laborers serving the owner class.
Booming for who exactly?
Me?
Gas prices are below $3 here, only spent $91 on weekly groceries yesterday, and my high interest savings accounts are sitting around 4.75%
My property taxes went up 20% but that’s a local thing…
And I’ll toss this in here even though you’ll cry that it’s not a valid metric, but my retirement accounts are at a record high
Like, what more do you want??
They probably want theirs and everyone else’s cost of living to not be a crisis.
It’s great that yours has slightly improved, it hasn’t for the majority however and continues to get worse.
But it’s now getting worse at a slightly slower rate. Yay, progress!
House prices to contract down to a realistic level. Rent controls such that the price of rent is not higher than the price of a mortgage (which gives you ownership of a valuable asset, a tenancy does not).
But rent has to cover all the costs of ownership and then some, meanwhile the mortgage payment is but a fraction of that.
It doesn’t, though. The owner should cover the cost of ownership, as they’re the one who gets the valuable asset at the end. The tenant should pay proportionally less than this, merely the cost of them living there for a temporary period.
If you live with someone and pay towards their mortgage, you can rightfully claim a share in the equity of their house. However, if you’re a tenant and pay the entire mortgage, and then some, you don’t get anything. That’s patently not right.
You don’t get to claim part of the equity just for living with someone and paying part of their mortgage. You would have to set up a joint venture or other business structure, otherwise you would just pay rent to the owner/ roommate like they were your landlord.
And even if the partnership was legally set up where you got a percentage for paying rent on a room in a house, unless you retroactively paid part of their downpayment, it would be an insignificant percent the home’s value…probably to the tune of 1/360th of the home’s value, minus the downpayment, minus the growth in value for however many years they have been paying on the loan, and your share would essentially be less than half of your rent going to the value of the investment due to taxes and insurance.
Most of what you are paying for on a home is taxes and insurance. My mortgage is about 65% taxes and insurance. If I were to rent my home, should I pay all of the taxes and insurance that occur in real time so the tenant has a less expensive place to live or pass that on to the renter as a cost of living in the residence?
I’m not a landlord because I ran the numbers and this just barely profitable in a best case scenario where you had nothing but great tenants, no downtime between renters, and no major house repairs, but there is a huge amount of risk with letting stranger occupy your most valuable asset. The expectation that a home owner should offer a discount on the actual cost of the home because they get to sell the house and recoup the asset value is not realistic. When you consider the amount of damage, additional maintenance, turnover costs, downtime between renters, and a whole mess of other things that cost additional money that come with renting to tenants, it is understandable why it’s hard to find cheap rent.
It sucks that this is how the system is, but housing prices have to come down and wages have to come up before this problem gets fixed, and the landlord isn’t the demon you think he is. Corporate firms buying up hundreds of houses to manipulate prices up on the other hand…
I agree that there is a lot more wrong with the system than just mortgage rates being higher than rents. The tax, fees and interests are certainly a good target for how things are wrong. With regards to damages, obviously tenants should be more easily held liable for damages they cause - and equally landlords should be more easily held liable for failing to provide a well maintained property (eg no mould).
The system is generally screwed up through and through. The people on the bottom get shat on, but even as you work your way up there’s always still someone above shitting down hill. But that’s no excuse for resigning and not sorting the shit out.
For starters, we need to sack all MPs and implement something closer to a direct democracy, or at least representation truly as a public service.
We’ll have to agree to disagree.
I’d appreciate if you could justify your position. I think, when you carefully consider it, you’ll understand that it’s skewed the wrong way and not justifiable.
If I buy a house with a mortgage, it costs a lot of money, but I can live in it right away and afterwards I have a house, which I can sell. If I rent, I only get to live in it for so long as I pay rent - I own nothing at the end. You get more for your mortgage but pay less, surely the rent should be lower and proportionate to what you’re getting?
Sure, if rent was cheaper than a mortgage, people would be far less inclined to be landlords - but why should that be a given path to profit? Why should the housing supply by usurped by those who already have an excess of wealth?
Sure. The terms of the owner’s financing are none of the renter’s business. The only facts that are relevant are that the owner is willing to rent out their property at a certain price, and the renter is willing to pay that price, and both parties are entering into the transaction of their own free will. If the owner and renter are unable to agree on a price, they are free to go their separate ways. No harm, no foul.
choosing to be wrong: it’s a bold move, cotton. let’s see how it plays out.
Flapjacks.
I can do Jack Black doing jumping jacks, final offer.
And hookers
That retirement account is going to mean fuckall when you retire as inflation eats up most of it.
I’ll be sure to raise a fist to Biden when that day comes, and curse the wretched two party system which hath delivered me and you, apparently, such misery
Edit:but until then, I’ll vote for Biden. Because honestly
$91 for a week of groceries? You either live alone or your poor family is subsisting on Top Ramen.
I just spent $86 at a Whole Foods for what will amount to this week’s groceries (which is making breakfast, lunch, and dinner for two each day). I already had many of the staple ingredients, and no Top Ramen is involved.
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I have a family of 3 and can hit that target for a week of groceries pretty easily. What are you buying that’s so expensive? I’ve found the price of produce, milk, and eggs have all gone down over the last few months
Where do you live and what do you eat?
I don’t know why this guy’s getting downvoted. Rent prices are at record high. APRs are through the roof. Groceries are getting more expensive every year. I’m even paying $20 more every month for car insurance. Sure Trump was worse but let’s not act like everything is all sunshine and rainbows just because it’s an election year.
Google seems t suck these days and I wasn’t able to find good data, but
- I see historical graph of car interest rates peaking over 8% in November, but current advertised rates 4-7%
- I see mortgage rates peaked in Sept and headed down. Most predictions I see are down or at least consistent - I didn’t see any predicting up
- gas prices are much cheaper lately
- my savings account t just went up again, I think it’s now paying 4.5%
Gotta admit it’s tough to sympathize with a $20 insurance increase when I just got hit with the double whammy of teenaged driver and new car. My car insurance is quintuple what it was a couple months ago😒
A shocking amount of people I know, including myself were all laid off. Ive been unemployed for 6 months. There are zero jobs in my Ruby red shithole state aside from retail.
This growth is not distributed equally.
my Ruby red shithole state
It’s really difficult not to turn this political, but yes, it seems like political leanings are a huge part of it.
Admittedly, my company is hiring mostly overseas in cheaper markets, but we are hiring, and a I’ve seen a lot of friends switch jobs to jump start stagnated pay
Thats the problem though, yes we know who’s to blame, but its still up to dems to fix it.
Its not acceptable to just have them rightfully blame then throw their hands up.
Tech?
A failed college actually. Friend was in construction.
That sucks, I’m sorry. Any plans to move to somewhere with more jobs?
My family safety net is here, so it would honestly take some saving at a different job before Im comfortable starting a life somewhere else.
But eventually I may have to. In the meantime all I can do is keep applying.
A lot of the Fox Business stuff is not crazy politically biased in the way the Opinion primetime stuff is. There’s a lot of old rich white guy conservatism, like Mitt Romney conservative. They’ll spin storylines as explanations, but not basic facts.
Just seems like people are talking past each other sometimes with Fox stuff. Same as the polling “even FOX is saying X Democrat is winning!” well yeah Fox’s polling infrastructure is pretty good, it’s probably because that candidate is leading.
I’d agree, but Fox Business has gotten much worse over the past few years. It has always been pro-business (duh), but it was rather reliable otherwise and had to be. The viewers cared about their investments and companies; a bias would make them unreliable.
They started changing and adding more and more right wing nutjob opinions to their reporting, though.
For example, three of their top stories right now are political pieces; one about how fast food prices will go up because of a higher minimum wage in one state and a second where Elon Musk blames immigrants for the housing crisis plus whatever other garbage comes from his mouth. Another article here claiming the “border crisis” was caused by DEI policies at some companies.
Lemmy: China is spreading propaganda about their failing economy booming in their news!
Lemmy: The American economy is booming! I read it in our news!
It’s almost like those are two different groups of people.
Websites aren’t collective intelligence?
Well both those types of articles are getting upvoted to the front page so I’m assuming there is overlap?
Have you tried submitting anything? There’s very little content, I’d wager you too could get to the front page.
(Not dogging on lemmy,I love this site)
There are genuine grievances in the economy; most notably perhaps the affordable housing crisis. My home’s value is so fucking inflated it’s not even funny. It’s not worth what it is appraised for; none of these houses are. Chronic homelessness is at an all-time high.
That being said — since we are going into election year — we need to frame this not as what we see but what Republicans would normally boast of if Donnie2Scoops was in office.
- They’d be boasting about unemployment
- They’d be boasting about low inflation
- They’d be boasting about lowering gas prices
- They’d be boasting about stock-market being at an all-time high
- They’d be boasting about the GDP growth-rate.
So context matters. By the standards of what Republicans usually tout, the economy is thriving. Which means they’ve got nothing going into an election year… Which means they’re fucked.
Consider that Democrats won a midterm election during worse economic conditions in what is historically a rough midterm for an incumbent President’s party. Now consider the same with the risk of Democracy on the line, abortion rights, and a strong economy.
Republicans are fucked. (But still, get 5 people you know to register and vote). Hence why they’re so desperately clinging to this BoRDEr cRiSis as their only issue that’s sticking — and Biden just called their bluff on it.
There’s quite a few places where right and left agree on some point, but not what to do about it. It’s not Horseshoe Theory, because they only meet in a single place and then run in different directions. They don’t come up with the same solutions at all.
Republicans say the economy is failing, Democrats do not, but the left also thinks the economy is failing. But the left think it’s failing because it does not provide a base of support for everyone and would like to fix it. Republicans don’t give a shit about that and would prefer to keep pulling the ladder up behind them.
This is the thing. We have objective measures of the economy and by those measures (the same ones we’d use to say a Republican is doing a great job) the economy is doing well.
The broader left becomes something of a useful tool for Republicans to use in election years during these discussions, because while Republicans agree with leftist feelings about the economy until elected. Afterwards, those same metrics they insist are incomplete or don’t count are exactly the things they’ll tout again to say they’re doing a great job.
Leftists need to get an objective set of metrics together and then consistently grade all policymakers on them. I also think that it’s not solely (or even mostly) up to the president to determine economic policy. Presidents have an effect, for sure, but it’s largely stuff passed through the Congress that impacts the economy.
Well said. In essence, perfections becomes the enemy of good. Because leftists frankly tend to be more informed on the nuances of the economy — and especially what impacts the poor and middle-class — they have more specific demands. Which is fine, but we must always remember that Republicans will never care about those things; whereas we’re seeing legitimate progress and a reshaping of the Democratic platform in just the last 10 years.
People of a certain level and type of education think data and policies mean more than sentiment and messaging. But for many,t he data is secondary. You can see my comment on gas prices and unemployment being rooted in data and vibes. But the vibes for most people are what matters. And the vibes on election day are what matter most to undecided voters. I don’t think either party really gets the sense of dread that most people have and may never get it.
Which midterm are you talking about? I’m assuming you’re talking about the 2018 mid-term when Democrats picked up 41 seats since they lost the House in 2022. But another way of looking at the last five midterms, you see the midterms going to the party that is not the president’s. So I don’t think that the 2018 midterms provide a great reference point for the presidential election. Additionally, those gains in the 2018 election have slowly eroded giving control in the house to the Republicans.
But I wanted to address your strategy first and foremost since you address messaging. The projected map has Biden at 226, Trump at 235, and 77 to close to call. Those 77 electoral votes are spread across six states:
- Nevada (6 electoral votes)
- Arizona (11)
- Wisconsin (10)
- Michigan (15)
- Pennsylvania (19)
- Georgia (16)
In 2020, all six went Biden by less than 5%. In the 2022 midterm, Republicans gained seats in the house from Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia. If those three switch to Trump, Trump wins with 272. Having a record showing in California or New York does little to help with these strategic areas.
I’m not too certain what matters to the voters in these six states, but in Arizona, the BoRDEr cRiSis, as you condescendingly noted, probably matters to them. In all six of those states, you’ll need a get out a vote drive to convince people to vibe with Biden. Usually those people are young and have a little more free time. But not when they see a genocide unfolding in Palestine and the Biden administration being complicit. Are the Arab Americans of Deerborn, MI going to come out and vote for Biden and Tlaib again? Will Tlaib stump for Biden? Are young Blacks in Atlanta or Philly going to come out in droves for Biden? I don’t know.
I don’t know what ground work the DNC has been doing, but I hope they’ve built a trusted network to get people to the polls. Either way, I don’t think the “Republicans are fucked”. It think we are looking at a close election again.
I’d wager we can simply call vibes the right-wing grip on shallow political talking-points at the national level, for which they’re pretty effective at admittedly. Such is the nature that lies and bullshit are easier to spread than the complexity of truth & reality. So in that respect, sure, there are many people who don’t have the vibe or feel the sentiment that things are going well — not because the data is wrong, but simply because they live in an alternate reality; an echo-chamber. A place where that data just doesn’t exist.
There is, frankly, little I can think of that we can do to reach these people. On the other hand, I think Donald has already cast a wide net and those who were trump supporters remain trump supporters (minus the dead ones from old boomers dying, covid, etc.). Yeah he’s making sligh tinroads with the likes of certain Hispanic populations — mostly in Florida and Texas, but Nevada is up in the air. The question is whether these inroads outpace the influx of Gen Z and Millennials who overall lean Dem.
Actually I am referring to 2022 midterms, because as you said – the midterms tend to go to the party not the President’s; and if we compare either 2010 or 2014 to 2022, then Democrats vastly overperformed in 2022, turning what was coined the “red wave,” to at best a red tinkle, or even a blue tinkle depending on what you prioritize. Because of the reversal of Roe, youth showed up and offset what could’ve otherwise been a disastrous midterm during a rough economy. We won key Secretary of State positions, Governorships, and expanded a lead in the Senate. Yes, lost the House, true. Though not by much.
If Democratic turnout meets 2020 or 2022 levels, which it should, then I think Biden is in a stronger position now than he was in 2020 due to:
- Having (and thus no longer going against) incumbent advantage.
- A more united Democratic party (than the brutal 2020 Dem primaries)
- Reversal of Roe being a massive boost in turnout
- Being honest here: There’s good reason Republicans fear a Taylor Swift endorsement and voter registration drive.
- Both covid recovery and the economy are objectively better now than 2022 and overall improved across the course of Biden’s Presidency
- 91 criminal charges across 4 Grand Jury indictments will do nothing for Trumpers, but it will be a consideration for independents/moderates/swing-voters, and the polling generally agrees: More than half of Independents polled believe Trump is guilty, and 27% don’t know. Hell, even 14% of Republicans think he’s guilty..
In the absence of major economic issues, I predict the priorities of preserving Democracy, Justice, and Women’s Rights will rise to forefront – especially after campaign spending really kicks off.
It’s really not that big of an issue. It’s no different than the “mIGRanT CaRaVaN” that Donnie tried to fearmonger with as he pulled National Guard from their Thanksgiving dinners to try to drum up hysteria… Which turned out to be nothing. Hell even of the recent MAGA convoy themselves arrived and are confused..
So, what exactly is going in favor for Republicans compared to past election cycles…? The age issue remains a constant with both Presidents. I “condescendingly” wrote it that way because it’s patently a manufactured crisis. There are myriad issues that far exceed in this in impact to Americans overall. Yet I admit that the “vibe” right-wing media projects has this “BoRDeR CriSis” sticking even with some Independents and Democrats. Hence why Biden in a stroke of genius called the bluff of Republicans by giving them everything they wanted, and now they stumble to save face and figure out a way to not pass the legislation because Donald Trump told them not to because it’s literally his only attack going into 2024. Thus, Biden just neutered it.
But not when they see a genocide unfolding in Palestine and the Biden administration being complicit. Are the Arab Americans of Deerborn, MI going to come out and vote for Biden and Tlaib again? Will Tlaib stump for Biden? Are young Blacks in Atlanta or Philly going to come out in droves for Biden? I don’t know.
These are pretty small groups; the BoTh SiDeS false equivalence fallacy is losing its muster as more and more people are made aware of classic wedge-driving techniques during these election cycles. At the end of the day, Biden has already significantly shifted his tone with Israel, and will these people be foolish enough to think Trump won’t be an order-of-magnitude worse in his revocation of rights and complicity in genocides? (Recall, Trump said he’d block all Palestinian refugees… That really sat well with Muslims last time he tried that, didn’t it?). What about Ukraine? We know Trump sucks up to Putin… Will people opt to not vote or vote for Trump, knowing he’ll leave Ukraine hanging? I don’t think so.
I’m not going to say this is a slam-dunk, but I absolutely am more confident now than I was in 2020, or 2022.
So two things and I’ll let it be.
First, the migration issue has gained traction among voters in swing states [2]. Our system doesn’t reward the most popular candidste, but the one who can garner the most votes by state.
Swing states matter. And small, undecided groups in swing states matter most.
All the data and risk assessment mean very little. Politics are emotional. They are in the pain of today and worries of tomorrow.
I think your confidence is on shaky ground. And worry that Biden and the Democrats aren’t doing enough of the right things to be seen as better than anything else.
Well I think we’ve both said our piece and it’s just a matter of time now before speculation turns history. Perhaps more productively we need to ask how we can increase the odds Biden wins by even more, which I’m not opposed.
Well yeah all those stats look great but the problem is that inflated housing just undoes them.
China is coincidentally also facing their economic issues from their massively inflated housing market with Evergrande (again?) collapsing
For sure, completely agree it needs addressed. But like most things, the origin of this housing crisis largely falls on Republicans. Here’s what I’d do if I were Democratic strategists going into this year. Pivots. Lots of pivots.
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If Republicans push back on Gun Control talk, you go, "okay, if you don’t want to solve that and deflect, then let’s solve root problems like societal stress, education, single-payer healthcare, and guaranteed access to a therapist at any age
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If republicans push back on the boRDeR cRiSis, (a) point out the net-positive economic impact these hard workers fleeing crime & poverty have while (b) pivoting to the domestic terrorist threat from right-wing extremists home-grown here in the US that are the #1 threat per the DOJ.
Combined with the border crisis and affordable housing, Democrats need to go, "Why focus on the small fish at the border and not the foreign investors from China, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia who’ve bought up large swaths of land, stifling the American dream? Hell even the King of Jordan owns 2 Beach-front Malibu properties. Look at all the real estate investors and AirBNB jacking up the prices.
Most of the housing crisis needs to be solved at the local level. Zone for density, support social housing (where the city builds the houses rather than developers), design walkable neighborhoods, and support public transportation.
The federal government can play with interest rates, regulate banks, and provide funding for cities to do the above. It certainly affects things, but it’s highly abstracted from the actual work of getting more people into affordable housing.
I agree zoning is a big one.
There are some top-down factors that need to be addressed in my view; chief among them is cracking down on rental properties, and foreign investors/ownership.
Another facet to this is the deterioration of small and rural communities across the country. We have a massive amount of land and yet the population density in certain hot-spots is off the charts. In this respect, I think we need an investment in bridging the rural-city divide. That means promoting work-from home jobs with federal tax incentives, high-speed rail infrastructure akin to the Interstate system that helps link the rural communities to the cities, and high-speed internet for all akin to the investments FDR made for rural communities in bringing electricity to the masses (The REA).
The ultimate effect of this will be de-congest cities where stress is high, bring people closer to nature, and tap into unused land and foster smaller more tightly-knit communities that aren’t so disconnected from the world.
Democrats aren’t going to fix shit lol they’re just going to bail out the banks again after the economy collapses like Obama did in 2008.
And then pepper spray the protestors on Wall Street
… That was a University police officer on UC Davis campus in California and literally had zero to do with Democrats’ direction, lmao. Wtf you smoking this early?
And don’t care — One side is objectively orders-of-magnitude worse. Progress or damage-control, it makes little difference to me.
Them protesting against the direction of Obama bailing out the big banks?
Seems kinda relevant.
One side is objectively worse but you don’t have to spread the fairy tale that Democrats are going to ever fix anything. They are just slightly less worse.
There’s also NYPD cops pepperspraying the protestors if you like that one more but the picture doesn’t look as funny:
New York City settles Occupy Wall Street pepper spray lawsuit for $50,001
Protester Kelly Schomburg filed suit after NYPD officer Anthony Bologna pepper-sprayed a group of protesters in 2011, when Schomburg was 18 years old
I’m certain the lives of these people would’ve totally improved if the banks and economy completely collapsed, right? As with most things, the direction and anger of these Occupy protests — which I was a part of — had a long list of grievances including “banks got bailed out, we got sold out.” But universally all these problems are squarely of Republican origin; and their solutions are almost all squarely obstructed by Republicans.
After all these years, do people forget that Democrats and Obama only had a filibuster-proof control of Congress for literally only months early in his first term? These protests came after the disastrous 2010 midterm election when many of these Occupy Wall Street protesters stayed home and let the Tea Party (pre-MAGA if you’re unfamiliar) take control of Congress with the Freedom Caucus and other bullshit. So that sure did wonders for all the bankers, didn’t it?
I’ll say they’re considerably-less worse. Obama sympathized with Occupy Wall street. I wonder what Trump would’ve done… Send in FBI vans like he did in Portland?
Bank bailouts got signed in by Bush though…wtf?
Both of them bailed out the banks. This is a both sides thing.
01/12/2009 11:39 AM EST
At Obama’s request, Bush has agreed to ask Congress for the second $350 billion of the $700 billion financial bailout.
Also Obama was the guy dictatoring against Occupy Wall Street.
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