Compared to pre-pandemic - Housing prices have shot up incredibly - Loan interest rates are two or three times higher - Every day goods are higher - Car prices are higher - Insurance is higher - Utilities are higher

And that would be fine, prices go up over time after all, but all of that is on the back of pay, that for most people, has not gone up anywhere close to enough to cover all of that, if it's gone up at all.

BLS data shows real (ie. inflation adjusted) wages has gone up since the pandemic.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

The average household income is 80k(ish) the average house is 420k(ish)

In Bethlehem, PA (a fairly middle of the road place tax wise) that means $5050 take home pay a month and a mortgage payment (FHA 3.5 down, 6.7 interest) of $2650 a month. That is more than half your pay just on a mortgage, not pmi, not insurance, not utilities, not anything else. Do this calculation across the country with localized numbers, do it with rent instead. Add a car and insurance for it into the mix. Then try adding in health insurance, groceries, etc. You are going to find that the numbers result in average people being squeezed and guess what? That lines up with peoples actual experience.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/paycheck-to-paycheck-definition...

https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2024/amid-a-resilient...

My interpretation of this is that pay has not kept up with inflation.

Edited to be less witty

The overall situation of housing and college costs have been increasing for a while this last round of inflation really was a big part of the last straw.

Source? Is this simply because rural counties are doing worse than urbanized counties, and there are more rural counties than urbanized counties, such that if you don't account for population you'll come to the conclusion that "vast majority of the counties had wages falling behind inflation", even though that's not true for the country as a whole?

[0]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEDLISPRIPERSQUFEEUS

Pennsylvania did not experience the same uplift in housing prices in 2020-2022 that much of the rest of the nation did as people are net leaving the state.

PA is actually one of the places least affected by inflation not just in the US but in the world.

The median home in the Bethlehem, PA core based statistical area costs $200 per square foot in October 2024. In October 2019, it cost $120 per square foot.

I'm sure you can find homes that list for half the cost per square foot just as well as someone could find homes that list for double the cost per square foot. That's why the median is useful – and it has increased 66% over the last five years.

If you think things aren't good enough for an average person in one of the statistically best periods a capitalist economy has ever seen, there are redistributive alternatives. That doesn't seem to be what Trump voters are expecting. Instead there seems to be a nostalgia for past better times, which isn't really explained by "people are squeezed" based on math that would almost certainly have worked out just as tightly ten years ago.

Something else is going on. I don't claim to have a full explanation but none of the attempts to "fix" BLS statistics that I've seen have been more persuasive than this.

Everyone likes to point this out like it somehow made up for all the wage stagnation of the last 40 years and it most definitely did not.

Not to mention these wage gains are slowing fast.

[0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/19/heres-how-labor-dynamism-aff....

The gap might be real, but it's existed for decades. Moreover at least when it comes to explaining why people voted for Trump: while I have no data to support it, "we're poorer because of inflation" is a much more popular sentiment/election issue than "the top 1% are taking the gains for themselves", especially among republican voters.

They deserved it because they worked hard for it!

That might be so, but it's better than people's vibes, which famously flip-flops based on whether their preferred party is in power.

>that may not apply for every individual or subpopulation

I never claimed that, but the parent comment did imply real wages have not gone up "for most people".

Also, the median stats say nothing about how people below it are doing. By definition, that is 50%, and that is also about the number of people voting for Trump, alongside your run-of-the-mill racists and fascists.

They're actually doing about $50 better, because there was a recession in 1980. Moreover, the $50 (or $30) dollars are "1982-84 CPI Adjusted Dollars", not today's dollars. In today's dollars it would be $158.28 (or $94.97). Moreover, given most people's expectation and discussion for income increases are the raw dollar amounts (ie. not inflation adjusted), it's not a fair benchmark for real wage increases.

>By definition, that is 50%, and that is also about the number of people voting for Trump, alongside your run-of-the-mill racists and fascists.

Given how the votes are roughly 50-50, you can make the opposite argument for Harris, replacing "racists and fascists" with "college students and woke activists".

> Given how the votes are roughly 50-50, you can make the opposite argument for Harris, replacing "racists and fascists" with "college students and woke activists".

Yeah, that is exactly what I am saying. And it seems to bear out: In the demography of income of > 100K, democrats win, below it, Trump wins.

Please be more specific if you are explaining why American voters have got angry and done something stupid that will make things worse or if you are defending that stupidity as a good thing that will help the situation you are talking about.

This makes their own lives, in which they are still better off than 99.9% of the history of humanity, feel worse.

Where's the evidence this is happening for a majority (or even something vaguely resembling one) of people? I've already posted official statistics that show inflation adjusted median wages are up.

The most recent wage gains failed to make up for this fact

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/19/heres-how-labor-dynamism-aff...

If wage gains kept pace with productivity gains it’d be a very different and vastly better economic story for the average American

It stagnated in 2008-2016 but they still voted for obama, but when it finally started rising in 2016 they voted for trump?

If wages increased with productivity increases we'd be in better shape overall as a society, but here we are.

You can’t argue about feelings

https://sciencenotes.org/what-would-happen-if-the-earth-stop...

Edit: Without the snark, lots of people believe their rent, grocery bills, energy bills etc. have gone up a lot more than official inflation numbers (and that can be true even if the inflation numbers are “accurate” for some definition of accurate), and you’re not going to convince them using anything derived from these inflation numbers.

It’s clear it has support from rank and file republicans as well, it is more than feasible that if republicans win the house too we will see tariffs in short order

[0]: https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/trumps-new-tariff-proposa...

Temporarily perhaps, the push for automation in manufacturing (and farm operations) will be very strong.

Wage gains won't keep pace with any price increases either, Republican's have already outlined policies that are regressive to average Americans[0][1]

About the only thing tariffs will do is consolidate power at the top and allow the largest corporations to buy out smaller ones that can't cope as well.

We are remember, talking about broad spectrum tariffs here, which will hit any import, from food to solar panels.

[0]: https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/32a303df-1977...

[1]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/10/30/trump-reduce...

Yes, prices will rise, the question is whether it will increase their leverage in the job market enough to boost their earnings enough to counteract the higher prices.

The highest levels of leadership of the Republican party have shown time and again that they want a permanent poor underclass through their policies (both enacted and proposed) and actions.

There's no sense in speculation here, if they can put the boot on labors neck, they will 100% of the time

But point taken, you think that the net result will be worse for poor people. I don’t necessarily disagree, it just seems that this one bit might be somewhat positive for the poor.

There was talk about this in the first term too, and it ended up with a lot of money from tariffs being used to subsidize farmers because they found themselves doing so poorly that suicides spiked.

They also talk about the problems of losing competitive pressure from protectionist systems.

I can't imagine there will be iphone factories all of the sudden in the US.

Those kinds of items effect people day to day.

I look in my refrigerator and I see a couple cheeses from Europe, butter from Ireland (and from the USA), a Belgian beer I still have around, and food from the US. We are, as a nation, completely self sufficient in food production, we turn a bunch of corn into ethanol (very stupid) and export enormous amounts of foodstuffs of all kinds.

There are very few nations, in fact, who could completely close their borders, in and out, and feed themselves. American could do this easily, furthermore, there would be widespread and worldwide starvation if we stopped exporting (no one wants to do this, just making a point).

This is such an odd claim to make.

And how much we get from Mexico

https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2021/november/u-s-fresh...

But we can easily feed our entire population off our own agricultural production, and well.

Google leads me to this link.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic...

This has taught me nothing new. We produce and export positively enormous amounts of food, we also buy a lot of it.

My point remains: that last part is completely optional because this country is food sufficient. If world trade were to shut off, and America could neither export nor import food, many millions of people would starve to death.

But none of them Americans.

> What about when tariffs are placed on US items, demand will drop with US made things.

Maybe that will happen, but over long term that isn't the dominant effect. The main effect is the tariff protected industries raise prices because the don't have to complete with international suppliers any more. They soon price themselves out of the international market. It doesn't take very long - a couple of years usually.

That's how it starts. It is usually tolerated because the jobs at the expense of higher local employment was the goal. Then it flows outward as industries that aren't tariff protected are forced to buy local stuff at more expensive prices than their overseas competitors. "Stuff" here includes labour, because these tariff protected industries can afford to pay their employees more. (That was one of the attractions of the tariff idea, right?) The solution is obvious - tariffs for those industries too. Your exports go through the floor.

Eventually it becomes obvious even to Joe Citizen in the street. Locally produced stuff can cost multiples of what the overseas producers can make it for. (Literally, multiples. People start to yearn for the time an electric drill could cost $20.) The quality goes down as well.

The time for change arrives. I still remember our treasurer calling Australia cowering behind tariff walls a "banana republic" [0]; NZ had the same moment without such theatrics. The tariff band aid was eventually ripped off in both countries.

The pain was immense. Protected industries go rapidly broke, unemployment sky rockets. It takes years for the new internationally competitively industries to develop. But here we are, 30 years later, the last 20 without a recession and now with a GDP bigger than Russia's.

Still if the tariff plan is implemented, the next few years will be very nice for USA citizens. I guess the even frog in the pot enjoys the warmer water for a while. Enjoy it while it lasts.

[0] https://theconversation.com/revisiting-the-banana-republic-a...

"There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat."

Meanwhile there are substantial differences between the two wings, what services and programs they think government should provide, how problem solving should be approached.

I feel that his success here suggests that this is a strategy that will succeed globally, and that many political candidates are going to be emulating his “style”.

Ultimately she lost, and probably should have even more aggressively emulated him by promising things that aren't even real. Like how do you circle the promise that the war in Ukraine will be over tomorrow. I'm not making it up, that was repeated ad nauseum on the campaign trail. I guess all that matters is winning.

Yup, it just came without the crass jokes and the mannerisms but I guess the confidence was pretty high that people would forgive her because she's just "not trump".

I think they totally bungled the messaging and stuck their head in the sand. With all the billions of campaign money, they spent most of it calling trump a fascist or orange idiot a bunch more times, hoping that's enough to bump voter numbers. There is a dose-response curve there and after some point it just doesn't yield linear results.

I don't care about that but the people that do make or break the democratic party. Unfortunately the democrats seem incapable of learning that if you don't appeal to those people, they will lose.

Isn't that literally what happened in his first term? Remember "I built the greatest economy the world has ever seen"? These claims were backed fully and completely by the stock market and not the rank & file. And this is the same situation we find ourselves in now. All these years later we're still in a situation where "the economy" is going gangbusters, but the average person feels left out.

Sure, Trump didn't cause the pandemic, but neither did Biden and the inflation isn't unrelated to Trump's fiscal policy being looser than it needed to be even before the pandemic either, as well as being fundamentally the Fed's job to solve[2]. It's difficult[1] for an incumbent to win by attacking the track record of the last government especially when much of it was factors outside their control, but not impossible, especially since Trump has presented wavering voters with plenty of other reasons not to vote for him. Trump is living proof that excuses work...

[1]Not impossible though: an unpopular British government won a majority in 2014 by constantly blaming slow post recession growth on the other party's borrowing five years earlier

[2]You can absolutely guarantee that if Trump was in power the US would have experienced at least as much inflation, and he'd have wasted no time in blaming the Fed

Would have been more effective to remind people why they didn't vote for him than remind them of his behaviour afterwards which he's perfectly good at doing himself.

This is more or less the direction I was heading w/ my post. I don't think it's a messaging issue per se. Rather it's control of the messaging. The economy in general has been on a steady path for a while, despite ups & downs: it's trending towards a bimodal distribution where certain parties are doing quite well and others are doing less well. But what I've seen the last several election cycles is the indicators that dominate what I see on TV, read online, etc swap depending on who is in power. So my expectation is that literally nothing will change yet we'll be hearing about how awesome the economy is for everyone in several months.

It doesn't matter. Trump claimed he'd build the greatest economy again. He didn't provide any details on what he plans to do that will actually improve people's lives. He just let people jump to their own happy conclusions.

He did provide high level detail. He said he'd use tariffs to exclude foreign made stuff, which will necessitate "made in America" and bring manufacturing back. He said he'd balance the budget, which (theoretically) has long-term effects. He said he'd deport illegals, which should reduce demand for housing and hence prices.

You can disagree with any of those things, but I don't think it's right to say he didn't offer anything specific.

I mean; he offered 'specifics' - they simply didn't make any sense on cursory examination. How to fight inflation? Tariffs! How to make already expensive goods cheaper? Tarriffs!

Hell, re: deporting illegals, he didn't even bother to do that his first term, Obama did it at a dramatically higher rate.

It's all a "I'll fix everything by doing nothing" smokescreen.

Trumps literally running on Tariffs and fixing inflation. Claiming you can do both and it's disingenuous to combine them when discussing each candidates approach is honestly asinine. "Yes, he's pro-gun! but He's also in favor of confiscating all guns. But they're two different policies so it's a disingenuous rebuttal to link them."

> how far their credibility has fallen with the common person

This is True. Somehow there's an incredible double standard at play in the minds of waaaay too many.

In the middle of a national emergency, Trump toured the country spouting fabricated tales about Kamala wasting FEMAs budget on transgender surgery for migrants - which had a clear and direct adverse affect on the actual recovery efforts as multiple centers had to deal with bomb threats, armed insurgents, and a general hostile populace as they tried to help people. It was of course all fabricated idiocy that directly hurt the very people who needed help the most, but that's not "constantly lied to"?

"He just talks, you can't assume anything he states is true or that he'll follow through" is incredibly stupid because people really do believe him, and it's incredibly damaging to the core of our country. But somehow he gets a free pass, while calling out his exact words is "constantly lied to".

It's not fabricated, this is based on a question she was asked by the ACLU.

> ACLU: As President will you use your executive authority to ensure that transgender and nonbinary people who rely on the state for medical care - including those in prison and immigration detention - will have access to comprehensive treatment associated with gender transition, including all necessary surgical care? If yes, how will you do so?

> Harris: Yes. It is important that transgender individuals who rely on the state for care receive the treatment they need, which includes access to treatment associated with gender transition. That’s why, as Attorney General, I pushed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide gender transition surgery to state inmates. I support policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained. Transition treatment is a medical necessity, and I will direct all federal agencies responsible for providing essential medical care to deliver transition treatment.

No, but he had a very simple and catchy message that even people with the lowest IQ can understand and remember: "Fuck illegal immigrants, fuck China, America first, USA no. 1".

Election messages need to appeal to the lowest common denominator of education and intellect. If you start boring people with facts and high brow speeches that only the well educated can understand, you lost from the start.

Republicans understand that the less educated a voter is, the more likely they are to vote R. It's not a coincidence that they are trying to gut the education system.

How?

Do you see the problem?

They've been pretty good for some people.

I'm not gonna go all "woe is me" since we're doing fine, but as someone with a family of 5 the discretionary income basically went to zero the last 4 years.

In fact, so good, people think anything buy 10-20% yearly gains on assets is bad

Every company I join literally has an arm in Mexico, India, Pakistan, Colombia or Ukraine - and it always started feeling like at any minute those people would have my job. And they do. I want an administration that makes it so that those people don't have my job. And yes, I have always been willing to work for a lot less, but all the other Americans want more and more and more, so that it's expected for a programmer in the US to make 200k, so these companies decide to hire someone in Colombia for 80k. I'll take 100 and work a lot closer than that person in Colombia. But no companies here will listen to that. And I'll do it as someone with 20 years of experience.

But the only thing people on the left care about, as usual, are issues that actually don't matter. Yes I get it you want Gay rights and you want Abortion rights, but the reality is those things are not going away in the states you're already in. But on the other side, American people are being pushed into a terrible economic state.

Go ahead and not listen, HN doesn't. It's WAAAY to left.

Telling people 'X' when their eyes/lived experiences tell them 'Y', and then frequently insulting them for not agreeing on top is certainly part of the reason for the popular vote going as it did.

i have no interest in coddling people's feelings and telling them how right they are when they are operating with this level of analysis. Im not a politician so i dont have to deal with that, but im so tired of trying to explain how the world works to stupid people and getting shit for it because im not validating their delusions.

The disconnect between government data and the economic realities MANY people experienced (as evidenced by exit polling on the economy) only further salts the wounds for people not doing well.

There were no economic failures during Joe Biden's presidency.

Democratic party needs to listen and at the very least fluff up a response that people in this situation feel heard. Even if there nothing they can really do. It's all about appeasing emotions.

Also, maybe look into a little history while youre at it - the economy is not even close to the worst one ever, see: 1930s, 1970s, the turn of the millenium, and 2008-2012 for examples in living memory.

I'm tired of pretending it's not. Want to call me a coastal elite like it's a slur? I'll wear it with a badge of honor. We are better than you at economic planning and becoming prosperous - also with defending social freedoms (i.e. legalizing the mushrooms).

We lost the low information voters. Bad from the perspective of winning elections but good from the perspective of self selecting your friends and people you associate with. The democrats really are a social club.

This is what matters.

John Deere: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/john-deere-faces-b...

GM: https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/21/business/gm-layoffs-kansas/in...

Stellantis: https://www.npr.org/2024/10/11/nx-s1-5145932/stellantis-jeep...

https://intellizence.com/insights/layoff-downsizing/leading-...

I have my doubts that Trump will change that.

If "the economy" is going to be fixed, first Congress and the senate will actually have to start passing bills again, but that's probably not happening for another decade

https://www.espn.com/espn/betting/story/_/id/39563784/sports...

So while it's a small percentage of GDP, it is a much larger percentage of their budget.

Things with limited supply are becoming more unaffordable because the rich are much richer than they were before. So if housing is limited and is seen as an investment vehicle, it becomes unaffordable.

The same goes for health care. There is a limit supply of medical care. Some people can afford much more than others which compounds the issue.

Americans (and most of the collective West) can afford all things that are not in limited supply - food, clothing, gadgets, transportation, etc. This is amazing in the context of history.

The weirdest thing is that both health care and housing do not need to be limited supply. It's completely artifical. We make bad governing decisions that force it to be so. Our problems are not economic but social/organizational ones.

Relatedly, I was quite surprised when recently I realized that the median (adjusted for PPP) disposable income in America was the highest in the OECD (except Luxembourg):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

This means that the average american really really is financially better off than anywhere else in the world. I'd say that their quality of life isn't - they die much earlier than the rest of OECD, for example. But they are definitely the richest. And not just the richest american but the average american.

People want a single family homes with a nice property in nice area. They want a short commute and all the convenience of modern life.

There is in fact a hard limit on how many single family homes you can have in a an area. You can build them somewhere else, but then you get long commutes or short commutes to low paying work.

HN, let me remind you, most people do not work in tech banging on a keyboard all day with mild collaboration. Most people still need to commute to their jobs at least once a week. The majority still need to go in everyday.

If I ever raised a family [0], I would very, very strongly prefer them to live in a reasonably-sized condo or apartment in a big city, rather than in the suburbs or in the sticks. There's more to do, better and more diverse food, a far more diverse set of people (and ideologies) to meet, and the environmental impact of one's consumption is much, much smaller per-capita than living outside of the city. [1]

It's to city managers' great discredit that they don't prioritize making it reasonably possible for families to have a decent quality of living within the cities that they manage. (If they did this, one would expect the quality of living for every ordinary person in the city to inevitably become substantially better.)

[0] And I will not, because I would be an absolutely terrible parent.

[1] Or, that was the case prior to the collapse of shopping in many big cities. Now, I guess many folks get stuff shipped direct to them, just as if they were living in the middle of nowhere.

We're not building out or building up. So yeah. It's bad.

At least here in San Francisco, even old condos have HOA fees that are within shouting distance of "market rate" rents... on top of the absolutely absurd purchase price. It's madness.

That doesn't really tell you all that much useful. Disposable income just deducts taxes from your gross income. What really matters is the cost of those other things we're talking about: food, housing, healthcare, childcare, etc. When you subtract those out as well, you get discretionary income, and I bet the US is not leading at all there.

https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/d90b402d-en.pdf

I don’t think this corresponds with what most people think that means. i.e. gross income - (taxes + housing costs + food + health/childcare). I certainly didn’t.

Suffice it to say that trying to directly compare individual wealth across disparate populations is so disingenuous as to be tantamount to spreading falsehoods. People feel poor because they are poor; Americans simply cannot afford many of the things that other developed economies provide for their residents. We can make lots of small changes to help with this^ (i.e., we don't need a massive overhaul or revolution), but the people calling the shots have to actually admit that people are not doing well, and that the costs people face today are burdensome. They won't, because they're afraid of not being reelected (and then they lose anyway).

^Solve food deserts by opening bodega-like shops in both urban AND suburban neighborhoods.

^Replace surface parking with structures housing amenities that people can walk to.

^Increase mass public transit access by building rail and bus/bike lanes.

The economy is 100% intentionally managed to protect the prior generations story mode way of thinking

The economy is good in america, but that just means that the amount of "resources" in the country is increasing, but, if "average joe" benefits from that or not is a question of how those resources are distributed.

Left/Right is about economy.

Being on the right means that you find it more important that the total pool of resources is increasing.

Being on the left means that you care more about how the resources are distributed.

What happened here is IMHO that the conservatives did the populist thing, they claimed that regular people would get more resources if they won, while still claiming that they would distribute less resources away from wealthy people.

They are not wrong in saying that the economy is good, it is just that since there is no left in american politics, it seems like some people have forgotten the other perspective, since redistribution of wealth have been almost an insult in america for so long. Yet, last time he was president, trump managed to send everyone a check, signed by himself, but paid for by taxes, without being called an evil communist.

I listened to a radia program where poor americans where interviewed, and that was the thing that they remembered about trump, he sent them a check.

So, in conclusion, there is a large group of poor americans, that associate the guy that wants to remove taxes for rich people with what I (according to the above definition) consider to be left wing politics.

There is, though? It’s just no represented at all because of FTPT there is based no constituency where it can get 50%. Usually not even in Democrat primaries.

This gets parroted too often. America objectively provides more abortion access than Europe. Speech here is undoubtedly more expansive than in Europe. Sure, unions may have more power in Europe, but not so much more that I'd be saying "there is no left in America".

Every single person I know feels this economy is terrible. Of every age. From new graduates, to senior people. Even the most extreme Obama or Bernie people feel like things are going very badly.

Everyone on campus was consistently outraged when Biden would gloat about his economy.

It's not Trump. I have no idea what his message even is.

This is an own goal. Democrats believed the total bullshit that economists spew about how good things are. When people actually feel how terrible they are.

My wages are up since Biden started. My rent, my biggest expense, has held the same. NW up a lot from stock market gains.

There seems to be a lot of inflation with food ,restaurants and domestic work, but isn't lower wage people getting higher wages a good thing?

I’m skeptical about the vibes based methods of evaluating the economy, I think the economy really is better for the lowest income workers, but forget stock market gains. Also, rents remaining flat might be a Bay Area specific phenomena. Or even SF specific? Don’t know where you live.

Their wages did not rise anywhere near commensurate with the increased costs of those goods and services - the same goods and services that those people would be buying

America wide looks at worse flat: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q (ignoring covid years which distort this)

Food might be up 30% in biden's term for all I know. And maybe wages are only up 20%. But as long as rent is 0% and asset growth kept track with inflation (it's blown past it), you are still ahead.

I suspect this is just standard human loss aversion at work. I feel this even from my own wife who looks at our economic position worse than me even though it is the same numbers. What's worsened becomes more important than what's improved, even if rationally, it nets out even.

My rent was up 30% and it was my largest expense. DoJ has been dragging its heels on punishing the companies that were a part of this gouging-via-algorithmic-price-fixing-and-warehousing, and now that Trump is going to be in office, those lawsuits are likely dead in the water. Very much a "Thanks for nothing, Joe," situation.

In gaslighting, the perpetrator insists on denying the victim's perception of reality, while actually controlling the facet of reality that he denies is altered. In this case, Democrats control the means to alter the economy via leaning on Congress, the Treasury, and the Fed. They manufactured an environment where earners would lose out to the concerns of asset holders (the "soft-landing," rather than a swift and severe FFR rate hike and tightening of Treasury holdings that would have squelched inflation), but insist on telling earners that everything is okay, because the metrics that matter to asset holders are doing well. In carrying water for this line of argument, you're participating in their gaslighting. People aren't doing well, full stop.

A fast rate hike might have caused massive unemployment which would be much worse.

A fast hike would have caused pain, but the money printing that we did anyway would have helped mitigate that. Instead, it just went to propping up asset prices. Bank Bailout 2.0; we didn't learn our lesson, and the incumbent party was yet again ousted.

I'd like to get out of here but can't move because of mortgage rates, among other reasons. I'd like to change jobs but tech layoffs have flooded the job market. It's an anxious time. My 401k is doing great though.

I don't blame Biden for all this. There was absolutely no choice but to pour enough stimulus into the economy to cause massive inflation in order to prevent a revolution during COVID. But if I'm feeling the hangover I'm sure the real working class is staggering.

I likely don’t count towards unemployment statistics. I don’t qualify for unemployment since I was a contractor before.

In my current job search, I’ve sent out more applications and had more interviews than the rest of my career. Granted, I found jobs more through connections than cold applying in the past. I’ve been tapping connections in this search too, though. It’s rough out there. I’ve contemplated taking an exit from tech and picking up a trade.

It sure feels surreal to me when I see reports of a strong economy.

I mean, frankly as a Gen Z man I don’t understand this at all. I’m doing a lot better than I was 4 years ago. Finished school, got a good job, etc.

Not to mention these wage gains are slowing fast.

[0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/19/heres-how-labor-dynamism-aff....

Where the Democrats went wrong is they looked at the economic figures for stuff like corporate profit margins and the stock market and said "look how good the economy is!" when those profit margins are high because they've jacked prices and regular consumers are feeling the squeeze. Unfortunately there's little a President can do about that. Corporate consolidation was largely complete before they even took office and monopolistic behavior is to be expected. The pandemic supply chain disruptions gave companies cover to increase their margins and that's what they did.

I think I'm an average person. Car prices came down and I was finally able to buy a sedan. Unemployment seems low. Eggs are expensive, sure, but on the other hand, my brand of yogurt always seems to be on sale and oatmeal prices are flat, so it's kind of a wash there. The economy seems pretty fine to me.

Certainly, there have been no threats to shut down the government (like in '18-'19), which did do a number on my retirement plan at the time...

And, more importantly, today's inflation is by large firms exerting their market control and monopolistic tendencies. How many grocery companies are there and in their region? Kroger is trying to buy out Albertsons to completely dominate the midwest, to lower quality and increase prices like all monopolists. What needs to be done is anti-trust enforcement which Biden has attempted. But none of this is known by 90% of the country and 0% of Trump voters.

Further, the democrats have been in power for 12/16 years, and multiple years controlling all 3 houses. They did nothing to help with Women's healthcare. I have followed the issue closely, and I still don't understand what they Dems were going to do to keep abortion legal. If it's a state issue, how would the President change anything ? If it's national issue, why haven't they already done anything ?

When was this exactly? The last time democrats controlled presidency and both houses was during Obama's first term and they passed the most historic overhaul of healthcare in this country, which was a huge win for women's healthcare.

The democrat party is not progressive. If they ever have 60 seats in the senate they will fracture and argue with the progressives elements. Most of the democrat party’s constituents are conservative, religious. Most of the minorities they take for granted are not onboard with nonbinary identities, or anything to do with fetus elimination. They just are afraid of republicans for one reason or another.

Was it? From a foreign perspective it doesn't seem to have changed the conversation around US healthcare at all.

To give you some context: every country is different here but usually we have an almost free healthcare system covering everything for everybody (but sometimes you have to wait for a long time) and private healthcare that is more expensive, usually faster but not necessarily better.

Here in the UK my wife and I have between us spent a fair bit on private medical care over the last year - in the case of my wife for cataract operation on both eyes and in my case dental implants and related procedures.

What I find amusing about private health care in the UK is that in each case I have ever used it they make it clear that if something goes seriously wrong they will take you to an NHS hospital.

Privatize the winnings, socialize the losses, the "free market" working as intended.

The part where we don't have the free healthcare system is mostly due to politicians being afraid of socialism or being afraid of raising taxes or both and a very strong medical lobby that doesn't want the salaries of doctors (very high over here) to drop.

The comment you're responding to was alluding to if people could choose to not pay for health insurance until after they got injured or sick and then needed the benefits.

This was huge because if you ever lost insurance and got new insurance (switched jobs) then you were often screwed.

ACA defined essential benefits. Before ACA insurance usually didn't cover things mental healthcare. Required coverage of preventative care/screenings/reproductive care for women.

Annual and lifetime coverage limits were banned. Your health insurance could no longer drop you because you got an expensive to treat cancer.

The amount of desperately needed consumer protections ACA added were immense.

Sure there are problems with ACA, especially the marketplace part of it, but overall it was a big change to healthcare in the US.

That’s putting it mildly. Sure, the ACA was, in many respects, a big improvement over what came before it. But it’s still outrageously broken. Let’s consider the perspective of a person who wants health insurance:

1. You mostly want to be insured via your employer, and you mostly get screwed if you leave your job. The financial disincentives to insuring yourself are huge unless you qualify for the subsidies.

2. For some bizarre reason, you can use only buy insurance at some times of the year.

3. You more or less have to buy insurance through a website that is massively and incomprehensibly bad. Want to figure out what that insurance covers? It’s sort of doable, but it sure isn’t easy.

4. Whether or not you will get to fill a given prescription still seems arbitrary and vaguely malicious.

5. The whole system rubs the insane list prices of healthcare in your face, almost continuously. For drugs, even small amounts of Internet searching points out how much cheaper they are basically anywhere else.

It’s really hard to be excited about the ACA.

(For added fun, and this isn’t really the ACA’s fault but it sure is a failure of affordability and sure seems like a massive failure of government: check out hims.com. Pulling a random example, “generic for Cialis” is at least 3x the price on hims.com as it is via GoodRx.)

Wheter it's a good idea to do this via private for-profit insurance and healthcare is another question. I prefer to just pay it via taxes.

https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/high-deductible-health-p...

I’m not saying that the ACA was a bad law. I’m saying that a not-no-nerdy voter contemplating whether ACA is a great achievement of the Democratic Party is likely to be unimpressed.

While your complains are all true and the ACA is a mess compared to any developed country, it is still very exciting to have the ACA. For anyone who was barred from getting insurance before, it is the lifesaver, literally.

Compared to other countries, ACA isn't very good (to put it mildly) but compared to how the US was before it, it is the most wonderful improvement ever.

You can use a broker (free to you) and get the same (regulated) plans. If your situation is at all complicated you should definitely use one. Probably even for “simple “ cases.

Edited original comment to be more productive.

They could pass a national law that protects a right to travel to other states for an abortion if your state bans them.

This is why America's supreme court is so important: One can argue that most federal level changes in the last 8 years cane from the court just changing their mind on what used to be settled precedent.

I don't exactly know how much of national politics is optimizing for fundraising rather than for making citizens' lives better, but it's clearly far too great.

The reality is that:

1. Abortion has always been one of the most divisive topics in the US

2. Roe vs. Wade to begin with was a very shaky legal hodgepodge based around right to privacy

3. Codifying something like that takes immense political might and public approval neither of which existed in a significant capacity

60+% majorities have supported abortion as a right until near the end of the second trimester, and for the health of the mother after that (for 30+ years).

https://news.gallup.com/poll/321143/americans-stand-abortion....

Campaigns should be publicly funded and not be raising collosal amounts of money. Either side will get tons of free tv space on popular shows and podcasts to get the word out, why does a candidate need to raise billions of dollars? Totally messed up

> "the first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act"

https://www.reuters.com/article/markets/us/obama-says-aborti...

> "I would like to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies that result in women feeling compelled to get an abortion, or at least considering getting an abortion, particularly if we can reduce the number of teen pregnancies," Obama said.

That said, there were very few moments, where a given party had house, senate and presidency at the same time. And most of those moments were divided almost evenly in half so breaking ranks had a big effect.

I think what I am saying it is a tired talking point.

The 111th Congress was the only time in the last 20 years Democrats had a filibuster-proof trifecta and that was for 72 days. [1]

That was the government that gave us the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare.

The other Democrat trifecta was the 117th Congress[2] but if you look that's only with independents in the Senate that caucused with Democrats. Obviously also not filibuster proof.

That's the government that gave us the CHIPS act.

Think about how often parties are in power and they can't even fill appointed positions because of partisan opposition during confirmation, let alone pass legislation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/117th_United_States_Congress

Aka Romneycare, originally put forth by the Heritage Foundation. If that's the best Democrats can do, no wonder people aren't too optimistic about them.

And its passage has helped millions, people I know personally and probably people you know personally. Maybe anyone who'd ever heard the phrase "pre-existing condition" before. It's one of the single most effective and widely beneficial government efforts in our lifetimes.

It's not that fact that Democrats did it by taking the best parts of an opposition party policy isn't impressive, it's that the unseriousness of Republicans when it comes to their own ostensible policy ideas is depressive.

https://web.archive.org/web/20211027180129/https://www.nytim...

The public health insurance option, also known as the public insurance option or the public option, is a proposal to create a government-run health insurance agency that would compete with other private health insurance companies within the United States. The public option is not the same as publicly funded health care, but was proposed as an alternative health insurance plan offered by the government. The public option was initially proposed for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but was removed after the independent US senator for Connecticut Joe Lieberman threatened a filibuster.

As a result, Congress did not include the public option in the bill passed under reconciliation. The public option was later supported by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party in the 2016 and 2020 elections and multiple other Democratic candidates, including the current President, Joe Biden.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health_insurance_option

Well there's your problem. The GOP knows that you need to sidestep those kind of tedious anachronisms in order to wield power effectively and get what you want. The Dems needed to learn that lesson several administrations ago.

    > They did nothing to help with Women's healthcare.

    > keep abortion legal

The economy has been fine for many peoples working lives during ZIRP. But when people feel like their struggling to afford diapers and cereal most other issues become secondary.

Keep in mind that this is after the Biden admin/Congress gutted half of his proposed infrastructure reform. That half was already compromised compared to what progressives wanted, and they STILL couldn't pass it. Guess who stayed home yesterday?

When you say, "Your only choice to save democracy is to vote for me," reasonable and rational people conclude that democracy is already done for and simply don't vote for anyone. And there were warnings that this would happen - like the primaries in Michigan - but establishment Democrats didn't listen (or didn't care). So, now, here we are. How's that for a rude awakening?

Now we know high inflation is much much worse in the minds of voters.

If software developer salaries cannot be expensed and it’s now 5 times more expensive to borrow money to expand, jobs will be lost.

Oh, and the TCJA was championed and signed into law by then President Trump.

Seems like a stretch. "Software Development Job Postings on Indeed in the United States"[1] was up into the beginning of 2022. The tax changes were known in advance for years. If the tax code changes were a significant factor, why did companies hire a bunch of people in 2021, knowing that when 2022 rolled around there would be massive taxes?

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE

Gruez... Income Taxes are paid the year after they're incurred. Tax Year 2022 is filed and paid in 2023. The effects wouldn't start being felt until March 2023 at the earliest.

Also, literally everyone involved in tax policy thought it would be repealed. Heck, the IRS had to scramble to release guidance because they thought it was going to be repealed. The IRS didn't release detailed guidance on Section 174 until September 2023 -- six months after tax filings were due (a number of businesses asked for an extension to file but still had to pay the taxes as if they had filed on time). https://www.cohnreznick.com/insights/additional-guidance-irs...

The Section 174 capitalization for software development was included in the TCJA as a way to 'pay' for the tax cuts, but no one seriously believed it would stay in the law. The problem is congress is very dysfunctional, so once it was signed into law you'd need a congress to get it out. It's no surprise the congress in 2023 was more dysfunctional than the one in 2017.

Also, in 2021 interest rates were historically low, and as I stated initially the dual loss of the ZIRP environment and the massive change to how software developer policies worked together to kill software development jobs.

First off, 2022 taxes are not paid in 2023. Corporations have to pay taxes quarterly, not yearly.

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

Second, no CFO is going to going to accept "this year's engineering expenses might be 100% more expensive (because we can't deduct it), but it's only due next year so we can keep on hiring!". The whole point of accounting is modeling the company's books to reflect its financial situation as accurately as possible, not just looking at whatever the bank balance is. This includes modeling future tax obligations.

For companies that were expensing 100% of developer salaries (which was a lot of them -- capitalization is very cash intensive), having to now eat 80% of that salary as profit and only being able to deduct 20% is devastating.

1171(!) small software companies have come together to try to get congress to repeal their changes to Section 174. They haven't been successful yet, but here's hoping that by further education of folks like yourself, they will be. https://ssballiance.org/

Sure.

And why do you think that might be?

In other words, do you think policy changes have instantaneous effect on issues like unemployment, or perhaps they take some time?

The length and intensity of the restrictions were unnecessary, and the economic consequences of giving away trillions of dollars during them are why we’re in this economic situation.

What would have changed if the restrictions were 6 or 12 months shorter? Nothing.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullartic...

Maybe if Democrats just played the republican card and refused to sign stimulus package just out of spite we would not be here. Same with the bank bailout in 2009.

You... You missed out on the whole vaccines part here. Amazing.

>What would have changed if the restrictions were 6 or 12 months shorter?

Everyone would get hit with COVID before vaccines became available.

The healthcare systems were on the verge of collapse as it was; this would ensure the collapse and mass deaths (and long term disabilities for many others).

>Nothing

The confidence with which you're saying nonsense based on absolutely nothing is admirable, but the bullshit you're spouting isn't.

Next time, don't ask questions if your answer is premade.

Biden inherited an inflation time bomb which has been handled. I expect Trump will claim he fixed inflation the first report that comes out after the inauguration.

Trump also pressed SA to cut oil production to help prop up gas prices in the US [2]. So when the economy turned demand surged back pushing prices higher.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/coronavirus-aid-relief-and-econ...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/economy/special-report-trump...

Is the tech bust of 2000 so easily forgotten? And then the global financial crisis of 2008?

Now right wing commentators are saying that Trump won't actually do what he promised.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/11/wh...

At best , its going to be performative on many things. Even with structural changes to the administrative state that the GOP's project 2025 seems to be promising - it's harder than it appears.

Regarding tariffs - China is currently in an economy slump. Trump being transactional in nature , its certain the Chinese will be open to bilateral agreements. So I don't see tariffs lasting long.

Then, he will apply his rule of: no adding regulation, unless you first remove regulation. The one-in, two-out program to cut regulatory costs. Considering he definitely did this in his last administration and did save ~$100 billion, reasonably certain he will do this again.

In 2016 the staffers were mostly Bush people, and the 2016 presidency was mostly a Bush repeat.

In 2024 the staffers are going to be much different. If Trump gets a trifecta all bets are off -- we'll get policy set by whoever gets Trump's ear.

I expect a lot of voters actually thought that would be the case: "yeah yeah he has to make noise during the campaign, once he gets in he'll just give us some more tax breaks, he's not crazy."

I guess we'll see if that's the case.

Not entirely unreasonable.

Now, if only they had the brains to realize that the economy during the current term was shaped by the decisions made in the previous term.

Cue Trump's 2nd term being propped up by everything Biden did to un-fuck Trump's 1st term.

In general easy lending benefits the richest the most - that's why you saw such a growing split between the wealth of the richest and poorest after throwing away the gold standard.

One that people tend to miss: compensation for high-income professionals. When that gets bid up, so does the price of everything they spend money on. Education/childcare, personal electronics, healthcare, transportation, food, etc. It's not just the wealthy and ultra-wealthy; when the upper middle class can pay and not feel pain, that's taken as a signal to jack up prices across the board.

    > essentially most Americans are single issue voters on the economy.

They then announce pensions for majority groups like the elderly and get voted into power by the same groups they are financing.

That is so low for an upper-middle/lower-upper income country. (Most economists would not describe Portugal as high income in 1996.) I expected EU integration would have made their economy boom. You are right: I have not seen this pattern before. Normally, good democracies can "right the ship".

Why does this persist in Portugal?

I think there are a few historical reasons:

- We are only 50 years out of a dictatorship

- We were late to industrialism

- Our main business sectors are bad (tourism, agriculture, textiles)

And a few law/cultural reasons:

- Lots of buroucracy and inefficiency + high taxes means making a business here is impossible (I've sold a company that I incorporated here so I'd know ahah)

- Bad education and lack of incentives for companies to be here means younger talent leaves for greener pastures across EU and the US. We call it "brain drain".

- Because all the young talented people keep leaving, the only remaining people are low-income workers or old people (we're a very old country). Old people keep voting the same corrupt parties into power so nothing ever changes.

- There's a big "crab mentality" about people who are wealthy being evil.

Extra:

The party that played the biggest role in getting rid of our dictatorship was the communist party (that's literally their name, Partido Comunista Português), so in Portugal communism is good, and capitalism is bad.

There's lots of talk about taxing the rich here, but the truth is that there are no rich. We only have ONE billionare. If were to tax 100% of our rich we wouldn't be able to run the government for more than a couple of weeks.

Which is kinda bizzare to me as a European - American salaries and economic output are growing the fastest of basically any developed economy, _especially_ in the poorer segements of society. By all accounts, post-COVID Dem policies have been incredibly succcessful.

But that's not good enough?!

The US series Breaking Bad talks about a well-behaved chemistry teacher who resorts to manufacturing and selling drugs after he gets cancer and finds out that his savings are no where close to covering the medical cost. He needs to magic the money from somewhere or simply die. Such a context for the story will sound utterly bizarre to almost all Europeans (including Russians).

I paid out of pocket to be able to function. Whatever the solution to American healthcare costs is it's not what we do in EU.

That is not the case - as mentioned even in pretty serious cases you might need to wait 1 year or more for something that should be done ASAP, on top of that the quality of the doctors isn't the best. This is especially bad for well-off people (as in middle class) as you pay e.g. 500-1000 USD a month and can't even get a basic check-up.

If you go east and look at Japan[0] which also has socialized healthcare the quality of healthcare there is very good

[0]: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/9789264225817-5-en.p...

You end up with cool things like high trust, and shitty things like intense racism.

Not to mention if it was on the median so bad for citizens you'd see more broad support for repealing it in countries where it is supposedly isn't working, but that isn't really happening either.

Private insurance is not the reason healthcare is expensive in US. The reason is that services and drugs are too expensive because of collusion, lack of sensible regulation and lack of competition.

At the risk of going off topic, this is a popular, but incorrect meme. Walter could have had enough money for his cancer treatment, especially after getting the offer of paying it off by his former cofounders. He started selling drugs to provide for his family because his cancer was terminal. (And continued because of his own hubris.)

One in the very beginning of the show, when Walter’s old friend Elliott offers him a job at his company (that Walter originally created with him, but later quit, and then it ended up turning into a very successful business afterwards). With the explicit mention of their health insurance being able to cover all the costs of his treatment.

Then later in the show, Elliott and his wife straight up offered him money to cover everything, feeling that Walter deserves it (not in the least part, for being an original cofounder who was unlucky and quit right before the company got big).

There were more moments like those that i keep forgetting, but claiming that Walter started manufacturing drugs as some last resort to cover his medical bills is complete revisionism.

This is an incredibly bad example and a meme that clueless people (usually Europeans) love to bring up time and time again but if you watch the show carefully, you'll see that Walter actually had health coverage for his chemo therapy from his school insurance but he resorted to selling meth because he wanted the best chemo therapist in the sate of New Mexico, and one of the top 10 in the whole US, so he had to go privately out of pocket. In Europe you'd also need a boatload of cash or a top private insurance if you'd choose the best private chemo therapist and clinic in the country outside the public health system where Walter would be on long waiting lists if he were in Europe.

And reason number two, he mainly sold meth because he had a huge ego that prevented him from accepting charity for his treatment and he loved the danger and thrill of it in his mid-life crisis to compensate for being a looser/push-over his entire life holding his career back despite his scientific brilliance, nothing to do with the US health system, that's why the show's writing and character development was so good.

Anyway, pointing at a fantasy TV show as an argument for real life issues is just silly. It's not real.

This is extremely incorrect take. Ask anyone in France, Germany or the UK. The quality of outcome is extremely small between public and private even for the most complicated procedure. Perhaps in private you will get a better experience in terms of customer service.

In fact some of the most notable experts usually work for both the public medical sector and run their own clinic.

This is as incorrect as saying in Germany you have to go to a private university to get access to the best professors.

There are also loads of datapoint supporting the "fantasy" take of the series. For example loads of american only start going for certain cancer screening at age 65 when it becomes free, this can visibly be seen in the data where there is a sudden jump in detection at this age. Again, this kind of behaviour would sound very bizarre for most Europeans.

Walter (the protagonist) didn’t start manufacturing drugs as the last resort to pay medical bills. From the get-go, Walter got offered a job by his former co-founder friend Elliott (who ended up turning their startup into a successful corp, while Walter ended up quitting and becoming a teacher), with the explicit mention of their health insurance being sufficient to cover any medical expenses Walter might incur.

That happened literally in the first few episodes of the show. Walter refuses because of his stupid pride. Later on in the show, Elliott and his wife straight up offer Walter to cover all medical costs (current and future ones), and he still refused. He had many many fantastic outs that didn’t require him to continue manufacturing drugs (or even starting to do so in the first place).

I am mostly upset about this inaccuracy, because it undercuts one of the most important aspects (if not *the* most important aspect) of the show. It is a story about a man who lived a life full of regrets, feels impotent, and found an excuse to do all the bad things that make him feel good, self-important, and inflate his ego to crazy highs, all without feeling any remorse whatsoever.

For example if I understood correctly he got "punished" by the system for preferring to work as a teacher than remain a cofounder and ended up losing his private health insurance this way.

Also, I think that the fact that his wife offered to burn her savings to fund his medical expense will be very difficult for most men to accept it is not really an "out", especially with the survival rate of cancer, you might end up burning her saving and then leaving her fend off for the kids by herself. Also what happens if he took the offer then she got cancer or they got hit by another big medical bill?

It doesn’t, which is why I said “while I […] agree with your larger point about wealth distribution” in my original reply. My gripe was about the overplayed and incorrect “Breaking Bad is about a teacher who got pushed to manufacture drugs due to medical bills” trope, not about your larger point.

> if I understood correctly he got "punished" by the system for preferring to work as a teacher than remain a cofounder and ended up losing his private health insurance this way.

He had that private health insurance waiting for him, as Elliott instantly offered Walter his position back upon hearing the bad news. Walter simply refused that offer and decided that getting involved in manufacturing meth was more fun and rewarding to his ego.

> Also, I think that the fact that his wife offered to burn her savings to fund his medical expense will be very difficult for most men to accept it is not really an "out"

Walter’s wife didn’t offer that. It was Elliott (the cofounder) and his wife that offered it, both of whom are close friends of Walter and are multimillionaires due to their company’s success. They themselves said that for them it wouldn’t be a financial hit at all, and they insist on helping out their close friend in need.

he thought he had terminal cancer, so he would die soon, and probably was worried his family future expenses won't be covered?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

Is there hope that this will change under Republican government?

Eventually people get tired and listen to populists. That's why they get elected, because they'll tell you what you want to hear. Whether they actually have any plans of doing it or not is almost irrelevant when you're dealing with bullshit on both sides.

The only way to beat populists is to have actual concrete plans, which as far as I saw as a non-USAian at least, the democrats barely ever spoke of, and it seems to be the common sentiment across this thread as well.

Denmark is a good example of what I mean, they had a surge in right-wing populist parties due to people's ongoing and ignored issues with Illegal immigration (among other things). Know what the moderates, who were in power, did? They adjusted their policies accordingly with actual concrete plans that they set in motion. And to no one's surprise, the populist parties died down and people calmed down in general once they saw that action was actually being taken.

To be fair, Democrats are historically only marginally better in that regard.

The entire situation (as an EU country citizen who moved to another EU country) and the narratives around it are funny to me because they're the same as the ones going around for years in my birth country.

"Side X should learn they should get better candidates, otherwise people are not going to show up" way of thinking included, which has only led to further decline as the "conservatives" win and make the situation worse taking more and more seats and control in state controlled companies and push their own companies to absorb more and more of the budget. Yeah, not showing up was a great success - if you wanted the decline to accelerate.

Well, good luck US friends, to you and us all.

Economically, inflation hurt. Real wages may have come up to compensate, but you get the inflation first, and then, some time later, then you get the wage increases. It still hurts. Even if the wages increase more, it still takes some time to recover.

Emotionally, it's not just the pain (and the remembered pain) from the inflation. It's Clinton calling people "deplorables". It's Biden calling them "garbage". It's the feeling that the Democrats have abandoned the working-class people - abandoned them for a couple of decades, in fact.

Trump speaks those peoples' language. He understand their sense of rejection and abandonment. Those are the people that the Democratic party claimed to champion, but the party took their support for granted, and championed a bunch of identity causes that the working class doesn't identify with at all.

Turns out ignoring and insulting your long-term base isn't a good way to win.

No fancy economics equations can compensate for continual sticker shock at the consumer level.

It has never been enough, in at least 70 years, for democrats to do good enough. They are graded on this insane curve compared to perfect, and they always fall short since they haven't had serious (more than 60 senators) political power in decades, so they can't do much.

Consider the Palestine issue. I wonder how many young progressives stayed home because Harris refused to say "I will ban Israel from buying US weapons", despite it being clear from polling that doing so would lose her some votes and undeniably increase republican voter turnout. But nope, they refused to see that reality, so they didn't vote for her "maybe we will tell them to kill fewer babies" tactic.

Oh well, in just a few years the problem of Palestine will probably be solved for good. I hope those voters are happy.

Meanwhile republicans can say "I have a concept of a plan" and say that harris should be shot by 9 guns and they get 70 million votes.

My brother is the weird conservative that thinks "Trump didn't win the election in 2020" and "maybe we should regulate companies a little", but that didn't stop him from voting for the one shouting for violence. Maybe that's because he has, even during bush's term, been of the opinion that "all democrats should be shot", which he says right in front of me. I bet he wonders why we don't have a better relationship. It's always for something absurd too, like he said democrats should be shot because of Michelle Obama saying children should be able to eat healthy food at school, which for some reason made her responsible for the decline of school lunch programs since the 80s (a time which he did not experience). It's just another nonsensical thing republicans believe about their country because fox news said it every day for a year even though it's objectively untrue. Our state's school lunch program was better under Obama than it was when he was in school and yet he is sure that Michelle Obama, who has no powers as a first lady, was personally responsible for decisions our STATE made about it's school lunch program.

I don't know what else to say. They believe lies, when I tell them that they believe lies they tell me to my face that I should be shot, and when I say "fuck you" to that, they insist that I'm so divisive and partisan. It's just absurd the reality they live in. It seems so stressful to believe that the government is going to send a liberal twink to steal your guns and shit in your litter box and trans your kid.

But when you can go in front of a judge and say "nobody rational would watch our news program and believe it" and "we literally made up out of whole cloth a story about how the democrats stole the election, despite the fact that many of us were not so sure about pushing such a total lie" and suffer no consequences, what the fuck else is there to do?

Harris avoided any conversation that wasn’t heavily edited.

He’s old, it’s not unexpected. I think he got a huge pass with Biden being in office, which was in retrospect a bad decision.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That was Trump’s competition. Trump may be abrasive but at least the version of him you see has already lost his mind so you know what you’re getting. And apparently it resonates with more Americans.

[1]https://www.npr.org/2024/08/20/nx-s1-5081386/planned-parenth...

In the context of a health check in reproductive health RV that offers a ton of things, _including_ vasectomies in the context of an informed discussion with a health expert, it is not only totally reasonable, but it should be extended to a host of other services that can provided in a mobile clinic the same that mobile vaccination sites were provided during COVID.

You have invented a person in your head to get mad at. Regardless, normal people think having the abortion clinic RV at your largest rally offering to sterilize your supporters is weird.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Why would you ever think this is true?

[1]https://www.npr.org/2024/08/20/nx-s1-5081386/planned-parenth...

The vice president wasn't giving anyone vasectomies, a mobile clinic was at a huge event.

Now that we've established the actual truth and not a ridiculous hallucination, what is the problem?

I don't know if English is your second language, but this is what's known as a lie for propaganda. There is something reasonable that everyone would be fine with (mobile medical clinic) and then there is the lie you're repeating that you're now going on an odyssey to back peddle away from as if you didn't just repeat propaganda.

Now that the truth has been established your forgot to explain what the problem is.

>"this is what's known as a lie for propaganda"

No one is outright lying, but you are certainly being dishonest by insisting someone else was not speaking figuratively when they obviously were.

>"your(sic) forgot to explain what the problem is."

The problem is that it is weird and off putting to most Americans that there is a clinic offering sterilization procedures to supporters of a politician at their rally.

If you meant something else, why did you say what you did and not the truth? Because you are lying for propaganda. If you wanted to explain the actual truth you would have said it.

No one is outright lying,

You are and you're doing it on purpose for outrage over something that isn't real.

The problem is that it is weird and off putting to most Americans that there is a clinic offering sterilization procedures to supporters of a politician at their rally.

I would guess they offer it to everyone actually. What is the problem? You still haven't explained it.

Everything you've said is variations of "I didn't meant it so it wasn't a lie" and "it's just not right because it is".

You’re not going to agree. You don’t have to agree. It’s rhetorical—an attempt to help you understand how to someone might see things. A data point.

I’m explaining how people I know who are, feelings about Trump aside, disenfranchised with the entire democrat strategy, viewed a portion of the greater landscape. A lot of people I know thought it was kinda weird. I don’t owe you a convincing explanation as to why any more than my other comments in this thread might betray. Take it or leave it.

This election was never about Trump.

I don't, because it's not.

disenfranchised

People are being fed constant propaganda like this. Maybe they wouldn't be so upset if they heard things that are true like "there was a mobile clinic in an adjacent parking lot to a convention".

You don’t need to splain to me how it actually was a mobile clinic. As has already been covered, I know what it was and I don’t know a single person who thinks like you claim to be outraged over. Your entire thread here is a non-sequitur, just like your party’s campaign strategy. People aren’t that dumb.

Right, this is why it's a lie. You know the truth and you say something different, that's what lying is.

The rest of your comment is trying to rationalize and ignore the lies. Insults, people should know better, claiming outrage, trying to talk about something else instead, all to take the focus off the fact that you lied and even you know lying is wrong.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Please avoid tit-for-tat spats in particular. They're tedious and nasty.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Please avoid tit-for-tat spats in particular. They're tedious and nasty.

He should have moved aside far, far sooner.

We didn't see much of it here in Milwaukee County. We got boatloads of mailers from WisGOP framing Trump as a moderate candidate, though.

Or do they? This strategy seems to work for them so far.

How do you win an election when your opponent is apparently not bound by reality? Maybe Harris should have just promised puppies and rainbows and candy.

She did, and no one fell for it.

Consider that, just maybe, you're the one not bound by reality.

If you want to support a compromise: most of what you need to do is shut up everyone who will only accept their extreme position.

Fact of the matter is most abortions are elective. It is, in fact, about unwanted children. It is however a shame actual health risks are lumped in - mostly due to marketing.

No but there was plenty of "if you're married and vote for Trump you're a misogynist" or "no real man with daughters can vote for Trump" messaging which rightly fell flat.

That Trump won the popular vote is astounding. That he's currently ahead in Michigan is insane, politically/electorally speaking. By 10pm last night the MSNBC crowd was already starting the "this was just about the economy," "no incumbent Dem could have won," "no challenging Rep could have lost" cope.

The Democratic party has an opportunity here to put DEI, identity politics, and culture war nonsense in the garbage where it belongs, and everyone on the left who was talking about unity and bringing America together 24 hours ago has an opportunity now to show whether they meant it, or if they only meant it on their terms.

It doesn't matter how many people vote for you, your policies can still be anti-democratic.

As far as I have read, Guiliani has been accused in a civil lawsuit of saying he was going to sell pardons, nobody's provided any proof or evidence that Trump knew about it or did anything, and nobody has even had criminal charges brought let alone adjudicated.

I'm happy to be proven wrong but two third parties being engaged in an unresolved civil claim is a long way away from "Trump sold pardons."

Disclaimer: I'm Canadian, not American, so my opinions don't matter.

I'm married with two daughters who are in their early 20s. The abortion issue has come up in my household when discussing Trump v Kamala, but the thing that the Democrats didn't seem to get is that even though it's something that my wife & daughters care about in the abstract, it's not a PRESSING matter for them because they're not planning on needing an abortion ever, let alone any time soon.

That doesn't mean that they aren't pro choice & don't want women's reproductive rights protected at the federal level, like it is here in Canada. But on the hierarchy of things that matter to them today, it is extremely far down on the list. What matters to them most right now is the economy and rising crime rates.

The right wing also spun it as "why on earth do the Democrats think that every single woman is dying to murder her unborn baby?" And while us pro-choicers don't look at it that way, I think that kind of worked as a reminder that while it's an issue, it's just not the most important one affecting their day to day lives at the moment.

It still seems wild to me because I don't share that psychology but am probably biased because I live in a place with a social safety net and most criminals don't have access to guns here so crime is less scary to me : Muggings are rare probably because it's not very profitable and is more of desperate/drug-addict thing.

Being a drug dealer seems much more profitable and I don't feel targeted as a person. Shootings remain rare

I'm the parent and you did an excellent job of clarifying what I was trying to say.

I do want to respond to this statement, however, since I'm Canadian and in one of those countries where abortion is federally protected (and Canadians strongly favour that across partisan lines for the most part) and I live in what used to be one of the safest cities in Canada.

10 - 20 years ago, homicide was virtually unheard of in our city. I mean, it was like a once in a decade event and almost always domestic violence. Today, we can't go a week without hearing about another stabbing or shooting that happened out in public.

Recently our street saw every single vehicle broken into, including ours. We all filed police reports but no one ever showed up or even gave us a follow up call. The message was clear: the police either don't have the capacity or just don't care to deal with certain crimes now. To contrast, I remember my house being broken into when I was around 13 or 14 years-old, so mid 1990s, and I remember watching the detective powder the windows for prints.

Times have changed here in scary ways. We pay the same taxes and have the same expectations of our government as we always did. Canadians value the social safety nets and gun regulations that we have. The problem is that those don't seem to be working as well as they used to. We earn less due to inflation, pay the same or higher taxes, and get less in return. Most of us know of people who travel to the USA for health care due to our long waiting lists while hearing from Americans how great our free health care is.

Almost all of the homicides are targeted gang violence between ethnic groups, but it still makes you concerned for your safety that you are going to take a stray bullet.

What can you do about a low information voter?

they're not planning on needing an abortion ever, let alone any time soon.

People rarely plan to get an abortion. Setting that aside, more than anything, from a political perspective, this is an issue about freedom. I'm not planning on buying a firearm any time soon, but I wouldn't support a firearm ban (and thankfully, I don't have to worry about this because no mainstream politician is running on this policy). It doesn't matter what your thoughts about abortion are, women should have the freedom to have autonomy over themselves. Also, the anti-abortion laws are also preventing women from getting medicine for treating some chronic disease.

I already explained this in another reply, but while crime rates might be going down across the board, I'm talking about what my daughters, my wife and their friends are telling me. And they are not low information voters, because crime rates are sky rocketing in our area and the data supports that. We live in what used to be considered one of the safest cities in all of Canada, and now we hear about a new shooting or stabbing in public just about every week. Mostly drug and gang related.

Everything else you said, especially about the abortion issue being a freedom issue, is preaching to the choir. I agree with you. I'm talking about the mindset of my wife, my daughters and their friends and what they say matters to them.

You can cite various statistics to a person up until the point their car or house is broken into. Or, until they don't feel safe at night any longer in the neighborhood they grew up.

We can double down and say these are "ignorant" voters, maybe even insult them, but I doubt that will help win them over. Even worse, it will alienate them.

Looking at 12 month running averages from FBI UCR since 2012, crime has been in a generally increasing trend from the last minimum, which was in the 12 months starting Jan 2020, to a maximum in the year starting Dec 2022.

https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim...

There is a fundamental issue that pro-choice people (of which I am, as well) continuously overlook with this argument: a fetus isn't merely a clump of cells up until it leaves the woman's body. At some point it's a viable human being and also deserves rights. Is that 3 months? 6 months? 8 months? I don't know, but it's somewhere.

Most people in the world share that view; why are pro-abortionists so ignorant of it?

93.5% of abortions happen before 13 weeks. 0.9% happen after 21 weeks [0]. Since Texas' trigger laws have been put into place, the maternal mortality rate rose by 56% [1]! In 2022, there was an 11.6% increase in infant mortality! Before that, across the years 2014-2021, infants death fell nearly 15% [2]. On top of this, 4 pregnant women have died because they couldn't get the care they needed and and again, women are finding they can't get certain medicines for chronic diseases because doctors are afraid to prescribe them. If you respect these lives, I would invite you to consider what is happening in the real world alongside your thought exercises about cells.

0 - https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/ss/ss7209a1.htm#:~:text=....

1 - https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/texas-abortion-...

2 - https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/20/health/texas-abortion-ban-inf...

Crime has increased in the US. The official numbers were wrong and were recently corrected, instead of dropping by 2% they actually increased by over 4%.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41859346

This is something that the average person saw. The only people who didn't were in a bubble.

0 - A website which happens to have a conservative bias and has failed several fact checks according to Media Bias/Fact Check: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/crime-prevention-research-cen...

"I think we should do more to reduce childhood hunger."

"Childhood hunger is already lower than it used to be, you must be a low information voter."

**

"I think we should do more to reduce traffic fatalities."

"Traffic fatalities are already lower than they used to be, you must be a low information voter."

**

"I think we should reduce carbon emissions."

"Carbon emissions are already lower than they used to be, you must be a low information voter."

If these are important issues for you, you're not going to want to be on the same team with the people who respond like that.

Abortion is what's called a Wedge Issue[1]. It is so because the public opinion on the US is divided roughtly 50% for it and 50% against it.

On top of that, the US presidential election is a First-past-the-post[2] system. So if I manage to get 52% of the votes and you only get 48%, I win everything, you lose everything. You can probably imagine where this is going: Instead of convincing 51% of the people I only need to convince 3% of the indecisive, and I win.

Finally, the US is a very polarized country. The "other" is always bad, "we" are always good. So the wedge issues tend to "align". If you and I agree on abortion, we will probably also agree in most of the other wedge issues.

All of these factors together result in that both Democrats and Republicans are forced to "optimize", so their campaigns all revolve around the same wedge issues. They must, if they want to win.

If you ask me, the least complex way to get the country out of this rut would be changing the voting system to something other First Past The Post.

Unfortunately, the people who are in a position to make such a change are the least motivated to make it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_issue

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting

I'm not planning on being in a car accident. I guess I just shouldn't care about policies that force doctors to let car accident victims just bleed out.

OP politely explained their reasoning and you’re being an ass.

You can't protect against random medical emergencies.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/thomas-wants-...

Even then, no contraception is 100% effective. The only 100% effective thing is abstinence. Just like getting into a car accident, the only way to not have any risk is to not get in the car. But good luck living in the US without getting in a car or being around moving cars.

I'm just pointing out the reality of their choices. They're acting like the only people who get a D&C are people who planned to get one before they were even pregnant. Most people who get this kind of care don't go into it planning on doing it. It's like thinking people planned to break their legs or planned to get cancer.

Buddy, we are long past believing NBC's interpretation of a complicated legal ruling. Your guys have been scare mongering for way too long. Believe it or not, there are lots of sensible conservatives.

Buddy, if you can't understand what these very direct words mean I don't know what to tell you. This isn't some "NBC interpretation of a complicated legal ruling", he's openly and directly saying these decisions should be overturned. He is directly stating we should reconsider contraception access, throwing gay people in prison for being gay, and recognizing gay marriage.

The modern GOP is openly talking about repealing the court decisions which legalized wide access to contraception, disallowed throwing people in prison for being gay, and requiring states to recognize gay marriage. This isn't some fringe conspiracy theory or complicated legal ruling fear mongering, its directly what they're saying.

Quit burying your head in the sand and listen to what your own party is actually saying.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

As I said, women's reproductive issues ARE important to them. It does come up in discussions.

The point is that people often tend to be single-issue, or few-issues voters... and there are policy issues that are just way more important to them right this very second. Issues like the economy and the housing crises.

My wife and I were living on our own and starting a family when we were our daughters' age. Our daughters not only still live with us but they have abandoned any hopes of ever being able to own a home of their own.

Our oldest daughter, who will turn 25 soon, wanted nothing more in life than to have a family and she is seeing the time window for that slip by. She thought she'd be married with a home and kids by now. She found her partner, he lives with us now too. Why would the abortion message resonate with her when what's bothering her most is that she wants kids?

From what I've heard in the news, the women who were single-issue-voters on abortion tended to be older women who are concerned about the rights of their daughters and grand daughters.

But I do wonder how many young women are in similar situations to my oldest daughter. Women who are more concerned about whether or not they can have kids versus whether or not they could terminate an unwanted pregnancy. They might not be a huge voting block, I honestly don't know. But I can't imagine that the abortion message resonated with this demographic at all.

Anyone thinking about possibly becoming pregnant should absolutely be worried about whether their doctors will be able to save their lives when something goes wrong, which is very often. If you think "abortion" rights are only about unwanted pregnancies you've got far too narrow of an understanding of the reproductive process and what can go wrong. You think Nevaeh Crain's child was unwanted, or the many other women whose deaths were just like hers?

> they have abandoned any hopes of ever being able to own a home of their own

Project 2025 pretty much ensure affordable housing pretty much won't get built anywhere near jobs are. It doubles down on NIBY housing policies and prevents densification of areas. It doubles down on requiring a car to drive to work on a long commute. Maybe they'll be able to afford a new build in a suburb 70 miles from their jobs eventually.

> Issues like the economy

Looking forward to that new 20%+ sales tax on imported (read: most things) you buy. That'll really do a lot for the economy. Good choice.

* Men aren't directly affected by it (~50% population)

* Woman over 40 aren't generally affected by it

So woman between 18-40 who can vote are the group most affected by abortion policy. And as you point out, even they aren't directly affected until they actually need one. So the skin-in-the-game for most people is very low. Most people vote and are opinionated on it as a sort of proxy for woman's rights.

However, some issues like house affordability, crime, employment, etc are very high for skin-in-the-game. People are currently affected or know people currently affected by these issues.

I would absolutely be affected by my friend dying from something which should be preventable but has been made pretty much illegal.

I am not an 18-40 woman and I am affected by the abortion policies in my state.

Most Americans don't like abortion laws the don't take into account the health of the mother. So that type of law becomes a wedge among Republicans.

Conversely, if a state passes a six week ban (Florida), that's going to draw out these distinctions among Democrats.

I'm not making a moral claim. I'm commenting on the politics of campaigning on it. I think politicians are advantaged at avoiding wedge issues and focusing on material concerns that affect the most people.

Texas's law allegedly takes into account the life of the mother. And yet mothers are dying because of this law. When you make it that the OB office needs to have the legal team on speed dial to make sure they're not facing life in prison on a regular life or death healthcare your law is abhorrent policy.

The politics of campaigning on it is to make people think only unplanned pregnancies are affected by these laws. I am making a moral claim on that; it's reprehensible.

Accidents happen. Do they not have sex ever?

In what way do you think the Republicans care about the economy? How should the Democrats communicate better that the Republicans tank the economy with every presidency only to be recovered by the Democrats who hand off a winning economy to the Republicans? To be completely honest, I don't think most Americans can even understand the argument.

A flight or bus ticket to California or Colorado for a once-in-a-lifetime service costs multiple orders of magnitude less than the recurring cost of groceries and basic goods.

How many people struggle to afford buying groceries?

Emergency abortions required for health reasons are often needed when things go wrong, and when that is the case it might need to be performed either soon or immediately. Being in a state that opposes it might delay the decision in ways that injure or kill the mother.

Non-emergency abortions required for health reasons - that is, when there is significant risk but it is not unfolding yet - also happen but being in a state that opposes abortions at any level in general might make it difficult - doctors not willing to suggest it to avoid risk to their business, those around you refusing the need and convincing you that it would be bad, not to mention having to plan a medical trip to a foreign location to get it done - and in turn put the mother at risk of injury or death through inaction.

Does it somehow make it less relevant to fix a cause of death because more people die of other unrelated causes?

Far more people die in accidents than any other causes of death in the U.S., seemingly only beat by cancer and heart disease. That doesn’t make every other cause of death any less troubling or worth fixing, and it certainly does not mean that one should hold back existing treatments for “lesser” deaths or injuries.

Any avoidable injury or premature death is one too many.

Economic hardship results in orders of magnitude more all-cause mortality, making it the more important problem to solve.

There are a small number of women who have died due to their physicians and/or hospitals misinterpreting the law, just as there are patients who die every day due to physicians’ and hospitals’ mistakes. Those are issues which need to be addressed.

But — so far as I know — right now there is nowhere in the country where if a pregnant woman’s life is threatened by her pregnancy then she cannot legally obtain a medical abortion.

Four deaths, reported on by one outlet, in the past couple months:

- A Texas teenager died after going to three emergency rooms and being misdiagnosed and denied treatment: https://www.propublica.org/article/nevaeh-crain-death-texas-...

- Another Texas woman died after a miscarriage as a result of doctors not treating her due to the state's fetal heartbeat law: https://www.propublica.org/article/josseli-barnica-death-mis...

- A Georgia woman with chronic health conditions, which can make pregnancy highly risky but did not exempt her from Georgia's abortion ban, died of complications from a medication abortion: https://www.propublica.org/article/candi-miller-abortion-ban...

- Another Georgia woman died because doctors delayed 20 hours after she arrived at a hospital—9 hours after she was diagnosed with sepsis—before treating her: https://www.propublica.org/article/georgia-abortion-ban-ambe...

This literally happened very recently

https://www.propublica.org/article/nevaeh-crain-death-texas-...

> Texas’s abortion ban threatens prison time for interventions that end a fetal heartbeat, whether the pregnancy is wanted or not. It includes exceptions for life-threatening conditions …

And from the actual text of the law (https://www.capitol.state.tx.us/tlodocs/87R/billtext/pdf/HB0...), abortion is permitted when ‘in the exercise of reasonable medical judgment, the pregnant female on whom the abortion is performed, induced, or attempted has a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced.’ That is a very broad exception.

The law has to allow for more uncertainty for the carve-out to be effective.

For example doctors have to wait for sepsis to actually occur before treatment, thus some will die because they loose to the infection

When you are pregnant, and particularly if you are experiencing complications, you do not have time to shop around and convince people and schedule in advance and all that. You are constrained by the spatiotemporal availability of a skilled medical professional.

The vast majority of the voters who had the opportunity, patience, ability, and inclination to follow an argument like this -- the inflation spike was global and the US did better than its peers -- voted for Harris.

Opportunity is a key part of the problem: many voters live in walled informational gardens guarded by propagandists. The only messages that can penetrate into the gardens are short, emotional rather than rational, and lacking in nuance. They are indistinguishable from the constant barrage of lies and disinformation these people are exposed to.

Isn't one of the proposals from Republicans is to ban inter-state travel for pregnant women?

There are zero illegal immigrants employed on any midwestern farm I have ever visited, known, etc. A $500,000 GPS-guided combine works better.

Given that congress is so naturally weak, the most important part of it is the senate's role in federal judicial appointments.

Many people got raises after the inflation shock... but rent hikes ate that up, prices for food and staples didn't go down despite fuel/energy prices going low, and many people didn't get raises at all or (especially in the tech sector) got laid off entirely.

The idea that if you don’t like inflation you should vote Trump is pretty much the definition of stupidity.

There are three big, floating currencies in the world: USD, EUR, and JPY. These currencies are overwhelming used for international trade. The USD<->EUR FX rate has been quite stable (~1.10) for about 10 years. However, the JPY<->USD FX rates has risen dramatically since 2022.

JPY, likewise, has performed terribly against a basket of all FX pairs.

JPY is the outlier.

If seniors weren't the majority of the electorate, the economy would've won out.

Revisionist history points toward COVID response being a left-wing thing, but there was almost zero variation in policy state to state. The only point of variation was school reopening schedules.

The one thing that was knowably wrong to do at the time we did it was to deliberately slow down testing to keep Trump’s numbers looking good. Everything else was flying blind and to the extent we made mistakes (visible in retrospect), we made fewer of them than any of our peers.

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears..

Did you visit any midwestern state during COVID? Florida?

You can use the Google on the internet machine as much as you like and cherry-pick some leftist city in any state, but: broad/legally-enforced mask mandates, forced business closures, etc. were absolutely not happening in many areas of the United States.

That’s not true, what on earth are you talking about? Everything was closed for way longer in New York than in Arizona for example.

He stopped talking about it at rallies because his supporters boo-ed him whenever he mentioned it.

We're partly at the mercy of his stupidity but also the stupidity (that we're not supposed to talk about apparently) of his most devoted voters.

No other vaccine is given entirely under the pretense that it will basically only be of benefit to other people.

COVID had a 0.1% IFR across the whole population.

If I am 18-30, why would I take a novel vaccine when it doesn't even prevent the illness or make me meaningfully more likely to survive? "To protect grandma, of course!" isn't why we agree to use TDAP vaccinations or formerly administered Polio or Smallpox vaccines.

The US population is around 340 million people, no matter how "low" a rate appears (besides your number being wrong, it's 1% [1] and the number of reported infections is likely to be way lower than the actual amount), the sheer size of the country will be problematic. At the very least 1.2 million Americans died of Covid over the four years of the pandemic. That is the equivalent of one average size city getting wiped out by a nuclear blast - if this amount of death were caused by an external force, the US would utterly annihilate that external force. Hell they flattened Afghanistan for a few thousand people who died in 9/11.

And additionally, deaths aren't the only metric. I caught it two times, I was out sick for three weeks with more weeks of lower productivity following because that shit fried my brain. Others had it worse, a friend of mine was out for half a year. That is an effect worthy enough of a mask and vaccine mandate.

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

It was the Supreme Court, staffed by Trump, who stopped the COVID madness with their vaccine mandate ruling.

The other issue is that Biden and his cronies Nuland, Blinken, Sullivan et al. deliberately escalated the Ukraine situation in 2021/2022, with the well known consequences. Note that Zelensky himself begged Biden not to be too aggressive at the Munich summit in early 2022! If I were Ukrainian, I'd loathe Biden.

The Biden administration mandated that their EU "allies" would participate in disastrous sanctions, which sent the EU into economic stagnation.

The U.S. is safe because it has natural gas and the reserve currency, which means they can print money more easily. It is not to Biden's credit that the U.S. economy is comparatively better.

I'd say that over 50% of Europe is very happy with the Trump victory, the EU press does not reflect public opinion.

I’m surprised you would write all of this, blaming Biden for Ukraine’s situation, without a word about Putin. I guess Putin isn’t responsible at all for Ukraine’s situation eh? It’s all magically Biden.

And the concept of 'NATO unity' is a joke. NATO is the US and the extension of its 'soft power'. How is e.g. unity between Greece and Turkey supposed to work out, or France with itself.

Suppose you are on a tour in Rwanda to observe gorillas, and the tour guide tells you not to look them in the eye. One tourist feels humiliated by that instruction, looks a gorilla in the eye and gets beaten up. Who do you blame if you know in advance what the gorilla will do?

It was patently obvious to anyone who experienced the cold war what Russia would do if Ukraine would be a NATO member, preferably equipped with Tomahawk missiles. It was obvious to Merkel, to Obama, to Zelensky.

Of course Russia is to blame, but what is the point if you are supposed to be the adult in the room? You are also to blame.

[0] aside from "it gives us moral cover to start deporting citizens we don't like"

What he will probably do is reverse the insane foreign policies of the Biden administration and stop the world from burning. I think he'll deescalate the Ukraine and Taiwan situations. Probably he'll not attack Iran either even though he is said to be a bigger hawk on Israel than Biden. But he also has a sense for economics and will not want another oil crisis.

Americans could had saved Russian economy with this move, currently facing an imminent stagflation, so I bet that Putin is also a very satisfied cat and licking his lips at this moment. He has a golden excuse to pause the war for a while in the most favorable conditions for him, and rearm himself

Kamala proposed several policies targeted at those problems. Many of which I disagree with, but it’s demonstrably untrue they “ignored” it.

The American people were just lied to successfully by the world’s biggest liar.

Dems could try to explain why Trump's economic policy made the US economically brittle, leaving Biden no choice but to pay the piper to avoid a depression. You're not going to woo voters with that kind of narrative, though, even if it's the truth.

My mind was blown when she said "There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of — and I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact."

Most of those issues are probably better explained by the trend for jobs, especially higher paying ones, to be more and more concentrated in cities. There has been almost no policy push to realistically address that from anyone, outside of lackluster and temporary measures to encourage jobs in smaller cities.

Meanwhile, the services you need, right down to food, are supplied in many cases by immigrants. So it’s working for the average person extremely well.

The reality is that immigration is not all good for the average person. Similarly, it's not all bad for the average person either. When we frame these discussions in the stark extremist terms on either side, we get into trouble.

We have to calibrate immigration, so that we get the good, without getting so much of the bad. There are so many untruths floating out there right now about immigration on both sides that it's hard for the people trying do that calibrating to actually make any progress. When we try to get a handle on the good or the bad, invariably, someone's narrative is going to be shown as false.

There is an impact on wages, that's lamentable and it causes pain in a lot of the middle class. Let's put our heads together and see how can we address that?

Some people are not willing to admit that there are people of foreign origin who are critical additions to our intellectual capital. But a reasoned analysis would concede that H1B's are not even close to the same as NIWs in that regard. We probably can source a lot of H1B work natively. We should still offer the H1B opportunity though, so what does that balance look like?

Crime? Crime is definitely a problem. The data shows that it doesn't get better through the generations as one side would have you believe. At the same time, it isn't as prolific among people of foreign origin as the other side would have you believe. (Heck, in all honesty, the data shows crime isn't even as prolific among native born Americans as one side would have you believe.) Do we have to address it? Absolutely, but we shouldn't look at everyone as a criminal.

We need balance to address these issues wisely, but balance is severely lacking in contemporary civic discourse here in the US. And therefore, balance is lacking in our policy decisions.

Ideas that come to mind are (1) reclassifing crimes as not crimes - instant reduction in crime in stats but no reduction in actual crime and victims (2) less reporting because of less enforcement as in police don't enforce the laws either because they don't want to or because there are less of them so there is less reportihg (3) less reporting because of uselessness. if you don't believe the police will do anything why report it. Car gets broken into, reporting is a chore that produces no results, reporting to car insurance just raises your rates.

Etc... as just one example I recently rented a car at SFO and there were signs saying don't leave anything valuable in your trunk because of theft. that's effectively saying the government isn't working to prevent this crime so the criminals are winning so you can no longer use a car for one if it's intended purposes. In can fully imagine in 20 years we'll be told not to store any valuables in our houses. that not how it should work.

I lived in the mission in Sf. Crime is way worse today than 20 than ago, any stats that claim otherwise are lying

>Jeff Bezos(01:34:00) We were going over a weekly business review and a set of documents, and I have a saying, which is when the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. And it doesn't mean you just slavishly go follow the anecdotes then.

    > The reality is that immigration is not all good for the average person.

Regarding low skill immigration, it can help to supress labor costs (and indirectly control inflation) in very high labor industries, such as non-commodity crop farming (vegetables, fruits, etc.) and food processing. That said, if uncontrolled, it will have a negative economic impact upon low skill natives.

IMHO, if you get permission to work in a country, it shouldn’t be revocable. The revocation just serves as a way of paying the immigrant, and therefore the native who could also do the job, less.

So - are population and housing costs going up and infrastructure failing to keep up, while businesses don't invest? Sure - but that's down to a failure to invest the proceeds of change, not down to the change itself.

just as how people are getting triggered online more easily by displeasure, so they are triggered by the bad apples more than the invisible good ones. there’s more of good ones, but the larger their absolute number, the more resources are shared and the more bad apples there are, the more this sharing becomes problematic. the fewer shared properties there are, the less there is to dilute the bad-applehood.

abstracting away from this into a symbolic ideal (equivalence via property of “humanhood” and equivalence via property of “need” determined via capacity of empathy and Christian virtue) does no one any good and is experienced as a result of effacement of shared histories (roots). the idea that real present (ie, ahistorical) causative elements are always only just social or imperialist is ideology.

because as UniverseHacker stated at the outset, that's a time tested method of gaining power. It works.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Trump is the new President isn't he?

Pretty sure the ever wealthier owner class is to blame for that, not immigrants.

> minority enclaves with values that are fundamentally incompatible with the West

And this is a massively overblown problem mostly pushed to distract voters from those listed above.

But, the Republicans will just attempt to make the rich richer, and keep the poor and others isolated, then sell the story that the others are the ones keeping the middle class down, not the rich.

That and employment for prime aged (i.e. not retirement age) Americans is as high as it's ever been.

However for people who work in those sectors the picture tend to look differently with wages and good safety practices being suppressed. Construction companies that follow regulations and pay taxes for all their employees will loose in the competitive market. The effect on the economy may be a net-positive, and it may also be true that most countries could not contain growth if construction actually cost as much as it had to without the illegal practices, but that is all multiple aspects of the same issue.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-5210935...

During COVID lockdowns, UK farmers complained that they can't get cheap foreigners to pick their strawberries. Obviously "lack of workforce" is just a propaganda expression for "we don't pay enough". Open borders directly reduces wages.

> Obviously "lack of workforce" is just a propaganda expression for "we don't pay enough"

Looks to me like this needs a specialized skilled workforce, otherwise they won't be able to pick the fruit in time for it to stay ripe.

Paying a smaller population of workers more will not necessarily encourage them to develop enough skills to do this job. It might just be left undone and then no fruit. If you have a larger population of potential workers, then there's more room for people to specialize in this because you have a larger economy.

> James Porter said 200 workers normally travelled to his farm in Scryne, Angus, from eastern Europe.

I'd like to know which part of Eastern Europe that means. If it was Ukraine they were bad then and worse now, but if it's Poland they have incredible economic growth right now and are on track to pass the UK before too long.

wow, this is probably the most ridiculous (i.e. funny and retarded) thing I've read on the internet today (and it's a special day, with tons of ridiculous takes!)

Not OP, but I can absolutely vouch for local negative sentiment in Eastern Europe. Granted, some of it is a direct result of war in Ukraine ( and a lot of those refugees getting benefits and priority for government services in host countries ).

It is hard for the population in general to get that they are getting a deal, when they don't. Maybe some individual billionaire does, but if anything, it only exacerbates the issue further by focusing anger on that one person.

As a result the prices of forest fruit has increase multiple times and food companies are reporting a significant increase in costs thus needing to reduce the number of employees. Every industry above in the chain is feeling the economical impact of losing the human slavery. Local government is also concerned since the created void, in combination with increase wages, may encourage new independent illegal workers which then the state must handle.

I highly recommend this DW documentary if others are interested to learn more about this very specific issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW1QWG3xSNg

If human slavery was a net-loss for countries then it wouldn't be historical popular. Be it building roads, railways, bridges, buildings, harvesting or picking fruits, those are not things people in general want to see prices increase. People who talk about illegal immigrants being a net-positive on the economy never talk about that aspect, in the same way that those being against illegal immigrants do not want to talk about increased costs. Even people who talk about human trafficking do not want to talk about human trafficking in construction or food production.

At one point the police even announced (as part of a political move in order to get more budget) that they would stop investigating construction places for human trafficking since just going to a single construction place would fill their work quota for that year, and thus everything else would had to be put at hold. Everyone who work in construction are fully aware of the open secret that a large part of all work is done by illegal workers that do not pay taxes (or minimum wages), do not get safety equipment, and is not limited by regulations that exist to protect workers. Sweden is far from unique in this aspect.

What bothers me much more: When companies and industries that generate middle class jobs (and above) complain about being unable to find workers. After the GFC ended around 2009, this was a constant complaint in business newspapers for many years (I guess at least five years during the post-GFC recovery). It was so obviously bullshit to even the most casual observer: The offered wages were much too low, so jobs stayed unfilled for months on end. In short, they wanted high skill people to work for low wages.

    > Open borders directly reduces wages.

Are you sure about that? It seems about equal to me [1]...

In any case, Brexit didn't cause closing the borders; immigration into the UK increased massively [2] (i.e. the politicians didn't deliver what the people wanted). Any negative changes to the UK economy were more likely caused by decrease in trade with the EU... [3] Although COVID makes all these statistics suspect.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/national-gdp-constant-usd...

[2] figure 5 here: https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/lo...

[3] https://obr.uk/box/the-latest-evidence-on-the-impact-of-brex...

I mean, no, not all of them do that all of the time.

But it seems to be pretty common, and I'm not at all convinced that it's smarter, more correct, or wiser to live by research than by subjective experience.

It reports only those actively looking for a job or employed, so it leaves out people who simply aren’t participating in the labor market anymore because they can’t find one.

It also reports all jobs, not the quality of the jobs. Average Americans feel the job market today is terrible and largely does not look at part time and near minimum wage work roles growing as a positive. The jobs report doesn’t disaggregate higher paying jobs from lower ones

Here's reports for all these that don't have those issues, as they just come from surveys.

> It reports only those actively looking for a job or employed, so it leaves out people who simply aren’t participating in the labor market anymore because they can’t find one.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060

This simply asks "do you have a job", and it's up to the people responding to decide if being an Uber driver is a job.

> Average Americans feel the job market today is terrible and largely does not look at part time and near minimum wage work roles growing as a positive.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12032196 - % of workers part time because they couldn't find anything better

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0203127200A - % of workers at federal minimum wage

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620 - % people with multiple jobs

All look healthy right now. (Obviously there's a lot more people at the state minimum wage.)

> The jobs report doesn’t disaggregate higher paying jobs from lower ones

That's in FRED somewhere, but https://realtimeinequality.org is an easier way to view it.

Btw, I think focusing on "jobs" isn't the best thing to look at - the poorest people in a country will always be children and the elderly, and hopefully we don't want them to get jobs.

No matter how you cut it though Americans do not feel they are getting their fair share economically and want to avenge that, which is why I think voters didn’t push back against tariffs - which have become a cornerstone of economic rhetoric by Trump and his allies - at the ballot box.

I think it’s also because a good chunk of the electorate doesn’t quite understand how tariffs work and it’s going to backfire, but the sentiment is very clear

There was some hangover effect from inflation, although of course that's going to get worse now.

Yes it does, and it shows that the fastest growing wages are in the bottom 10%.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

We can make assumptions though and yes I agree it shows that trend.

Even if I’m misinterpreting this my general assertion about people’s feeling about the job reports that I’m telegraphing I think still remains valid

Some people are hurting because there's always some people hurting, and for some reason that means we get the party that wants to reduce social safety nets?!

Whether those sectors include most of the people worried that their wages will be suppressed, when who we’re talking about are illegal immigrants who mostly do stuff like chicken processing and house framing/roofing, is another matter.

It’s weird that “we had a bipartisan bill to address specifically this thing you’re worried about, likely to pass and be signed into law, and Trump scuttled it so he could keep complaining about it” didn’t resonate. Frankly, if that’s too “technical” a message to be received, we really are fucked.

In practice this is not an issue, to the point it's hard to find cases where it ever happened. Collection of studies: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-...

One reason for this is that immigrants have differing and complementary skills from natives - eg just speaking a different native language is a skill - and so they're not likely to land in the same sectors. They're more similar to other immigrants from the same place, and so it's more likely they'd lower each other's wages. I think this is totally believable, but the demand factor is still very important here - one immigrant could start a business and employ others etc.

> If this weren’t the case, there wouldn’t be a bunch of us wanting to loosen rules about foreign-trained doctors practicing in the US.

Doctors in the US are a special case because their number is so limited by the AMA and by (US government funded) residency slots. So yes, this could lower their wages if foreign doctors have similar enough skills to compete with them vs complement them. But it's more important for us to just stop limiting how many new doctors we train.

This wouldn't necessarily hurt them though; I mean it probably would, but if it made healthcare more affordable resulting in more people going to see doctors, then they'd all get paid more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

We have a history of doing the Neoliberal “well this will make line go up and we can just help the few whom it harms” and then not helping those few, so I get why people worried their wages might be some of the ones affected aren’t thrilled. Whether most of the folks so-concerned would actually see such a thing, is another matter (I’m guessing not, in at least 95% of cases of people with those concerns).

and here we have another reason for yesterdays results.

What? You’re really claiming that increasing the supply side of a market has no effect on prices? That’s absurd. You shouldn’t need evidence for common sense. If labour supply is essentially unlimited then there is never pressure to increase wages. A literal child can understand this…

Also, I'm going by empirical studies here. Those are better than beliefs, because truth is stranger than fiction.

Since immigration started increasing in the late 90's wages have been stagnant. Correlation doesn't equal causation, but hmm.

So you have much bigger problems. For there to be jobs there has to be industry first. That'd provide the demand.

Immigration can heavily increase demand, and so it can play a big part, depending on the immigration numbers. Anyone moving in needs a place to live as well.

Housing is also one of the few issues that is so local and immigration is such a tiny story around it to begin with. Prices are high in plenty of areas seeing little immigration activity

You’re also failing to draw a causal link here. Not to mention NYC is one of the biggest cities in the world period (10th). It’s hardly representative of most US cities.

The far-left strategy seems to be clientele politics, and attempting to rule over the fractured result.

The avg joe isn't affected by this.

But hey let's be real here: will the avg American start working all the not so good immigrants jobs?

It's ironic to pay lip service to supporting the poor while kicking the ladder out from under them with immigration.

[1] https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-region/massive-lineu...

With this issue it’s all about the particulars

Cultures are not monolithic, static entities. How do we go from "different cultures" to "negative outcomes?" That's a complete non-sequiter.

Imagine if all of Germany moved to India. What would happen? What if part of Britain moved to UK? At some point the politicians will have to look at the issue...

> During the 2015–2016 celebrations of New Year's Eve in Germany, approximately 1,200 women were reported to have been sexually assaulted, especially in the city of Cologne. In many of the incidents, while these women were in public spaces, they were surrounded and assaulted by large groups of men who were identified by officials as Arab or North African men.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%9316_New_Year%27s_E...

Just interesting.

  a: a member of an Arabic-speaking people
  b: a member of the Semitic people of the Arabian Peninsula

> imagine if all of India moved to Germany. What would happen?

Indian & East-Asian immigrants have much lower violence stats than the native populations. To that end, your example doesn't say much about the GP that you're replying to.

To steel man the GP, let's say they mean any 2 demographics, not German vs Indians specifically. But there in lies the core issue with immigrant conversations. You can't pick 'any 2 demographics'.

Different immigrant groups (grouped by nation/age/gender/religion/skill-level) demonstrate different integration characterisitics. All immigrant conversations should be painfully specific. The conversations will be politically insensitive. But this is a comment thread about Trump winning his 2nd term in office. So, clearly, the ship has already sailed on political correctness.

    > Constant immigration is not sustainable. Especially when people come from cultures which are very different than the west. They have different value systems, religions, etc.

Also, specifically regarding Germany, are you German, or have you lived there? Unfortunately, I see a lot of negative media about immigration in Germany ("Oh, too much! Cannot mix different types!" -- All that bullshit). But, then you talk to Germans, especially those under 40, and it is a different story. Many of them grew up with many immigrants in their schools. Germany is already much more multi-cultural than outsiders realise. The number of ethnic Turks in Germany would surprise many. In the last 20 years, this community has become much more integrated into wider Germany society. (They finally have some federal minister roles... whoot!) Yes, Germany has ethnic struggles, as any newly multi-cultural nation has, but, overall, they have a good attitude about it.

People really need to face reality and that our society simply cannot sustain even limited immigration if those people end up as a negative for the state in terms of financials.

https://www.cdss.ca.gov/inforesources/refugees/programs-and-...

People would likely be less annoyed if the “free housing” was more akin to government owned military barracks instead of subsidized rent to private enterprise.

Skilled migrants bring wealth with them, and in fact countries like Australia have avoided recession through immigration (and unemployment is still around 4%).

Secondly in many countries "the left" hasn't really been in power for a long time; often government are in the centre or centre-right.

All this boils again to emotions - people see french teacher having head cut off by student due to showing muhammad's picture in the class, and this trumps 1000s other data points and discussions. I am not saying such things should be ignored or swept under the carpet, but analyzed rationally, discussed and good measures taken, even very harsh if they are the best course of action. Simple folks don't want to hear arguments, they want to see blood and whole world to fix their lives so they can live like some tiktokers they follow en masse.

For Europe, yet again Switzerland is doing stuff 1000x better than rest of the continent. They have 3x the immigration of average western EU country, yet 0.1% problems with it. But its population is smarter and less emotionally driven, so populists have it much harder here. Also they as society setup the whole immigration as set of rules as expectations that everybody +-adheres to. But EU has too big egos to actually admit somebody is better and just learn from more successful, so they will keep fucking things up till people are so pissed they will vote for people who will do further long term damage but will tackle scary immigration boogeyman.

Now its really not a good time for democracies that don't have well educated smart self-sufficient population, dictators are coming better off.

Well, being the continent's money vault and avoiding two world wars while the whole continent ravaged itself twice, tends to make a huge difference in your nation's development (time in the market beats timing the market and Switzerland did both).

Also, just like the USA, Switzerland won the geopolitical lottery early on by being in a position that's easy to defend and difficult to attack and capitalized on it over the decades by attracting the highly educated elite and the wealthy entrepreneurs escaping from the European countries as they were torn by wars and revolutions, plus the dirty money of warlords, dictators and criminals from all over the world made them incredibly prosperous. It's not a repeatable formula that any other EU country could have easily replicated.

Adding the fact that Switzerland is incredibly restrictive with who they accept in the country, compared to neighboring EU countries who just let the dross in to virtue signal how tolerant they are, maintains Switzerland a very safe and desirable place to be despite it being relatively diverse (diversity in this context also means diversity of thought and diversity of opinion, not just the US identity politics version of only meaning non straight white males). So another win for them.

But if you look at Swiss elections, plenty of candidates took the xenophobic route in their campaigns demonizing Muslims and burkas as the biggest threat, but unlike EU members they don't really care what other think of them so they're a lot more outspoken about it.[1][2]

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/anti-minaret-campaign-divides-switzerl...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56314173

Just one nitpick - people love bashing swiss banking and relation to money laundering and nazis. If you check the numbers, this had absolutely minimal effect on economy, even now banks together form cca 10% of the economy, tourism has bigger impact. Plus its a profit kept within corporations who dont pay massive taxes back to state, so there are some benefits but its overblown, but makes easy blaming mental shortcut. Emotions emotions...

And I stand by the fact most of swiss success could be easily repeated in ie Germany or France, they have the competence, if they were setup differently and folks had slightly different mindset. Its no magic, just few extra rules and responsibilities. But no they have to have overblown easy to abuse social state, high taxes. Of course this doesnt work well. Again swiss have by far the best and most sustainable/resilient model in this, good health and social systems, yet low taxes and state basically doesnt have deficits

- there's immigration

- normal people are getting shafted

However, the two things are entirely unrelated.

However, the ones doing the shafting tell people they're related so often that people believe it.

Once again, we see a tactic identical to Nazi Germany. Hitler rose to power by saying the terrible economy was because of the Jews.

It's already happening.

Not just running the place into the ground, but also actively lecturing people how everything is fine and how it's their perception that is wrong. That's what really pisses people off and gets the to vote extremists as those tend to at least acknowledge some of the issues average people are facing or seeing.

Average working class people don't like being lectured by upper class higher educated elitists off their high horse on how they're wrong.

IF you were so interested in preventing the next Hitler what you would actually have to do is to rigorously oppose anything that threatens the livelihood of average people. Fighting inflation would be THE number one concern because you'd know that people carrying their money in wheelbarrows was what caused Hitler.

If you want to prevent Hitler, you'd fight like hell for decency. Homeless encampments? Open air drug dens? Only-fans? This would be your concern because you'd know that in the Weimar Republic rampant prostitution and other cultural decay is what caused Hitler.

If you wanted to prevent Hitler you'd also speak out sternly against Antifa and other violent extreme leftists, like those that caused the George Floyd riots, because you'd know that the breakdown of public order due to rampant political violence in the Weimar Republic is what caused Hitler.

Nobody on the left is doing any of that because nobody on the left really thinks Trump is a Nazi. It's just a label, just a tactic. And all it has done is to burn term. Trump or Maga or the current right reaction isn't the big bad. What comes after this might be, if Trump fails. Ironically, it's exactly Trump's agenda which is most suited to fight real fascism.

The more Hitlery you advertise them as the more likely they'll get votes. And you will think more gaslight is the solution when it was the root cause for the radicalization.

Enjoy the bed you made

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-review...

Back then the right wing were the industrialists who wanted immigration.

Hitler blamed all sorts of people, including the socialists (who were against immigration). Using Hitler to shut down any discussion about immigration is not very productive. Obviously there are limits. Less so in the U.S. because there is more space, but in Europe everyone is already living in tiny overpriced apartments on top of each other.

The root causes of the issues are war, climate change and demographics. No amount of "battening down the hatches" or "sticking your head in the sand", which is right wing answers to this, are going to solve it. The real solutions are strengthening global co-operation and international agencies.

Unfortunately we're going in exactly the wrong direction.

Pensions, social security, healthcare; once you have a feeling that you'll be taken care of if things go bad you can think about your neighbours a little more.

The democrats shifted to the center instead of creating a campaign chasm on actual progressive issues that Americans would generally support like universal healthcare[0], student debt cancellation, housing subsidies, stronger pro labor policies (support for unions has grown across the aisle substantially) and generally fairer more equitable economic participation.

That would have reached across the aisle and put Republicans on the defensive especially around messaging

Instead, they went strong with wedge issues and tried to play culture wars. Which honestly I don’t disagree with the conclusions and policy positions democrats made here but it didn’t speak to economic fears or relief for the masses

We did this to ourselves to a certain degree. All progressives have left now is molotovs in the streets

[0]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/468401/majority-say-gov-ensure-...

The reason is that there is an ulterior motive: left intellectuals think they can abolish racism by making the world ethnically and culturally uniform. That's why the arguments and reality never matter: the elites have a higher cause and we just have to suck it up.

In the US I’ve never heard this narrative from major candidates or seen it in their policy proposals from the democrats

Rhetoric is always about respecting the melting pot and letting cultural and ethnic differences co-exist under the great American experiment as it always has since its founding

That is the uniform culture. You see it in tv shows everywhere, people looking the same in every show etc. (the 1 black, 1 white woman 1 white man 1 Hispanic 1 Asian group you see everywhere in American stuff)

There used to be shows like Friends and Fresh Prince which means diversity, now everything is just the gruel of the melting pot.

It does rest that cultures will become homogeneous over time as they melt together but I take what is being asserted to be different from that, as in it’s promoting an artificial uniformity of culture rather a naturally blended one

Yeah, it feels like instead of enabling a diverse set of cultures to coexist they try to enforce a culture that has a diverse set of things in it.

Feelings being what they are, you can't really 'disprove' them per se, but this may be more of a reaction to media representations of diversity vs actual ideals

Since we're already treating people like cattle ("we need bodies") to be moved around at will here, then we might as well make a comparison with a cattle farmer. If his cattle are not reproducing and thus are dying out, what sensible person would suggest that the solution is to get cattle from other farmers? When is it time to ask why his cattle is dying? Is it because they deserve it? Is it because the farmer needs the milk more than the calves?

I personally want my people to survive and not join the scrolls of history on the long list of exterminated tribes. If we have to survive outside of our current geographical country in a different place, then that is preferable to extermination.

Give me any way of "making people reproduce again" which isn't overtly dystopian-totalitarian and i will accept that promoting "as much immigration as possible, not letting in only known criminals" was a bad idea.

Sure government can just start having babies for itself. That will be real cattle herding.

I live in (around) a major city. Sure it's overcrowded but that has nothing to do with foreign immigration and everything to do about it being a economic powerhouse. Quality of life has been increasing since the city has invested/is investing in more transportation/bikeable lanes/better air pollution standards/less noise. Also laws that are forcing better insulation standards are a net quality of life both in terms of comfort and footing the bill. Even the people who really need to take their cars will benefit because there will less traffic jams on account of 1. people for whom it was mostly comfort leaving the road and 2. reduced speed means less unnecessary braking to get out and in the motorway around the city.

Strained services seems to be because of budget tightening. It's a policy choice that has to do with ideology (don't fund a service when it could made profitable by outsourcing it) and trying to save on budgets because of a bad economy. Again you'd have to back up with data that it has something to do with immigration.

I could on and on but basically what you are saying there was too much new people too fast but I don't think this is nowhere true in my western european country.

The only thing that could worry is the minorities enclaves but it's not hard to break up a ghetto by opening it up sociogeographically and economically, you just need to the political will to do so but instead it's left in place and used as convenient fear-mongering tool for politicians.

The Guardian (a left-leaning newspaper) estimates that leaving the housing crisis unfixed also fuels the far right parties.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/article/2024/may/06/fix-eur...

Sure is. Change zoning rules to allow building a lot more. Let people and corporations build using their own money. No need for government to use any money, just change the rules. Collect property taxes from the new buildings.