this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2024
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All of these things definitely were in the news, of course. They just don't STAY in the news, and the public memory hole works fast.
And Trump will take credit for it all and his idiot believers will eat it up.
In the exact same way Biden took credit for people returning to work after covid
Did you know that a lot of folks that received aid during the pandemic call it the "Trump check"?
Do you think he takes credit for that?
Because they're fucking bread crumbs. What you want us to hold a parade over credit card fees while housing, education, healthcare and food continue to become more expensive and Biden's cabinet works to suppress wages? Neato.
Ya, basically Biden is only able to solve minor first world problems instead of any sort of meaningful attempt on any of the several huge issues.
This isn't all his fault, he's not a king and can't do whatever he wants, but I also don't often find my own managers all that happy with me when all I can say I've accomplished is minor, non-critical tasks and haven't even started on the major work they want accomplished. Making a report look nicer and fixing the break room coffee machine isn't going to cover for failing to launch our latest product. Americans are right to be disappointed in their government and we should be disappointed in our media for failing to stick to larger issues.
I'm more disappointed in the people who keep voting conservative blockers into the senate and house than I am that biden won't circumvent them.
I’m disappointed in them and fucking livid at shitbags like Sinema who run on a platform and gleefully give the middle finger to everyone while they do the exact opposite once in office.
This isn't an accident. The same thing happened during Obama's presidency.
People don't want to face facts: The Democrat party is filled to the brim with pro-corporate trash.
He could have stayed out of the rail strike, he could have not gone around congress to ship weapons to Israel and he could have told Yellen not to make suppression of worker wages her goal.
You're trying to deflect blame away from him as if we're all expecting him to do things he can't. Biden isn't acting in our interests and it should come as no surprise that means we're not interested in voting for him again.
Do you think not voting will make the world better? Biden isn't perfect and I'll continue to pursue progressive candidates in primaries, but I don't see what anyone gains by not voting or voting for someone who's definitely going to do a lot more that I disagree with. I didn't disagree that America has a right to be angry with him, regardless of any excuses, but you still live in reality and have to deal with the situation you have, not the one you want.
Tell us you don't know anything about how the rail strike got resolved and what the outcomes were...
Especially since Biden was brought into that position to do precisely that. Do some pet projects but not challenge the underlying root issues of inequality and peoples economic situation. Because that would be against the interests of the billionaire "donors" of the Dems and Reps.
"pet projects"? 🤦♂️ jfc you people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal
Yes. They are pet projects compared to what other presidents have achieved and what is needed to change the country to an economically, socially and ecologically sustainable new status quo. Biden is preventing that change together with his DNC buddies who want to make sure the inequality in the US stays, the interests of the super rich are kept and the white upper class remains in power.
BIDEN is preventing change? 🤦♂️ jfc you people.
Why do you limit yourself and your political demands to the little box given to you instead of demanding to see the horizon?
I'm open to taking mushrooms.
They're steps in the right direction, but in general I agree with the sentiment. We need much more drastic changes.
We need new leadership, these geriatric parasites aint gonna do shit to really change anything.
Their main job is to placate us while transferring nations wealth upwards. Looks at the national debt over last 30 years and nothing to show for it. Literally no infrastructure, no social support except for boomers/old. Everybody is also in more debt. Every major market is consolidated is being price gouged.
This shit don't happen on its own folks. Somebody did this...
While I fully agree with the sentiment of your comment, I need to remark that national debt is a non-issue. The central bank of the US, in this case the Federal Reserve, is the one and only entity in planet Earth with the power to create dollars at will. It doesn't even need to print them, since money now is mostly digital, they can be created at a keystroke on a keyboard.
As long as the national debt is denominated in USD, which it is, the US will never have a problem with debt payments, it could literally pay it all back early tomorrow pressing a keyboard 3 times, and it would cost taxpayers a grand total of $0.
Debt is simply a useful tool for other reasons, like being able to control the interest rate of loans the economy (as we saw during the recent increase enacted to attempt fighting inflation), but public expenditure isn't reliant on debt or even on taxes, since the government can create an arbitrarily large amount of dollars. The desirable amount to be created should be discussed with scientific evidence in hand, or even modulated over time responding to the markets and the situation of the economy and inflation, but debt is absolutely not a limit on public expenditure. The US could create as many dollars as desired to pay for infrastructure or social support (as it did during the very successful new deal, or the pandemic cheques, or rescuing silicon valley banks).
Yes national debt is not a problem for the state printing money... Make no mistake that it is has impact on people responsible for paying it.
Where is this cavalier attitude coming from?
Who do you think pays the interrest and where do you think that money goes?
Again, it's not cavalier attitude, I'm at least as much of a leftist as you are, it's just an explanation of the economics of the state and the public sector.
Who pays the interest? The government. Where does that money go? A combination of private sector of this country and others, and the public sector of other countries, basically anyone who wants to buy public debt. Myself included btw. I'm not paying interest on my country's debt, my country is paying me interest on the debt I purchased from it.
I'm purely talking about public debt, not private debt. Unless someone in the private sector can get indebted in a currency they create and control, then they can't pay for it immediately and without cost. It's just that when people discuss the problem of national debt they're usually talking about the debt of the public sector.
You are still missing the point.
Government has only one way to raise revenue, taxes. Taxes are paid mostly by working people, ie middle aged. Most of public debt is owned by the wealthy and old.
So public debt is transfer of money from working middle aged wager slaves to the wealthy owner elites.
What benefit did working people get from this national debt? None.
So while you point stands, public debt does not matter for the federal government.
You pretending like it has no impact on the people paying taxes is rather naive take on how it actually works.
It is an extraction racket, no amount of modern monetary theory bullshit explains away the economic toll that is imposed on the working people.
We are clearly suffering from it as we talking right now. QoL is going down, this is a direct result of failed fiscal and monetary policy.
Again, I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be smug or a smartass here, but I'm not missing any points.
A government doesn't need revenue. As I said, a government like the US creates its own currency in whichever arbitrary amount it decides, whenever it wants. A government can spend as much as it wants in its own currency, without raising taxes first, and without going into debt. Want more doctors? It can create dollars to pay them. Want more roads? More dollars. You get the point.
My point isn't that taxes are useless, they're useful for several things such as forcing the private sector to use your currency (since they have to pay taxes with it). They're useful to disincentivize certain behaviours (alcohol and tobacco taxes), to boost your industry and internal market (import taxes). And even better, they can be a great tool to reduce inequality (taxes on wealth, progressive taxes on income, taxes on inheritance, higher VAT for luxury products...). Another important thing they do is removing money from the private sector, this is important to prevent macroeconomic imbalances, you can't have ONLY government expenditure without taxes.
But the thing is, we CAN pay for things without taxes. Government budgets don't have any real reason to be linked to either debt, or taxes. And in fact as I mentioned already, they pay for lots of things without debt or taxes. They pay for wars this way, they pay for bank bailouts this way, they pay for COVID emergency measures this way. A government can pay ALL of its debt without raising A SINGLE dollar in taxes from the citizens. Why they don't do that, is actually a good question.
Sadly, the right wing and neoliberalism have convinced us somehow that "governments budgets are paid by taxes", when it's backwards. The private sector can't have dollars without the government creating them first. Budget deficits aren't bad. In fact they're so normal that they happen in every developed country every year, and they're a GOOD THING! Yes, government budget deficit is a good thing for us! We're the private sector. The ONLY way for the private sector to be able to have more money circulating or in savings, is if the state CREATES this money and spends it first in the private sector. If a government has more revenue than expenditure one year, they're literally extracting currency from the economy, how's that a good thing?
The hard and interesting question then isn't "how are we gonna pay for things?". Paying for things is very easy for the state, literally just create the dollars. The question is: how much deficit should we be running? How much deficit is the best for the economy? And where should be running this deficit, maybe less for military and more for healthcare and education and pensions and infrastructure?
The question on taxation shouldn't be "how are we gonna pay for it?" But rather "how much money should we remove from the economy"? Or "what behaviours should the government disincentivize?" Or "where in the economy do we want to extract currency to reduce inequality?" "Should we be charging lower taxes on poor people and higher taxes on richer people and on big companies?"
This reality-based understanding of government budgets, deficits, debt creation, money creation and taxation, instead of the neoliberal dogma, opens up so many cans of worms and exposed so many non-issues. I'll say it again: "GOVERNMENT BUDGET DEFICITS AND DEBT AREN'T A BAD THING".
You still out right ignoring the point how this behavior has consequences on working people's lives and finance
Also, sounds like you are high on modern monetary theory and have not thought this through beyond repeating talking points of the theory, which were circulated on teevee during covid.
COVID was an attempt do this trick and inflation spiked and people's QoL went down.
Either, money got spend and nothing to show for it. How is this good?
I'm not ignoring this, I'm saying increasing expenditure in healthcare, education, infrastructure and pensions can have a POSITIVE impact on peoples' lives.
It's not. We sadly live under mostly governments that follow neoliberalism. I want the opposite, I don't want smaller governments spending less, I want bigger more progressive governments eliminating homelessness by making huge amounts of public housing in well planned out cities with great public transit, eliminating unemployment through guaranteed jobs, raising the expenditure in universal healthcare and education to have more professionals... I want actual leftism, not lukewarm centrist socialdemocrats/liberals.
I'm very high on MMT, but why does that mean I'm repeating talking points? I'm personally very interested in economics for the past years. MMT is just a stepping stone imo for people (myself included) to learn about economics. I'd gladly apply much, MUCH more radical leftist measures than those prescripted by MMT. But a productive talk about debt and budgets isn't a thing I'll deny :)
If you think inflation was a consequence of government spending, I'm sorry, but you've been lied to. Inflation did spike, and people's purchase power went down, but none of that is due to public expenditure. I'm personally European so I can tell you about the reasons for inflation:
Spike in energy prices as a consequence of the war in Ukraine
Problems in supply of goods as a consequence of COVID bottlenecks
Companies rising prices more than would be necessary to just maintain profit, in order to get more profits by riding the wave of inflation
Like, these are known, studied, measured effects, it's not even a discussion in serious academia that these are the reason, they can even quantify by how much. Just think about it, inflation happened widespread across the world. If it had been a monetary phenomenon, it would have been confined to specific currencies, the policy in the US (dollars) was very different as that on Canada (Canadian Dollars) or in the UK (Pounds) or in the EU (Euros) or in Japan (yen).
if by "new leadership" you mean "get the republicans out the senate and the house", then yes. Jeesus. The president isn't a god, you nutter.
Blame congress for 99% of that. The president doesn't have as much power as people seem to think they do.
I know this will get downvoted to hell, but jesus the hypocrisy of these sort of statements blows my mind.
It's not hypocrisy. Republicans first tried to overthrow the government in the 1930s. They've aimed at ending democracy for a century at least. The reason Trump can do it has nothing to do with presidential powers. And everything to do with fascists in Congress. Who would support it.
That you think it's some sort of failing of Democrats or Biden. Just speaks to a completed lack of understanding, and no desire to engage with reality. That's why you'll be down voted.
It's rich for you to evaluate my desire to engage with reality from a person who's trying to defend a party that produces 80 year old candidates from the primaries and then wondering why young people won't vote. Historians are going to have a field day dissecting your delusions.
I'm not defending them. I criticize them often. What I am doing, is commenting on your childish behavior.
I know why young people don't vote. Especially those that have been radicalized like yourself. With no strategic/critical thinking skills. Ain't none of em good.
Bulllllllshit. I can tell from your comment lecturing young people and leftists is where all your focus is.
Take that energy to moderate voters electing procorporate trash in the primaries. Those are the people who lack strategy.
Lol, I'm a Dejacque Libertarian/anarchist. They aren't going to listen to me either. Do you are more than welcome to keep proving my points. And acting the victim pretending that it's all because you're somehow so much more left than anyone else LOL. That sort of rhetoric is only a victim of itself.
I mean, you can call yourself whatever you want bud. But if you only spend your time lecturing young people and leftists about strategy you're indistinguishable from another moderate democrat voter electing pro-corporate trash in every election.
If you think having strategy makes you a moderate. That's a you problem. And one I'm glad not to have. Everyone needs strategy if they want to get something accomplished. And you'll learn that someday.
Your "strategy" is the same strategy the moderates have had for decades. It's a failure.
Here's mine: I don't vote for procorporate trash. Period.
LOL such bad reasoning. I'm not fond of much of what they've done but I'll give them this much they've actually accomplished things where people with your mentality haven't. Good luck with that:-)
They elevated Trump in the 2016 Republican primaries and then lost to him in the general election.
Your ability to assess the success of a strategy is suspect sir.
And your petulant childish behavior is without bounds. Listen I've never once questioned your commitment or political alignment. Yes I've commented how you behavior is childish. Which it is and that's one thing. But I've never questioned your intent. Just the efficacy of it. And you've proven over and over again by impuning upon my commitment calling myself and others no true lefty. Because we disagree with you. You could not be displaying anymore petulant childish behavior.
Even your last response here was completely disingenuous purposely missing the point. Yes they f***** themselves over with trump. But on the regular they actually get things accomplished. Whereas people like yourself who constantly harp on others, denying their identities. Are the exact reason why people in general don't take the left very seriously and why the left as a group struggles to get anything accomplished. Have fun with your Purity tests.
The difference is that Biden is following the rules of office, while Trump has said he's going to blatantly disregard them.