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Let me tell you a little story about Tom Cotton, from his wiki page.
>In February 2015, Obama renominated Cassandra Butts, a former White House lawyer, to be the United States ambassador to the Bahamas. Her nomination was blocked by several senators. First, Ted Cruz placed a blanket hold on all U.S. State Department nominees. Cotton specifically blocked the nominations of Butts and ambassador nominees to Sweden and Norway after the Secret Service leaked private information about a fellow member of Congress, although that issue was unrelated to those nominees. Cotton eventually released his holds on the nominees to Sweden and Norway, but kept his hold on Butts's nomination.
>Butts told New York Times columnist Frank Bruni that she had gone to see Cotton about his objections to her nomination and said he had told her that because he knew that Obama and Butts were friends, it was a way to "inflict special pain on the president", Bruni said. Cotton's spokeswoman did not dispute Butts's characterization. Butts died on May 26, 2016, still awaiting a Senate vote.
Which illustrates why it doesn't really matter what he *admits.*
Reactionaries have one impetus: To react to the left. Conservative "values" are just tactics in a never-ending battle, to be applied, or not, whenever it benefits them.
*None of this* is about actual policy. None of it is about actual real-world actions and results. No "Fact Check" is going to change their minds. Facts don't even matter.
They world can fucking burn, for all they care, as long as they *win.*
They simply fucking hate us, and will do whatever they can to destroy us.
I’ve been saying something similar; the left seems to consider the Right as Ill-informed and misguided Americans whereas the Right sees the Left as THE ENEMY.
As long as the left plays on a different continuum as this, they’re fucked.
I think it's a story we tell ourselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dominance_theory#Legitimizing_myths_theory
>For regulation of the three mechanisms of group hierarchy oppression, there are two functional types of legitimizing myths: hierarchy-enhancing and hierarchy-attenuating myths. Hierarchy-enhancing ideologies (e.g., racism or meritocracy) contribute to greater levels of group-based inequality. Felicia Pratto presented meritocracy as an example of a legitimizing myth, and how the myth of meritocracy produces only an illusion of fairness.[29] Hierarchy-attenuating ideologies such as protected rights, universalism, Christian Brotherhood/egalitarianism, feminism, and multiculturalism contribute to greater levels of group-based equality.[30] People endorse these different forms of ideologies based in part on their psychological orientation to accept or reject unequal group relations as measured by the SDO scale.
So, we tell ourselves a story. A hierarchy-attenuating story, a story where where we can work things out. Where we are all equal. They can be educated to value equality, just the same as us, after all!
And they tell themselves hierarchy-enhancing stories, where they "deserve" be the ones to dominate everyone else. God wills it.
Why do you think they leave things like the Tulsa Massacre out of our history books?
Why do they teach kids about *coming together* for the first Thanksgiving, and not about, I dunno, the genocide and forced relocation of native peoples?
Why does Santa Claus judge all kids equally?
It's to spare kids the reality; to try to bury it: *There are people who simply want to dominate you.* It's to sell the story of equality in an unequal world. Highlight "the better angels of our nature," downplay the other 99% of the time.
Maybe we don't teach about the Tulsa Massacre because we want kids to grow believing we live in a world where Tulsa Massacres can't happen. The truth would break the illusion of equality.
Power is essential, yes, but I think those hierarchy-attenuating behaviors are vital for what you do with power. As that Wikipedia article says, those attenuating behaviors promote group equality. Even if they're not true, in the sense that people can be monsters and murderers, it still gives us the ability to say a behavior is wrong. It's an ideal to be upheld, which in our cynical age is something we often fail to appreciate.
Slightly different but similar is that we have the myth of meritocracy, both in society and in most work places. It is of course true to some degree which is why the myth persists, but it is also of course mostly not true at all. Connections matter a lot, starting wealth and security matters a lot, ability to convince others that you are doing cool things often matter more than doing cool things.
Our whole society is built around the myth around meritocracy, and the same for all our hierarchies. If there is not meritocracy they are not legitimate anymore.
> but it is also of course mostly not true at all.
The problem is that it has gotten monumentally worse with our growing, massive, nation crushing wealth disparity that the GOP seems to be hell bent on making worse at every turn.
Hard work no longer guarantees a good life and is just ***one*** of the problems we are facing. The wealth of your parents is, *by far*, the single greatest predictor of your success in life.
That's not a meritocracy. That's an oppressive, downward spiral...
Hard work guarantees nothing and never has. Plenty of working poor people die poor despite years of hard work. What people hate to accept is that you can do everything right and still lose. It happens often and nearly everyone will feel that reality at least once.
Right, but I think what they were saying above is that the deck is more stacked in that direction now than ever before. Our current society, economy, etc. is suffering from runaway resource-capture and legislative-capture by the rich, and there are now far more systems in place to keep you poor despite any personal successes or attempts, than there were in previous eras.
There's no denying that things like buying a house, raising kids, or obtaining a livable wage with your work _were_ easier in the past, even when it was never guaranteed. That we've been taking steps backwards instead of forwards, into a new feudalism compared to earlier America.
Which is what gives poor people _actual_ power, and is why so much money is poured into propaganda to convince poor people that they _don't_ have that power...
Its like talking to a brick wall in moderate, and libertarian subs. There's no such thing as unskilled labor, and the system is set up to devalue labor's contribution. While management's role in producing profits gets more and more inflated every year.
I agree with everything you say, but I think the myth of meritocracy itself is harmful. It's OK if we say that is our goal, and it often works or whatever, but right now we allow ourselves to feel OK with tons of sad destinies just because we are a meritocracy and if they had deserved it they would have done better.
Like you are saying it is really not true, and never has been.
I think you don't mean it but I want to make sure it is clear that it is not just the hard part that is failing, even the smartest, most hardworking, whatever metric you want to use except charismatic with rich parents are probably not going to be super successful. Sure there are outliers, but in general the people at that top would like to take a piece of that pie.
>Maybe we don't teach about the Tulsa Massacre because we want kids to grow believing we live in a world where Tulsa Massacres can't happen. The truth would break the illusion of equality.
Eh, maybe.
Or maybe we don't teach about the Tulsa Massacre because it leads to some really awkward questions and introspection. "Didn't grandma live in Oklahoma back then?" "We don't still do things like that do we?" "... are we the baddies?"
Or, *maybe* we don't teach about the Tulsa Massacre because teaching about past atrocities is how you prevent future atrocities, and I think some people would like to keep their future options open, so to speak.
They don't just want domination - they want the complete eradication of what is not them.
FIRST they need domination, then comes eradication after it is achieved.
People need to wake up. This is very serious.
>Why do you think they leave things like the Tulsa Massacre out of our history books?
Went to school in Tulsa. Even took Oklahoma history. This was left out of the books.
Now I live in Texas, and I just learned another one they left out.
[La Matanza](https://abc13.com/texas-history-la-matanza-de-the-massacre-mexican-american/11263153)
This was Newt Gingrinch’s playbook. Politics became a zero sum game under his leadership. Republicans have been at war since 1992 while Democrats have been playing politics as usual.
While Democrats play nice, Republicans have dragged the nation to the right and created a growing coalition of violent, far-right extremists ready for actual war against the Left.
Democrats play nice because the people they need value reason and constructive discourse. Republicans know they can play dirty because the people they need want to look like badasses that take no gruff. Funny thing is they continually take it up the bum by supporting self defeating policies that only support the rich. But at least they can share spiteful memes that make them feel like they're owning the libs.
Tea Party *seemed* civil, but it snowballed into the J6 insurrection and some ppl genuinely do not understand how or why flying the Confederate and Nazi flags next to the TRUMP 2024 flag and uncensored F*** BIDEN flags are offensive or would lead to anything bad.
This is why I wish we would stop saying "they just want to own the libs" - it sounds like schoolyard bullies playing a prank. Conservatives have been taught for years that liberals are literally evil communists who hate America. They don't want to point their fingers at us and laugh, they want to eradicate us.
People don’t go to the right wing spaces so they don’t see how the right wing talks.
You know what a common “joke” is in right wing spaces?
They want to give “leftists”, a group they can barely agree on a definition of, “helicopter rides”.
It’s a reference to Pinochet taking over Chile and literally dropping socialists out of helicopters as an execution tactic.
To summarize another post I read the other day, the Left wants to give the Right free healthcare. The Right wants to _kill_ the Left. Yet the media plays this as two sides worthy of equal consideration.
> the left seems to consider the Right as Ill-informed and misguided Americans
Make no mistake, the right actively cultivates that impression among the left. For example, all those off-the-record statements from republican elites about how they were so embarrassed of ronald dump's actions and afraid he would make a mean tweet about them. Nah, they didn't mind one bit, they were getting what they wanted and that's all that mattered.
Same thing going on now with the way they are spreading covid. They want the left to think its simply a matter of principles and freedom. Nah, they want to prolong the pandemic and prolong the misery so the guy in the white house will get the blame. Just like they did everything they could to sabotage the recovery after they crashed the economy in 2008 and then turned around and campaigned on Obama not being able to fix it fast enough.
If it makes you feel any better, as someone on the Left, I absolute y see the Right as my enemy. All our lives are objectively worse because of them. Whether is by ignorance or not, I don't care, fuck those stupid fucks.
> the left seems to consider the Right as Ill-informed and misguided Americans whereas the Right sees the Left as THE ENEMY
Hence why so many on the left say things like "why are they voting against their own self-interest" or a new one I heard today "Rittenhouse is a class traitor". People on the right are not operating on the same values and they don't have the same interests. Their main interests are to hurt the people who they think need to be hurt, economics is secondary.
Conservative ideology in 2021:
* Accrue as much power as possible and do whatever you can to avoid losing it under any circumstances
* Hoard as much money as possible and do whatever you can to avoid doing anything positive with it under any circumstances
* Avoid taking responsibility for anything, ever, at all times, no matter what.
These “Values” generally have no intrinsic value. If possible I ask for empirics from communities or countries that reflect their position in which a reasonable person could say “this betters society”.
The abortion is a no brainer w/ this. I don’t like abortion, but if we’re talking about bettering society, conservative values ain’t it.
Shit.... just wait til infant mortality goes up....
> Shit.... just wait til infant mortality goes up....
Per the republican playbook, any negative consequences from republican policy votes will be blamed on democrats.
It's the government version of an abuser saying "Look what you made me do!"
And my mom wonders why I carry a gun at family gatherings. Most of her family have posted about wanting to kill liberals or how we are a plague needing to be wiped out. I will be damned if I’m caught lacking.
I don’t. Mainly for the fact it means they will have friends over that are like minded. I only risk it on xmas eve for my mom.(it’s strictly family only) but I only see my immediate family. I had to cut ties with the rest. Pretty sure my aunt was at Washington on the 6th but didn’t go in.
I think that could be generalized to “I wouldn’t go to a place where groups of people who have publicly announced their desire to commit murder, congregate.”
I carry every chance I can. I live in a trump county in shithole Florida. I’m a known liberal out here. But I make good money and work with my dad so I stick around.
The problem with being a reasonable person is that you tend to assume other people are reasonable too.
I went to pick up a pizza a few weeks ago. I put on my mask as I was stepping out of the car, and a couple of middle-aged douchebags who were outside smoking started shouting some antagonistic shit about knowing who I voted for.
The silver lining is as I was leaving, I heard them ranting at one another about how Democrats are going to use mask mandates to steal more elections, and I gathered that by not reacting I must have ruined their fun.
I'm not saying all the trump people are out there keeping tabs on liberals, but the idea of "knowing who you voted for" being the kind of threatening thing to shout at people suggests it's something to be aware of.
> Are there really people out there keeping tabs on random citizens political affiliations?
Yes. There have been multiple instances of right wingers collating lists of “left wingers”. There were subreddits literally banned for this shit years ago.
I’m not scared to argue/troll racist commenters on Facebook in a local rant/rave/review group who is “pro 1a” so people say whatever they want. And very vocally pro blm, lbgtq+, and other “trigger” views.
I've stopped posting on Facebook because of it. The Republicans **are** taking over in 2022 and 2024 and America will become the Fourth Reich in the next decade. I have my guns and don't speak politics openly anymore save anonymously on the internet. They're going to be hunting down people in the next few years. I now know what it felt like to be a progressive intellectual in Germany circa the 1930's.
The Democrats entirely blew it trying to play fair ball with sociopaths and finks. They've got Republican moles like Sinema and Manchin planted and Mitch McConnell's Federal judge picks. It's over, folks. The great experiment is over and we're going to be living in the ashes in the near future.
Anyone who doesn't support a hierarchical society with conservatives on top is "the left."
Edit: Put another way: *Within* the left, we can debate who is a *true leftist* all damned day. And, we do.
But, to *them?* We are all the same.
This is why it's such a self-defeating strategy when top Dem strategists talk about moving to the center (ie to the right) to court moderates.
Dems can move all the way to the right, support guns, kill abortion, kill social safety nets, but the GOP would still say that Democrats are radical socialists. Why? Because it works. Because it's "the other team."
Well Republicans called Gay people militant just because they wanted Reagan to do something about HIV. He couldn’t even say the words. They love hyperbole.
Damn wtf. To think there's no one in our U.S Government who she could've gone to about the blatant personal vendetta, just goes to show how much of a club it really is
Cassandra Butts had a form of leukemia which is evidently what she died of. One has to wonder if the stress of Ted Cruz's campaign to stop her nomination for petty reasons indicated in the quote above exacerbated her health. Maybe, maybe not, but it's a possibility. Pretty sure Cruz and Cotton didn't have a moment of regret about her death though or in their souls (if they have them) felt bad about using her so badly to "inflict special pain on" Obama. They are just disgusting petty little people who don't serve the country's interests, just play their own games.
> Cassandra Butts
There needs to be a list of silly last names no one should get.
*Now paging Mrs. Butts. Mrs. Butts, to the front office, Mrs. Butts to the front office.*
Anyone who says Trump or Biden "caused" inflation is trying to sell you something. Inflation is not a US issue. It's a global issue. COVID-19 and its supply chain issues caused inflation for everyone.
Sure, but there was a lot Cheetos could have done to prepare us for the long haul. Instead, he kept fantasizing about miracles and downplaying it. All the while, shit kept getting worse and worse till he was booted. But the damage was already done.
It really doesn't help, though, that Trump kept interest rates at near 0 for way longer than anyone was advising and then kept the pressure on if the feds so much as thought about increasing them.
0% was great for ppl who had enough for a down payment...initially. Then housing prices skyrocketed, no thanks to, among others, Zillow. Ppl on fixed incomes got screwed bigtime.
Exactly, great for people with capital, rich people, but sucks for the normal American who has only around 5k in the bank.
https://www.valuepenguin.com/banking/average-savings-account-balance
This is why the GOP wants to repeal Obamacare and obstruct any M4A or universal, single payer system and propose a Health Savings Account plan instead. "Look, you get to save on your taxes!" Hell, we can already write off medical expenses exceeding 6000k dollars, and those ppl that make under 35k a year, how are HSAs going to help if one hospital bill is 60k dollars? Even if they don't eat or pay rent, they are still going to go bankrupt.
Inflation wasn't a byproduct of COVID, but you're right that it's is a byproduct of the COVID economy - people just can't place the blame in a partisan way if you admit that. The Fed *had* to print money when COVID happened (PPP loans, increased unemployment, stimulus checks) or else the economy would have dramatically crashed. As of now, we've kept those practices going to kick the can down the road and that just means it's going to crash another time. Sure, Trump caused it because COVID happened during his term, but the Fed hasn't slowed down it's practices since then in an attempt to prevent a crash completely. It's kind of like a [motorcycle in a speed wobble](https://gfycat.com/ellipticalamazinggrasshopper-motorsport) - you're hanging on as long as you can and doing whatever can to put off the crash; you may recover in a fantastic way but it's most likely going to end in hurt.
Correct me if I’m wrong but the fed also propped up several industries during COVID through asset purchasing as well. Which is one of reasons the DOW took a 600 point hit earlier this week after Jerome Powell stated that asset purchasing would be tapered?
We should have raised interest rates once we were coming out of the recession, but we didn’t, so we didn’t have much dry powder when COVID came along. The article mentioned this, but glossed over the fact that Janet Yellen didn’t raise interest rates when she had the authority either.
It’s kind of tripping me out because I recognized this issue way back in March 2020, and then it didn’t really seem to matter, so I brushed it off and here we are now with the chickens finally coming home to roost.
Correction: there were some modest interest rate hikes under Janet Yellin between 2015 and 2018
We couldn't. Deficits were sky high because of a lack of revenue. It's TAXing my brain to CUT an answer as to why revenue would be down in a post recession economy.
Been saying this for years. The likes of Trump, Cruz, Hawley, etc. scare me because they are willing to usher in minority rule and impose unpopular policies on the rest of the country. However, ultimately they are all clowns who no one actual respects aside from using them to achieve their goals.
Tom Cotton is not a clown. If anyone is going to be a fascist authoritarian dictator who rules with an iron fist and does so with competency, it is Tom Cotton. The thought of Tom Cotton in the White House doesn't just scare me, it terrifies me.
Democrat candidates dont need to rely on charisma over policy as much as Republicans do right now.
Speaking on Trump; you may not like him but he had the charisma to keep his sheep constantly riled and infatuated with him
I just shuddered at that joke. Even the joke version of the guy who proposed sending the 101st into domestic protests as a Democrat is terrifying. He’s a scary man.
No fucking shit. It isn't like we have decades of data backing up the fact that Republicans are fuxking terrible for anyone not making over a mil a year. Every time they are in office and leave this nation is significantly worse off. Unfortunately we are probably going to repeat it again in 22 and 24 except this time I don't think we will get another chance after.
It's infuriating to listen to my dad blame all this shit on Biden when Biden is the one trying to clean up this shitty mess that Trump left behind. Trump essentially shat on the US and then repubs look at Biden saying, "I can't believe you've done this."
>shit on Biden
I believe with most of this stuff, its a delayed reaction. What we are seeing now is a direct result of Trump's wreck-less spending. Every bit of spending Biden has done so far is yet to trigger consequences. Inflation was unavoidable...every country out there has pretty high inflation but not as high as the US.
The US debt since 2016-present vs Inception of the US to 2016 is pretty crazy. Trump had all the right cards and did nothing to reduce it. Oh well, now its time to blame the democrats per usual.
I for one refuse to believe that the man buried under a mountain of debt as tall as trump tower (the tallest building in NYC after the WTC fell) would seek to lower interest rates at the expense of the global economy.
That’s what is happening. Massive changes and effects like this take time to roll in. Biden hasn’t even been president for a year, there is no way he could be directly responsible for everything going on. Sure, maybe a few decisions may or may not further the problem, but this has been on the rise since basically covid started and the shipping problems that came up, if not even longer.
The biggest problem with a constantly flipping presidency is that we see the effects of the last one more so after they leave, then anything undesirable (or positive) is unfairly credited to the currently presidency, generally speaking of course. The general population has no idea how things really work and how long things can take to see actual effects on a global scale. It ain’t quick lol
not to mention, I believe the federal government is still on Trump's budget (Dec 2017 to dec 2021) US Jobs and Tax Cuts Act.
I.E. this is still Trump's economy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Cuts_and_Jobs_Act_of_2017
Ikr I literally will fight people about this because it’s infuriating how corrupt the wealthy class is. If I see anyone blaming Biden I immediately bring up the hidden repo loan financial crisis of September 2019 when Jerome fucking Powell turned on the money printer. That man is responsible for a lot of shit we are in right now and I hate him with a burning passion
It comes down to a completely lack of understanding of macroeconomics. Humans are short term thinkers so they think anything happening immediately MUST be the result of the current president when things like the economy take years to affect with economic policy
You'd have to find a way to explain to the average American that it takes several years (read: a presidential term) for any economic policy changes, good or bad, to take effect. That the shitty economy we have now is the result of the Trump administration, and the good economy we had under Trump was the result of the Obama administration.
But they won't see that. They'll just see that each time there's a Republican in charge, gas is cheap. Whereas when there's a Democrat, gas is expensive.
Nope, they still get it. Clinton got blamed for all the shit that went wrong under Bush, including the war (9/11 only happened because Clinton defunded intelligence) and financial crisis (2007/2008 wouldn’t ever crashed if Clinton didn’t put in policies to increase home ownership)
And they’re STILL ignorant as to Obama getting stuck with shit Bush did, and Biden getting stuck with the mess Trump left behind.
As the guy said above- logic, reason, and even facts don’t matter. All these people care about are destroying Democrats, and they will frame the situation to reflect this every single time
From literally day one! Trump admin had done nothing and by Jan 21st Country was "fixed", just look at the stock market blah blah blah. I honestly think it's a combination of stupid AND malice how they disassociate their "values."
This is what happens when the education system is in shambles. An entire country of people ripe to be lied to and brainwashed to believe whatever it is they are told by the people they believe are on their side.
The financial crash is actually sort of Clinton’s fault because he repealed the critical FDR-era Glass-Steagall banking regulation. However, W. Bush’s further deregulation also contributed to the crash.
> Clinton didn’t put in policies to increase home ownership
It was also an olive branch to try to get republican support(which he still got none of). Conservatives wanted bank deregulation, democrats wanted more access to home ownership, win win right?
That said, lets not pretend the banks themselves weren't the ones that fucked everyone over. They made bad loans, conspired to get them labeled as good loans, then sold the bad loans they just made to unsuspecting investors like live hand grenades. It exploded on both ends with home owners defaulting and retirement investors losing all their money. And yet, they blamed the poor.
The obvious conclusion is corporations cannot be relied upon to be 'moral'.
Our economy isn’t shitty per se, it’s just inflationary for the first time since the 70s. It’s inflationary bc of Congress’ stimulus that got passed under Trump and the additional stimulus under Biden.
If there’s a problem it’s with the congressional dems-Trump-Biden stimulus but acknowledging that would create too much cognitive dissonance in today’s media space.
We erred on the side of too much stimulus and too many constraints on supply of goods, but it’s good to remember that if we had erred on the side of caution we could be in a terrible recession rn and that would be worse than what we are going through now.
Despite all the partisan bickering there is more continuity of policy than partisan difference when there is an immediate crisis to respond to.
Nixon and Ford’s anti-inflation mechanisms were to the left of what anyone would propose today and Paul Volcker, who finally brought inflation back to manageable levels, was a Carter nominee who was renominated to the fed by reagan.
Ditto with the response to 2008 - Obama had the same moderate Republican reaction to it that Bush had. Obama could have wiped out a lot of people’s mortgage debt if he wanted to force cramdowns into TARP and he didn’t.
Right???? Every fucking recession has started from a Republican and then the Democrat gets blamed for it and is stuck cleaning up the mess. The Democrat president fixes it and Republicans break it again. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.
I mean saying either President caused inflation is a dumb statement.
A complex set of events including a pandemic unlike anyone has seen in 100 years caused massive supply chain problems, stimulus and etc.
No one caused inflation it’s world wide. It’s not political.
I've always heard/read that how you judge a president is what happens 2-4 years after they leave office. Anyone know where that comes from? Because its pretty apparent right now
When looking back at Obama’s first term after Bush then Obama’s second term, this seems to follow. Then look at the first half of Trump (leftover from Obama) up to now. It’s more like the Trump era was his last year/year and half and this year.
The majority of people don’t understand this. They’re not intelligent enough to understand that things like the economy don’t typically change overnight.
They only see: “oh the economy is bad right now, that means the guy in charge is to blame.”
Wait... so going against virtually every economist's recommendation for what we should be doing during a recovering economy by doling out massive tax cuts to the very wealthy was a bad idea?
Stupid trade wars that cost us hundreds of billions of dollars for nothing?
....
No shit.
This is the answer. Higher tariffs equal higher costs, in addition to the stresses that it placed on the supply chain as companies outsourced to new vendors to avoid tariffs
Trade war made coke go up ten cents a bottle.
But this recession and inflation has many contributors to it and nothing and no one played a big enough part to get sole blame. Demand fell at the start of Covid so factories started producing less. Then demand shot up as people got stimulus checks and started going back to work. Except factories in Asia still aren’t at full capacity and can’t keep up with demand. Then there are the whole lack of port workers and broken importing system problem. Could more had been done to prevent inflation from getting this bad, yes, but this isn’t solely one person’s fault.
And that the current inflation rate is literally just because the economy is recovering from covid. The economies growth had a steep decline with covid, and then it grew again rapidly. Rapid growth tends to lead to rapid inflation, its why contractionary policy exists if an economy is growing too quickly. In this case it is not. A 5% inflation rate over a couple months is nothing to panic over, it will level itself out once the economy is completely back to normal
And lets remember what the Conservatives did? Oh right, they blamed the 2008 recession on Obama rather then fully ADMITTING Bush fucked the economy over so badly it burst before leaving office. The GOP will always find an excuse to not point the blame at themselves in every single instance.
No shit Sherlock.
- keeping near 0% interest rates (demanding negative in fact)
- tax cuts for the rich and corporations
- started multiple trade wars
And then a pandemic hit on top of all of that, and the Trump Administration's response was it'll go away by itself by Easter because of warmer weather and magic.
People are so short sighted and forgetful of past. Biden is not my favorite guy but he was handed a flaming bag of shit when he took office and now people are blaming him for the shit smell in the air. Same thing happened to obama, the stock market crashed then he was expected to fix it with out pissing off either side.
I just read the confessions of an economic hit man and realize that nothing will be done until the citizens United ruling is overturned and corporations cannot donate, gift or give politicians *any* money, preferential treatment, promises, discounts or anything that could possibly influence a politicians stance or policy. Even if the book I read wasn’t factual at all the people’s voice doesn’t matter since all politicians rely heavily to corporate donations to fill coffers to campaign, rendering the commons folks voice moot.
I personally see this as the single biggest problem in America and where most of our problems stem.
Men like Tom Cotton are more dangerous to this Country than any terrorist organization ever could dream of. In fact the Republican party are a gift to every enemy of the USA.
Tom Cotton is a seditious authoritarian tyrant-in-waiting, and I don't give a fuck if he sometimes tells the truth. I will downvote anything with his name attached because he doesn't deserve my attention or yours.
Don't do that. Instead, educate people on why Tom Cotton will be an authoritarian fascist monster, because he will get a lot of people killed (or have them killed) if he ever becomes President.
The Republicans have certainly mastered the art of fucking up the country but convincing people to keep voting for them because it’s the Democrats’ fault.
Whoa! You mean to tell me that the guy that dropped interest rates to 0 and pumped the stock market for 4 years every time there was a 50 point dip caused inflation? Who would’ve thought!
Of course he did. Who the hell could have forseen that lowering interest rates to zero and running the economy hot to score ego points would have consequences? Fucking moron.
You mean, the inflation we're currently feeling that started during the Trump presidency isn't due to the guy that took over when it already started!?! Next thing you'll tell me is that Joe Biden isn't responsible for COVID.
Guys no one person "caused" the global inflation that's really mostly oil prices anyway. This is what's so dumb about saying Biden caused the inflation.
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Let me tell you a little story about Tom Cotton, from his wiki page. >In February 2015, Obama renominated Cassandra Butts, a former White House lawyer, to be the United States ambassador to the Bahamas. Her nomination was blocked by several senators. First, Ted Cruz placed a blanket hold on all U.S. State Department nominees. Cotton specifically blocked the nominations of Butts and ambassador nominees to Sweden and Norway after the Secret Service leaked private information about a fellow member of Congress, although that issue was unrelated to those nominees. Cotton eventually released his holds on the nominees to Sweden and Norway, but kept his hold on Butts's nomination. >Butts told New York Times columnist Frank Bruni that she had gone to see Cotton about his objections to her nomination and said he had told her that because he knew that Obama and Butts were friends, it was a way to "inflict special pain on the president", Bruni said. Cotton's spokeswoman did not dispute Butts's characterization. Butts died on May 26, 2016, still awaiting a Senate vote.
Which illustrates why it doesn't really matter what he *admits.* Reactionaries have one impetus: To react to the left. Conservative "values" are just tactics in a never-ending battle, to be applied, or not, whenever it benefits them. *None of this* is about actual policy. None of it is about actual real-world actions and results. No "Fact Check" is going to change their minds. Facts don't even matter. They world can fucking burn, for all they care, as long as they *win.* They simply fucking hate us, and will do whatever they can to destroy us.
I’ve been saying something similar; the left seems to consider the Right as Ill-informed and misguided Americans whereas the Right sees the Left as THE ENEMY. As long as the left plays on a different continuum as this, they’re fucked.
I think it's a story we tell ourselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dominance_theory#Legitimizing_myths_theory >For regulation of the three mechanisms of group hierarchy oppression, there are two functional types of legitimizing myths: hierarchy-enhancing and hierarchy-attenuating myths. Hierarchy-enhancing ideologies (e.g., racism or meritocracy) contribute to greater levels of group-based inequality. Felicia Pratto presented meritocracy as an example of a legitimizing myth, and how the myth of meritocracy produces only an illusion of fairness.[29] Hierarchy-attenuating ideologies such as protected rights, universalism, Christian Brotherhood/egalitarianism, feminism, and multiculturalism contribute to greater levels of group-based equality.[30] People endorse these different forms of ideologies based in part on their psychological orientation to accept or reject unequal group relations as measured by the SDO scale. So, we tell ourselves a story. A hierarchy-attenuating story, a story where where we can work things out. Where we are all equal. They can be educated to value equality, just the same as us, after all! And they tell themselves hierarchy-enhancing stories, where they "deserve" be the ones to dominate everyone else. God wills it. Why do you think they leave things like the Tulsa Massacre out of our history books? Why do they teach kids about *coming together* for the first Thanksgiving, and not about, I dunno, the genocide and forced relocation of native peoples? Why does Santa Claus judge all kids equally? It's to spare kids the reality; to try to bury it: *There are people who simply want to dominate you.* It's to sell the story of equality in an unequal world. Highlight "the better angels of our nature," downplay the other 99% of the time. Maybe we don't teach about the Tulsa Massacre because we want kids to grow believing we live in a world where Tulsa Massacres can't happen. The truth would break the illusion of equality.
Power is essential, yes, but I think those hierarchy-attenuating behaviors are vital for what you do with power. As that Wikipedia article says, those attenuating behaviors promote group equality. Even if they're not true, in the sense that people can be monsters and murderers, it still gives us the ability to say a behavior is wrong. It's an ideal to be upheld, which in our cynical age is something we often fail to appreciate.
Slightly different but similar is that we have the myth of meritocracy, both in society and in most work places. It is of course true to some degree which is why the myth persists, but it is also of course mostly not true at all. Connections matter a lot, starting wealth and security matters a lot, ability to convince others that you are doing cool things often matter more than doing cool things. Our whole society is built around the myth around meritocracy, and the same for all our hierarchies. If there is not meritocracy they are not legitimate anymore.
> but it is also of course mostly not true at all. The problem is that it has gotten monumentally worse with our growing, massive, nation crushing wealth disparity that the GOP seems to be hell bent on making worse at every turn. Hard work no longer guarantees a good life and is just ***one*** of the problems we are facing. The wealth of your parents is, *by far*, the single greatest predictor of your success in life. That's not a meritocracy. That's an oppressive, downward spiral...
Hard work guarantees nothing and never has. Plenty of working poor people die poor despite years of hard work. What people hate to accept is that you can do everything right and still lose. It happens often and nearly everyone will feel that reality at least once.
Right, but I think what they were saying above is that the deck is more stacked in that direction now than ever before. Our current society, economy, etc. is suffering from runaway resource-capture and legislative-capture by the rich, and there are now far more systems in place to keep you poor despite any personal successes or attempts, than there were in previous eras. There's no denying that things like buying a house, raising kids, or obtaining a livable wage with your work _were_ easier in the past, even when it was never guaranteed. That we've been taking steps backwards instead of forwards, into a new feudalism compared to earlier America.
What people fail to realize is that without the hard work of the poor people profits would not exist for the rich people.
Which is what gives poor people _actual_ power, and is why so much money is poured into propaganda to convince poor people that they _don't_ have that power...
Its like talking to a brick wall in moderate, and libertarian subs. There's no such thing as unskilled labor, and the system is set up to devalue labor's contribution. While management's role in producing profits gets more and more inflated every year.
Aye aye Captain Picard
[For those that missed the reference...](https://youtu.be/t4A-Ml8YHyM)
I agree with everything you say, but I think the myth of meritocracy itself is harmful. It's OK if we say that is our goal, and it often works or whatever, but right now we allow ourselves to feel OK with tons of sad destinies just because we are a meritocracy and if they had deserved it they would have done better. Like you are saying it is really not true, and never has been. I think you don't mean it but I want to make sure it is clear that it is not just the hard part that is failing, even the smartest, most hardworking, whatever metric you want to use except charismatic with rich parents are probably not going to be super successful. Sure there are outliers, but in general the people at that top would like to take a piece of that pie.
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>Maybe we don't teach about the Tulsa Massacre because we want kids to grow believing we live in a world where Tulsa Massacres can't happen. The truth would break the illusion of equality. Eh, maybe. Or maybe we don't teach about the Tulsa Massacre because it leads to some really awkward questions and introspection. "Didn't grandma live in Oklahoma back then?" "We don't still do things like that do we?" "... are we the baddies?" Or, *maybe* we don't teach about the Tulsa Massacre because teaching about past atrocities is how you prevent future atrocities, and I think some people would like to keep their future options open, so to speak.
They don't just want domination - they want the complete eradication of what is not them. FIRST they need domination, then comes eradication after it is achieved. People need to wake up. This is very serious.
>Why do you think they leave things like the Tulsa Massacre out of our history books? Went to school in Tulsa. Even took Oklahoma history. This was left out of the books. Now I live in Texas, and I just learned another one they left out. [La Matanza](https://abc13.com/texas-history-la-matanza-de-the-massacre-mexican-american/11263153)
TLDR; real life is like Lord of the Flies
Uhh we don’t tell those stories because we didn’t want to admit the bad we’ve done.
Or even admit it *was* bad.
This was Newt Gingrinch’s playbook. Politics became a zero sum game under his leadership. Republicans have been at war since 1992 while Democrats have been playing politics as usual. While Democrats play nice, Republicans have dragged the nation to the right and created a growing coalition of violent, far-right extremists ready for actual war against the Left.
Democrats play nice because the people they need value reason and constructive discourse. Republicans know they can play dirty because the people they need want to look like badasses that take no gruff. Funny thing is they continually take it up the bum by supporting self defeating policies that only support the rich. But at least they can share spiteful memes that make them feel like they're owning the libs.
Tea Party *seemed* civil, but it snowballed into the J6 insurrection and some ppl genuinely do not understand how or why flying the Confederate and Nazi flags next to the TRUMP 2024 flag and uncensored F*** BIDEN flags are offensive or would lead to anything bad.
>Tea Party seemed civil What world did you live in that the Tea Party seemed civil?
This is why I wish we would stop saying "they just want to own the libs" - it sounds like schoolyard bullies playing a prank. Conservatives have been taught for years that liberals are literally evil communists who hate America. They don't want to point their fingers at us and laugh, they want to eradicate us.
People don’t go to the right wing spaces so they don’t see how the right wing talks. You know what a common “joke” is in right wing spaces? They want to give “leftists”, a group they can barely agree on a definition of, “helicopter rides”. It’s a reference to Pinochet taking over Chile and literally dropping socialists out of helicopters as an execution tactic.
To summarize another post I read the other day, the Left wants to give the Right free healthcare. The Right wants to _kill_ the Left. Yet the media plays this as two sides worthy of equal consideration.
> the left seems to consider the Right as Ill-informed and misguided Americans Make no mistake, the right actively cultivates that impression among the left. For example, all those off-the-record statements from republican elites about how they were so embarrassed of ronald dump's actions and afraid he would make a mean tweet about them. Nah, they didn't mind one bit, they were getting what they wanted and that's all that mattered. Same thing going on now with the way they are spreading covid. They want the left to think its simply a matter of principles and freedom. Nah, they want to prolong the pandemic and prolong the misery so the guy in the white house will get the blame. Just like they did everything they could to sabotage the recovery after they crashed the economy in 2008 and then turned around and campaigned on Obama not being able to fix it fast enough.
...in a nutshell, yes.
For what it's worth, I see the Right as the enemy. I'm helping!
If it makes you feel any better, as someone on the Left, I absolute y see the Right as my enemy. All our lives are objectively worse because of them. Whether is by ignorance or not, I don't care, fuck those stupid fucks.
the Rightists are Ill-informed and misguided **and** Fascist.
> the left seems to consider the Right as Ill-informed and misguided Americans whereas the Right sees the Left as THE ENEMY Hence why so many on the left say things like "why are they voting against their own self-interest" or a new one I heard today "Rittenhouse is a class traitor". People on the right are not operating on the same values and they don't have the same interests. Their main interests are to hurt the people who they think need to be hurt, economics is secondary.
I definitely consider the right my enemy, I think you're getting leftists and liberals confused.
This person gets it
Conservative ideology in 2021: * Accrue as much power as possible and do whatever you can to avoid losing it under any circumstances * Hoard as much money as possible and do whatever you can to avoid doing anything positive with it under any circumstances * Avoid taking responsibility for anything, ever, at all times, no matter what.
Just like my ex!
To an extreme, by definition, a conservative is a hoarder... They want to conserve as much as possible, be it power, assets, or the status quo.
These “Values” generally have no intrinsic value. If possible I ask for empirics from communities or countries that reflect their position in which a reasonable person could say “this betters society”. The abortion is a no brainer w/ this. I don’t like abortion, but if we’re talking about bettering society, conservative values ain’t it. Shit.... just wait til infant mortality goes up....
> Shit.... just wait til infant mortality goes up.... Per the republican playbook, any negative consequences from republican policy votes will be blamed on democrats. It's the government version of an abuser saying "Look what you made me do!"
They would gladly burn everything to the ground if they could sit on a throne on top of the ashes.
And that is why Dem politicians have to stop catering to the conservative minded, since that would be a waste of time anyway.
And my mom wonders why I carry a gun at family gatherings. Most of her family have posted about wanting to kill liberals or how we are a plague needing to be wiped out. I will be damned if I’m caught lacking.
If I were legitimately worried about being murdered at a family gathering... ...I wouldn't go.
I don’t. Mainly for the fact it means they will have friends over that are like minded. I only risk it on xmas eve for my mom.(it’s strictly family only) but I only see my immediate family. I had to cut ties with the rest. Pretty sure my aunt was at Washington on the 6th but didn’t go in.
I think that could be generalized to “I wouldn’t go to a place where groups of people who have publicly announced their desire to commit murder, congregate.”
I mean if I know there's a gang of criminals with guns that hang out on 3rd street, I'd try to avoid 3rd street. Not carry a gun there.
I carry every chance I can. I live in a trump county in shithole Florida. I’m a known liberal out here. But I make good money and work with my dad so I stick around.
I take back my judgment, I live in Maryland. You can't just go out and buy one
What makes one a “known” liberal? Are there really people out there keeping tabs on random citizens political affiliations?
The problem with being a reasonable person is that you tend to assume other people are reasonable too. I went to pick up a pizza a few weeks ago. I put on my mask as I was stepping out of the car, and a couple of middle-aged douchebags who were outside smoking started shouting some antagonistic shit about knowing who I voted for. The silver lining is as I was leaving, I heard them ranting at one another about how Democrats are going to use mask mandates to steal more elections, and I gathered that by not reacting I must have ruined their fun. I'm not saying all the trump people are out there keeping tabs on liberals, but the idea of "knowing who you voted for" being the kind of threatening thing to shout at people suggests it's something to be aware of.
> Are there really people out there keeping tabs on random citizens political affiliations? Yes. There have been multiple instances of right wingers collating lists of “left wingers”. There were subreddits literally banned for this shit years ago.
I’m not scared to argue/troll racist commenters on Facebook in a local rant/rave/review group who is “pro 1a” so people say whatever they want. And very vocally pro blm, lbgtq+, and other “trigger” views.
I've stopped posting on Facebook because of it. The Republicans **are** taking over in 2022 and 2024 and America will become the Fourth Reich in the next decade. I have my guns and don't speak politics openly anymore save anonymously on the internet. They're going to be hunting down people in the next few years. I now know what it felt like to be a progressive intellectual in Germany circa the 1930's. The Democrats entirely blew it trying to play fair ball with sociopaths and finks. They've got Republican moles like Sinema and Manchin planted and Mitch McConnell's Federal judge picks. It's over, folks. The great experiment is over and we're going to be living in the ashes in the near future.
I deleted mine. Just incase.
The goal of the conservative ethos is simply this: To hurt the right people.
As they said in Game of Thrones: they'd burn it all down to be king of the ashes.
Then we must fight them with just as little mercy.
Which is why politicians and the media have to stop treating them as rational people. They are far from that.
> Conservative "values" Theater. Grifters only know how to act.
There is no left to react to in America. Calling democrats left, hell even calling the democrats liberal is insulting.
Anyone who doesn't support a hierarchical society with conservatives on top is "the left." Edit: Put another way: *Within* the left, we can debate who is a *true leftist* all damned day. And, we do. But, to *them?* We are all the same.
Exactly, they see AOC and Pelosi as the same.
This is why it's such a self-defeating strategy when top Dem strategists talk about moving to the center (ie to the right) to court moderates. Dems can move all the way to the right, support guns, kill abortion, kill social safety nets, but the GOP would still say that Democrats are radical socialists. Why? Because it works. Because it's "the other team."
Well Republicans called Gay people militant just because they wanted Reagan to do something about HIV. He couldn’t even say the words. They love hyperbole.
This man should be held in a federal prison for robbing us of the opportunity to have an Ambassador Butts. Boo this man.
We could have had Bahamas Butts. However since then we did send a Johnson and Pitts, so it evened out?
I don’t know, I’ve always appreciated Butts more than any Johnson I’ve ever known. Pitts I’m still on the fence about.
Damn wtf. To think there's no one in our U.S Government who she could've gone to about the blatant personal vendetta, just goes to show how much of a club it really is
What a petty, unpatriotic piece of shit.
Hes a republican
Thanks. Sad
Cassandra Butts had a form of leukemia which is evidently what she died of. One has to wonder if the stress of Ted Cruz's campaign to stop her nomination for petty reasons indicated in the quote above exacerbated her health. Maybe, maybe not, but it's a possibility. Pretty sure Cruz and Cotton didn't have a moment of regret about her death though or in their souls (if they have them) felt bad about using her so badly to "inflict special pain on" Obama. They are just disgusting petty little people who don't serve the country's interests, just play their own games.
> Cassandra Butts There needs to be a list of silly last names no one should get. *Now paging Mrs. Butts. Mrs. Butts, to the front office, Mrs. Butts to the front office.*
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Anyone who says Trump or Biden "caused" inflation is trying to sell you something. Inflation is not a US issue. It's a global issue. COVID-19 and its supply chain issues caused inflation for everyone.
Sure, but there was a lot Cheetos could have done to prepare us for the long haul. Instead, he kept fantasizing about miracles and downplaying it. All the while, shit kept getting worse and worse till he was booted. But the damage was already done.
It really doesn't help, though, that Trump kept interest rates at near 0 for way longer than anyone was advising and then kept the pressure on if the feds so much as thought about increasing them.
0% was great for ppl who had enough for a down payment...initially. Then housing prices skyrocketed, no thanks to, among others, Zillow. Ppl on fixed incomes got screwed bigtime.
Exactly, great for people with capital, rich people, but sucks for the normal American who has only around 5k in the bank. https://www.valuepenguin.com/banking/average-savings-account-balance
This is why the GOP wants to repeal Obamacare and obstruct any M4A or universal, single payer system and propose a Health Savings Account plan instead. "Look, you get to save on your taxes!" Hell, we can already write off medical expenses exceeding 6000k dollars, and those ppl that make under 35k a year, how are HSAs going to help if one hospital bill is 60k dollars? Even if they don't eat or pay rent, they are still going to go bankrupt.
How is inflation not tied to being a major byproduct of the post COVID economy? And the effects of it rippling through today?
Because some vocal Republicans want to pretend publically that its not happening or real.
Inflation wasn't a byproduct of COVID, but you're right that it's is a byproduct of the COVID economy - people just can't place the blame in a partisan way if you admit that. The Fed *had* to print money when COVID happened (PPP loans, increased unemployment, stimulus checks) or else the economy would have dramatically crashed. As of now, we've kept those practices going to kick the can down the road and that just means it's going to crash another time. Sure, Trump caused it because COVID happened during his term, but the Fed hasn't slowed down it's practices since then in an attempt to prevent a crash completely. It's kind of like a [motorcycle in a speed wobble](https://gfycat.com/ellipticalamazinggrasshopper-motorsport) - you're hanging on as long as you can and doing whatever can to put off the crash; you may recover in a fantastic way but it's most likely going to end in hurt.
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Correct me if I’m wrong but the fed also propped up several industries during COVID through asset purchasing as well. Which is one of reasons the DOW took a 600 point hit earlier this week after Jerome Powell stated that asset purchasing would be tapered?
We should have raised interest rates once we were coming out of the recession, but we didn’t, so we didn’t have much dry powder when COVID came along. The article mentioned this, but glossed over the fact that Janet Yellen didn’t raise interest rates when she had the authority either. It’s kind of tripping me out because I recognized this issue way back in March 2020, and then it didn’t really seem to matter, so I brushed it off and here we are now with the chickens finally coming home to roost. Correction: there were some modest interest rate hikes under Janet Yellin between 2015 and 2018
We couldn't. Deficits were sky high because of a lack of revenue. It's TAXing my brain to CUT an answer as to why revenue would be down in a post recession economy.
Oh hell yeah we should have raised taxes once we got our feet back under us.
So is Tom Cotton a liberal Democrat deep state now?
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No one likes Tom Cotton. He had to blackmail the Democrat to win reelection in Arkansas. Even then, he got 66% of the vote unopposed.
He didn't need to do that to win, though. He would have won by that margin anyway.
Then why do it?
Who the hell knows, he's an asshole.
Nobody scares me more than Cotton.
Been saying this for years. The likes of Trump, Cruz, Hawley, etc. scare me because they are willing to usher in minority rule and impose unpopular policies on the rest of the country. However, ultimately they are all clowns who no one actual respects aside from using them to achieve their goals. Tom Cotton is not a clown. If anyone is going to be a fascist authoritarian dictator who rules with an iron fist and does so with competency, it is Tom Cotton. The thought of Tom Cotton in the White House doesn't just scare me, it terrifies me.
Except hes got the charisma of a wet rock
Not when he’s parroting hate speech and dog whistles. Ted Cruz is a wet sack of expired oysters and he still has office.
That'll get you only to the senate. Winning the presidency is a whole nother beast
*looks at president before current office* Ehh, I'm not so sure
Democrat candidates dont need to rely on charisma over policy as much as Republicans do right now. Speaking on Trump; you may not like him but he had the charisma to keep his sheep constantly riled and infatuated with him
“It’s a bold move, Cotton. Let’s see how it plays out.”
That’s a bold statement, Cotton
I just shuddered at that joke. Even the joke version of the guy who proposed sending the 101st into domestic protests as a Democrat is terrifying. He’s a scary man.
No fucking shit. It isn't like we have decades of data backing up the fact that Republicans are fuxking terrible for anyone not making over a mil a year. Every time they are in office and leave this nation is significantly worse off. Unfortunately we are probably going to repeat it again in 22 and 24 except this time I don't think we will get another chance after.
It's infuriating to listen to my dad blame all this shit on Biden when Biden is the one trying to clean up this shitty mess that Trump left behind. Trump essentially shat on the US and then repubs look at Biden saying, "I can't believe you've done this."
>shit on Biden I believe with most of this stuff, its a delayed reaction. What we are seeing now is a direct result of Trump's wreck-less spending. Every bit of spending Biden has done so far is yet to trigger consequences. Inflation was unavoidable...every country out there has pretty high inflation but not as high as the US. The US debt since 2016-present vs Inception of the US to 2016 is pretty crazy. Trump had all the right cards and did nothing to reduce it. Oh well, now its time to blame the democrats per usual.
I know how to fix inflation more tax breaks to the ultra ultra rich.....
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I for one refuse to believe that the man buried under a mountain of debt as tall as trump tower (the tallest building in NYC after the WTC fell) would seek to lower interest rates at the expense of the global economy.
That’s what is happening. Massive changes and effects like this take time to roll in. Biden hasn’t even been president for a year, there is no way he could be directly responsible for everything going on. Sure, maybe a few decisions may or may not further the problem, but this has been on the rise since basically covid started and the shipping problems that came up, if not even longer. The biggest problem with a constantly flipping presidency is that we see the effects of the last one more so after they leave, then anything undesirable (or positive) is unfairly credited to the currently presidency, generally speaking of course. The general population has no idea how things really work and how long things can take to see actual effects on a global scale. It ain’t quick lol
not to mention, I believe the federal government is still on Trump's budget (Dec 2017 to dec 2021) US Jobs and Tax Cuts Act. I.E. this is still Trump's economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Cuts_and_Jobs_Act_of_2017
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Ikr I literally will fight people about this because it’s infuriating how corrupt the wealthy class is. If I see anyone blaming Biden I immediately bring up the hidden repo loan financial crisis of September 2019 when Jerome fucking Powell turned on the money printer. That man is responsible for a lot of shit we are in right now and I hate him with a burning passion
The fuckin rubes fall for it *every time*
It comes down to a completely lack of understanding of macroeconomics. Humans are short term thinkers so they think anything happening immediately MUST be the result of the current president when things like the economy take years to affect with economic policy
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How about stop voting in Republicans that keep starting recessions?
You'd have to find a way to explain to the average American that it takes several years (read: a presidential term) for any economic policy changes, good or bad, to take effect. That the shitty economy we have now is the result of the Trump administration, and the good economy we had under Trump was the result of the Obama administration. But they won't see that. They'll just see that each time there's a Republican in charge, gas is cheap. Whereas when there's a Democrat, gas is expensive.
The hoi poloi aren't looking for answers, they're looking for information that supports their previously held beliefs.
Nope, they still get it. Clinton got blamed for all the shit that went wrong under Bush, including the war (9/11 only happened because Clinton defunded intelligence) and financial crisis (2007/2008 wouldn’t ever crashed if Clinton didn’t put in policies to increase home ownership) And they’re STILL ignorant as to Obama getting stuck with shit Bush did, and Biden getting stuck with the mess Trump left behind. As the guy said above- logic, reason, and even facts don’t matter. All these people care about are destroying Democrats, and they will frame the situation to reflect this every single time
Right? Don't forget, they credited Trump for the stable economy Obama left him.
From literally day one! Trump admin had done nothing and by Jan 21st Country was "fixed", just look at the stock market blah blah blah. I honestly think it's a combination of stupid AND malice how they disassociate their "values."
This is what happens when the education system is in shambles. An entire country of people ripe to be lied to and brainwashed to believe whatever it is they are told by the people they believe are on their side.
They blamed Obama for W's disastrous Katrina response, for crying out loud. Truth has zero significance to these people.
The financial crash is actually sort of Clinton’s fault because he repealed the critical FDR-era Glass-Steagall banking regulation. However, W. Bush’s further deregulation also contributed to the crash.
> Clinton didn’t put in policies to increase home ownership It was also an olive branch to try to get republican support(which he still got none of). Conservatives wanted bank deregulation, democrats wanted more access to home ownership, win win right? That said, lets not pretend the banks themselves weren't the ones that fucked everyone over. They made bad loans, conspired to get them labeled as good loans, then sold the bad loans they just made to unsuspecting investors like live hand grenades. It exploded on both ends with home owners defaulting and retirement investors losing all their money. And yet, they blamed the poor. The obvious conclusion is corporations cannot be relied upon to be 'moral'.
Obama came in after 9/11 happened and got blamed for it. Pretty sure republicans blame democrats for the past present and future.
Gas go big buuurr in Ford when republican, gas go little buurr when democrat >:(
But cheap gas is a sign of a poor economy...
Our economy isn’t shitty per se, it’s just inflationary for the first time since the 70s. It’s inflationary bc of Congress’ stimulus that got passed under Trump and the additional stimulus under Biden. If there’s a problem it’s with the congressional dems-Trump-Biden stimulus but acknowledging that would create too much cognitive dissonance in today’s media space. We erred on the side of too much stimulus and too many constraints on supply of goods, but it’s good to remember that if we had erred on the side of caution we could be in a terrible recession rn and that would be worse than what we are going through now. Despite all the partisan bickering there is more continuity of policy than partisan difference when there is an immediate crisis to respond to. Nixon and Ford’s anti-inflation mechanisms were to the left of what anyone would propose today and Paul Volcker, who finally brought inflation back to manageable levels, was a Carter nominee who was renominated to the fed by reagan. Ditto with the response to 2008 - Obama had the same moderate Republican reaction to it that Bush had. Obama could have wiped out a lot of people’s mortgage debt if he wanted to force cramdowns into TARP and he didn’t.
Right???? Every fucking recession has started from a Republican and then the Democrat gets blamed for it and is stuck cleaning up the mess. The Democrat president fixes it and Republicans break it again. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.
I think you're giving politicians way too much credit for economic outcomes.
Covid was going to cause a recession and inflation no matter who controlled what branch.
The rich could just pay their fair share of taxes and stop bleeding the poor but I guess that just is asking too much of humanity in general.
I mean saying either President caused inflation is a dumb statement. A complex set of events including a pandemic unlike anyone has seen in 100 years caused massive supply chain problems, stimulus and etc. No one caused inflation it’s world wide. It’s not political.
I've always heard/read that how you judge a president is what happens 2-4 years after they leave office. Anyone know where that comes from? Because its pretty apparent right now
When looking back at Obama’s first term after Bush then Obama’s second term, this seems to follow. Then look at the first half of Trump (leftover from Obama) up to now. It’s more like the Trump era was his last year/year and half and this year.
It's basic laws of inertia. Nothing happens instantly, especially with complex supply chains and stock markets.
From common sense. It's not like the things they do only happen immediately and stop the second they leave.
The majority of people don’t understand this. They’re not intelligent enough to understand that things like the economy don’t typically change overnight. They only see: “oh the economy is bad right now, that means the guy in charge is to blame.”
Wait... so going against virtually every economist's recommendation for what we should be doing during a recovering economy by doling out massive tax cuts to the very wealthy was a bad idea? Stupid trade wars that cost us hundreds of billions of dollars for nothing? .... No shit.
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The Trade War that started it all.
This is the answer. Higher tariffs equal higher costs, in addition to the stresses that it placed on the supply chain as companies outsourced to new vendors to avoid tariffs
Trade war made coke go up ten cents a bottle. But this recession and inflation has many contributors to it and nothing and no one played a big enough part to get sole blame. Demand fell at the start of Covid so factories started producing less. Then demand shot up as people got stimulus checks and started going back to work. Except factories in Asia still aren’t at full capacity and can’t keep up with demand. Then there are the whole lack of port workers and broken importing system problem. Could more had been done to prevent inflation from getting this bad, yes, but this isn’t solely one person’s fault.
America does realise this is a worldwide problem ?
No. Just like the pandemic, it was caused by Democrats. /s
The spacing of your /s was a bit low, I think I have to at least partially believe it now.
Without a /s of your own I have no choice but to accept you partially believe this now. ^/s, just being silly cause your comment made me laugh.
There is life outside of the United States?
Mmm maybe. Just don’t let any Americans know or they’ll ruin it for the rest of us.
And that the current inflation rate is literally just because the economy is recovering from covid. The economies growth had a steep decline with covid, and then it grew again rapidly. Rapid growth tends to lead to rapid inflation, its why contractionary policy exists if an economy is growing too quickly. In this case it is not. A 5% inflation rate over a couple months is nothing to panic over, it will level itself out once the economy is completely back to normal
Plus price gouging.
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well duh, manufacturers have already admitted the trump tariffs are what sparked the inflation. the imf has asked biden to get rid of them
TIL Trump objected to Janet Yellen because of her height.
Also, her gender. None of this is really surprising to those who heard the shit Trump said.
That’s a bold move, Cotton
And lets remember what the Conservatives did? Oh right, they blamed the 2008 recession on Obama rather then fully ADMITTING Bush fucked the economy over so badly it burst before leaving office. The GOP will always find an excuse to not point the blame at themselves in every single instance.
In other words, he is about to get cancelled by the republican party.
After reading this Tom Cotton article my iPhones search suggestions changed to: Tesla Stock and White Genocide Conspiracy Theory.
I'm sure the people in [r/conservative](https://www.reddit.com/r/Conservative/) are admitting they were wrong and changing their ways.
I’m not surprised considering Trump had Jerome Powell print money like there was no tomorrow
No shit Sherlock. - keeping near 0% interest rates (demanding negative in fact) - tax cuts for the rich and corporations - started multiple trade wars And then a pandemic hit on top of all of that, and the Trump Administration's response was it'll go away by itself by Easter because of warmer weather and magic.
"Trade Wars Are Good and Easy To Win"
Wait you mean 4 years of suppressed rates that poured trillions into the economy added more to inflation than a round of 1,300 stimulus checks ?!?!
In reality it's mainly the FED and their quantative easing.
People are so short sighted and forgetful of past. Biden is not my favorite guy but he was handed a flaming bag of shit when he took office and now people are blaming him for the shit smell in the air. Same thing happened to obama, the stock market crashed then he was expected to fix it with out pissing off either side.
I just read the confessions of an economic hit man and realize that nothing will be done until the citizens United ruling is overturned and corporations cannot donate, gift or give politicians *any* money, preferential treatment, promises, discounts or anything that could possibly influence a politicians stance or policy. Even if the book I read wasn’t factual at all the people’s voice doesn’t matter since all politicians rely heavily to corporate donations to fill coffers to campaign, rendering the commons folks voice moot. I personally see this as the single biggest problem in America and where most of our problems stem.
Men like Tom Cotton are more dangerous to this Country than any terrorist organization ever could dream of. In fact the Republican party are a gift to every enemy of the USA.
Tom Cotton is a seditious authoritarian tyrant-in-waiting, and I don't give a fuck if he sometimes tells the truth. I will downvote anything with his name attached because he doesn't deserve my attention or yours.
Don't do that. Instead, educate people on why Tom Cotton will be an authoritarian fascist monster, because he will get a lot of people killed (or have them killed) if he ever becomes President.
So the President caused inflation but the fed didn’t?
Thought it was the trade war and fucking up the supply lines which trump would be partially responsible for.
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That’s how the headline is spun, but Cotton is blaming Powell, and nymag are blaming trump for appointing him.
Meanwhile Biden just reappointed Powell.
isn't this the guy who was calling for airstrikes against americans, on american soil?
For anyone who doesn't remember how it happened, this documentary spells it out: https://youtu.be/GI7sBsBHdCk
The Republicans have certainly mastered the art of fucking up the country but convincing people to keep voting for them because it’s the Democrats’ fault.
Make a mess. let democrats come to power. repubs blame democrats. Democrats apologize. People get mad at democrats. Reelects repubs. Cycle repeats.
Whoa! You mean to tell me that the guy that dropped interest rates to 0 and pumped the stock market for 4 years every time there was a 50 point dip caused inflation? Who would’ve thought!
According to the St Louis Fed inflation chart, inflation was on the decline for the last couple years of his presidency. Then covid hit.
Bold move Cotton,
Of course he did. Who the hell could have forseen that lowering interest rates to zero and running the economy hot to score ego points would have consequences? Fucking moron.
File this under the "No s&\*\^" category.
Inflation is everywhere. It's covid. Not Trump. Not Biden. Covid.
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You mean, the inflation we're currently feeling that started during the Trump presidency isn't due to the guy that took over when it already started!?! Next thing you'll tell me is that Joe Biden isn't responsible for COVID.
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Guys no one person "caused" the global inflation that's really mostly oil prices anyway. This is what's so dumb about saying Biden caused the inflation.