I'm proud to be a Joe Biden Democrat. pic.twitter.com/EudcQ4kiqm
— The Biden Accomplishments Guy (on Threads) (@What46HasDone) July 25, 2023
When firms like Morgan Stanley are praising a Democrat’s handling of the economy, things must REALLY be going well! #Bidenomics pic.twitter.com/emXM8llMgE
— Nick Knudsen ???? (@NickKnudsenUS) July 24, 2023
(cont.)
"Biden’s Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act is “driving a boom in large-scale infrastructure,” wrote Ellen Zentner, chief U.S. economist for Morgan Stanley. In addition to infrastructure, “manufacturing construction has shown broad strength,” she wrote"
— Jesse Ferguson (@JesseFFerguson) July 23, 2023
The consensus view now…is that there is no recession coming for the American economy.
A year ago…the consensus view was that a recession was definitely coming…and that the only question was whether it was a soft or hard landing.
?????
— Dominic Chu ?????? (@TheDomino) July 19, 2023
Count on the FTFNYTimes…
hey do you know which outlet it was that spread these things
— Ed Zitron (@edzitron) July 19, 2023
You better contact… the @nytimes … pic.twitter.com/fe0EeEY3GC
— The wind in the Trees (@Psithurismmmmm) July 20, 2023
This is a rhetorical question.
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) July 17, 2023
Meanwhile… Hot take from a ‘Senior Fellow & Director, Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility @AEI‘:
Why stop with lunch when we have breakfast and dinner too? Why stop with kids? Why stop with food? https://t.co/39wEEOrpFQ
— Scott Winship (@swinshi) July 25, 2023
Investing in children’s nutrition is one of the most cost-effective ways we can improve educational outcomes!
— Jean-Michel Connard ?? (@torriangray) July 25, 2023
On The Road – Uncle Ebeneezer – Yucatan Adventure Part 6 (of 8) – Uxmal
Baud
We are awash in propaganda.
Baud
The rhetorical crutch of needing to blame or question Dems to advocate for good things continues to be an albatross around our necks.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Love the way media picked up and are using the term “Bidenomics.” Someone working for Joe deserves a raise.
Re the Scott Winship tweet, how nasty do you have to be to get worked up over the idea that it’s good for kids to have free lunches?
Cervantes
What’s going to become of this blog when you can no longer just mine Twitter for posts?
John Barleycorn
I want to see the success of Bidenomics become conventional wisdom. It might change the discussion during next year’s elections if everyone understands that things are, in broad strokes, going well for the economy and for workers.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Cervantes: In all honesty, it will be a loss. You might hate twitter and its current owner, but the site was great for centralized posting of news. I went there for my morning news sweep.
Baud
@John Barleycorn:
Dems have been better on the economy since at least Bush I. Normies continue to believe Republicans are better. That’s the power of marketing.
eclare
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I wonder if Bidenomics started as an insult, like Brandon, then oops! it’s a good thing!
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Something will take its place. Probably Threads. There’ll be a transition period though.
p.a.
We know the usual suspects- Fed, Rethugs- will do what they can to sabotage any successful working-person economy. And their p.r. arms, from FTFNYT to Fux News to Reich Wing ‘think tanks’ will be right there with support.
Lapassionara
Our country has forgotten why investing in the nation’s children is important and worth doing. They just want to see if they can transform what used to be a public good into a “profit center.”
MattF
Except— it’s all a conspiracy. Just look it up, those ‘jobs’ aren’t really jobs, those ‘people’ getting the jobs are lizards from outer space, and, obvsly, their ‘votes’ aren’t really votes.
Baud
@p.a.:
And a great many workers will help them because of the “culture war.”
eclare
@Baud:
I will also be sad to see it go. As long as you carefully select who you follow, you (or at least I) don’t see the Nazi/mean tweets.
My local public utility was very active on Twitter last week with all of the storms. It helped.
MattF
@Baud: In the unlikely event that Threads ever lets you limit your feed to people you follow, possibly. Otherwise, nope.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Even Jimmy Carter, the President who seemed to get us this stigma, was just struggling to deal with the mess the Nixon and Ford administrations had left him. Arguably Democrats have been better on the economy for the whole period since FDR.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Really, any form of collective investment or action.
Most probably actually don’t. But too few people make the connection between our profit-driven ethos and the growing gap in meeting people’s needs.
Throw in a healthy round of victim blaming and now it’s your fault your children can’t eat as well as they ought to and damned right the children ought to suffer for it.
Baud
@MattF:
Agree. Hard to believe they won’t allow that at some point. I have the feeling they rushed it out.
Also, embedding. Tweets are easy to embed, which helps their popularity.
Kay
@Lapassionara:
Free lunch in public schools makes a ton of sense. Schools can drop the whole payment system -the lunch cards, the annual distribution, collection and submission of the free and reduced lunch individual applications, the payment systems to alert parents when the lunch card account is empty, the humiliating practice of having a special, extra cheap lunch for kids who didn’t pay…
Conservatives just don’t like it because it violates their rigid sort of silly beliefs about how things should work and they want to eradicate public schools anyway, but charging kids for lunch in school is dumb.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Carter vs. Reagan is really the only basis for thinking Republicans are better at the economy. And that’s only if you look at it at a superficial level.
Otherwise, better at the economy really means lower taxes on rich people.
ETA: and less regulation on corporations.
Baud
@Kay:
Free lunch, free abortions, free people.
eclare
@MattF:
Same here. No way I let Zuck choose what I see.
Eyeroller
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I am convinced that resistance to school-lunch programs by conservatives is the same reason they oppose other social-welfare spending; in their minds it means nonwhites getting free stuff with their money. “Why stop at food” indeed–the government might go so far as to try to help provide housing and medical care, and then we’d be a socialist hellhole.
Baud
@Eyeroller:
Absolutely. Every public good is a slippery slope to them, especially where nonwhites disproportionately benefit.
Kay
Too – food in the US is already subsidized. You’re all making payments to growers thru federal ag “loan” payments -used to be direct subsidies now mostly structured as zero interest “loans” that essentially never have to be paid back. It’s why food is cheap. So we can give some of the food we already paid for to students.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: It does seem like the election of Republicans can cause short-term stock rallies just because stock traders like Republicans.
Anyway
@Kay:
Met some friends on Sunday and the talk turned to the economy. I mentioned to my R friend that the manufacturing sector in Ohio was booming and they were having trouble hiring to keep up with demand -from a friend on the ground :-). R friend immediately shot back that the Ohio state gov was very supportive of manufacturing and no doubt had a big role in the state of things. Not willing to give Biden and the Ds any credit…
Josie
The middle school in which I was a librarian for 15 years served free breakfast and lunch to all students. There were many students who actually qualified for them, and the administration found that doing away with the paperwork involved in qualifying them was a savings. We were not a wealthy district by any means, and, if we could do that, I think that many others could do so.
Also, in the summer, the district distributed free lunch to all the institutions in the city that administered summer camp programs. Feeding children is a great way to spend money.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Republican economics are based on a boom and bust cycle. The boom periods can make everyone feel real good. It becomes like an opioid, and people start to tell themselves they can have the boom without the bust.
Baud
@Anyway:
Ohio state government has been in GOP hands for a long time. But your friend won’t care.
Yarrow
@Baud: Threads seems to be Instagram with words. So far it’s not working well as a Twitter replacement, which is probably why its use has dropped off significantly.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud:
Agree with a twist: That’s the power of having money (and wanting more) and using that money and that motivation to buy great marketing.
IMO, Dems have been great on the economy ever since they adopted Keynesian policy (like, pre-WWII). Some argued that they strayed a bit when Clinton dabbled with the monetarists, but his actual policy solutions were still mainly Keynesian, again, IMO (which isn’t worth much)
ETA: what Matt said at @Matt McIrvin:
Anyway
@Cervantes:
Pbbbt! I am appreciative of AL and the front-pagers finding content to keep us informed/entertained/amused/outraged …
Baud
@Yarrow:
I don’t use Instagram.
Meta’s business practices suck, but they known how to operate networks that billions of people use. Anything can happen, but my money is on them (not literal money). I don’t see a future for Twitter as long as Musk is in charge.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I very much remember the Reagan recession. Hunger leaves an impression on one.
Baud
@Chief Oshkosh:
People want to hate Clinton, and they ignore that he and the Dems raised taxes in 1993, percentage wise, by a lot more than we’ve seen since.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yeah, but few do, and many that do, don’t care to blame right wing economics.
Ciotog
I read that AEI guy through my liberal spectacles at first and thought, “Yeah, how about housing and education?” Didn’t realize he was being sarcastic.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: I’ll get on Threads as soon as there’s a version I can use on my desktop, which is where I keep Instagram. I don’t put social media on my phone because I don’t want it interrupting me all day.
MisterDancer
@Cervantes: I don’t do what Anne, Betty, and others do so well here, because my writing skills aren’t tuned in that direction, of working thru tweets and building a story out of them. (Also, too: my life turned far more complex than I planned…)
But it’s WORK, and it should be respected as such. Once Tweets are really gone, I’m sure something will pop, but some of this is the closing of VC wallets that made running at a loss possible. I fear the Internet of a decade from now will look very different, and I can only hope it’s for the best in most ways.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Ciotog: Maybe even roads! How outrageous is it that we don’t expect everyone to pay for paving the road in front of their own house? What are we, socialists?
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I turn off a lot of my notifications on my phone.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: The future of twitter is bankruptcy.
Soprano2
@Dorothy A. Winsor: They are so worried that someone “undeserving” will get something that they tie themselves in knots trying to make sure that never happens, all the while promoting TFG and his failchildren. They don’t see the contradiction. This is why we quit doing “Share Your Christmas” here at work, because too many of these people were all worried that the family we were helping wasn’t “truly deserving” because they had a decent house to live in. Some people really believe that you aren’t deserving of help unless you’re living in a hut with no utilities and wearing rags.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Or Saudi ownership. They’re throwing around money like crazy.
Chief Oshkosh
@Matt McIrvin:
In my limited experience, this is true not just for stock traders, but for nearly all financial “professionals.” Republicans make all of their lives easier and more profitable, mainly by softening the regulatory environment. I have yet to meet anyone in the financial industry who I thought “wow, now there is an honest, hard-working, smart cookie.” None of them would compete well in any number of other sectors that I’ve have experience with. But, again, my experience is very limited, so maybe there’s lots of financial Einsteins out there.
Kay
@Anyway:
No – it’s Democrats at the national level. Not just Biden either. Obama made a ton of investment in “rust belt” manufacturing areas. It takes about a decade to start to pay out. Biden doubled down.
People have to adjust their opinions about the plight of the working man in the rustbelt to align with reality, and that includes Lefties, who continue to insist the region is “ignored”. It just isn’t true.
You can see it in recreation this summer. They’re all filling lake campgrounds and beaches in MI and OH. They’re flush. Everyone is working. I’m thrilled for them. Hopefully they can build a little financial breathing room before the GOP come back in and fuck it all up again.
Dorothy A. Winsor
From KOS, speculation that Georgia will indict before the end of this month:
Baud
@Kay:
Fixed in sorrow.
Soprano2
@Kay: It’s interesting how conservatives understand the concept of “moral hazard” when it comes to poor people, but never apply it to wealthier people. People with lots of money have things given to them that regular people can’t get, but conservatives never worry that it’s going to affect their moral beliefs.
Baud
@Soprano2:
In conservative Wordle, moral and money are the same word.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Soprano2: If you’re wealthy, you’re above moral questioning.
Chief Oshkosh
@Ciotog: I wonder how many AEI fellows have careers that would stand up to close scrutiny. I’m not suggesting malfeasance, but rather, simple incompetence and mediocrity. The ones I’m aware of are all white men of a certain age. They all come across as intellectually lazy and way, way overprivileged. Rather dull and smarmy, but I guess that’s the job description.
Same goes for Hoover Institute, Heritage Foundation, etc. I sense a trend.
Baud
@Chief Oshkosh:
Those who can, do. Those who can’t, go work at think tanks.
Kay
I’m lurking on Threads (which is what I did on Twitter) and enjoying it. I have an Instagram account which I pruned carefully to just gardens, trees and my children so I have kept that untouched.
IMO Threads has more normies and political newbies so if I wanted to reach those people that’s what I would go to find them. As I said I don’t post so that’s not what I’m doing there but one COULD reach normies there. They’re less politically sophisticated than Twitter but also less cynical and nasty, frankly.
Soprano2
I suspect most schools would find out this is true if they ran the numbers, but some places (like the one where I live) would be unhappy if they did that, because the poor kids need to be humiliated if they can’t pay – it’s the only way to keep their parents in line, doncha know? *rolleyes
Craig
@Kay: yes. Farming is one of the biggest socialist actions in the old USA
Uncle Cosmo
Two things to remember w/r/t economists:
1. An economist is someone who likes to work with numbers but isn’t personable enough to be an accountant.
2. An economist has two main tasks: (i) Predict what the economy will be doing a year from now; (ii) Attempt to explain why last year’s prediction was so utterly wrong.
(NB I worked for nearly 5 years as statistical programmer and computer guy for a collection of research economists. Personally no better or worse, on the average, than a random sample of human beans – I liked and loathed them in about the same proportions – but there were enough weirdos, bozos and furriners that at times it felt like working for the Untied Nations.)
Soprano2
@Baud: It’s so obvious that Musk isn’t a business person. He pissed away a huge brand to rename it with a letter that people associate with porn, just because he likes the letter. No businessperson would do that.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: The Saudi’s will do for X what they’ve done for golf, which so far is introduce strife to the game.
Chief Oshkosh
@Soprano2:
Example #1 is still occupying an undeserved seat on our nation’s highest court.
Another Scott
@Eyeroller: Sure, that’s a big part of it.
Another big part of it is they think that any social service is paid for by themselves – personally – through their taxes. Cut school lunches means that their taxes will, of necessity, go down because all life is zero-sum.
Of course, they, personally do not pay all the costs of school lunches, or free menstruation products, or covered bus stops, or whatever. Their taxes will not go down if 500 kids in their local elementary school stop getting free lunches. And even if they did, zero sum arguments mean that hungry kids who can’t pay attention in school or get their homework done don’t do as well, aren’t as healthy, and cost more in the long run.
The National School Lunch Program has 30+M participants. It’s federal, not based on their property taxes (assuming they own property in their school district). (And economists have argued for hundreds of years that property taxes have nothing to do with what landlords charge for rent – they always charge as much as they can. So it won’t drop their rent, either.)
Progress is not driven by selfishness. We’re all in this together, and there is no zero-sum. Places with low taxes and weak governments are not paradise…
We need better memes – more kittens and puppies explaining economics and social progress!! (Like a modern version of Britney Spears Explains Semiconductor Physics.)
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Soprano2
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Sadly, they really believe that, at least if you’re a conservative wealthy person.
Kay
@Soprano2:
Our district is 50% low income so I learned a ton when I was on a school committee. Feeding them and getting them to school (reducing absenteeism) are two of the most cost effective ways to improve their test scores and therefore prospects. Low income kids miss school days/hours much more than higher income kids. Just getting them to fewer than 15 (unexcused) missed days a year brings up the whole district. 15 is a lot! Any family can meet that goal.
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I heard a lawyer/reporter on the radio yester morn say that Tuesdays and Thursdays are the days the J6 grand jury meets and 1 PM is when they make announcements. Yes, my fingers are crossed, why do you ask?
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Soprano2: And if you’re a wealthy liberal, every action is a part of a globe-spanning conspiracy that is simultaneously obvious to see and meticulously hidden.
OzarkHillbilly
The same applies to Supreme Court justices.
Ken
And that was before the Michigan example.
There’s undoubtedly a story there — why Georgia decided to try to flip them pre-indictment, while Michigan went for the arrests first.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: The entire letters section this morning (responding to a Pamela Paul op-ed) is about “why is Joe Biden running? How arrogant of him!”
Roger Moore
@Lapassionara:
I don’t think “our country” has forgotten this, just the handful of rich assholes who drive the news. Most ordinary Americans agree that educating our kids is a good idea.
Yarrow
@Soprano2:
Seems to be what “conservatism” is about. Conservatives beat up on people who have less and suck up to people who have more. It’s why “conservative comedy” doesn’t work. Comedy works when it punches up but conservative comedy punches down. It’s not funny.
Other MJS
Life is hard, people are often unhappy for one reason or another, and unhappy people don’t like to approve of things. It would be interesting to ask if things have improved under Biden compared to TFG. (Or maybe it wouldn’t. I’m not a pollster)
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
Cheryl from Maryland
@Kay: Conservatives spout “market efficiency,” “let markets be free,” etc. Still, their policies don’t reflect those slogans meaningfully other than letting corporations and wealthy people do what they want. With the time and money spent on processing paperwork, having badges, monitoring lunch accounts, and making special “lunches” for those in lunch debt, I believe free lunches and breakfasts for all are cheaper than that vast and complicated bureaucracy for monitoring who is “deserving.”
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Who is Pamela Paul?
I can’t blame her for knowing what the NYT wants to publish.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: There were impressive booms under Clinton and Obama, anyway, and it didn’t seem to change the mythology. In Obama’s case the Republicans simply argued the numbers were all fake and the boom was a fraud. Then Trump came in and the same numbers magically turned real, like Pinocchio becoming a real boy. So Trump had fixed the economy.
OzarkHillbilly
They are Texas.
Kay
@Cheryl from Maryland:
Well, we’ll see because some blue states are already doing it, but I’m with you- I bet it’s a net savings.
SFAW
@Anyway:
It’s just Cervantes being Cervantes.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: She’s an asshole.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
zhena gogolia
@SFAW: I forgot the nym, saw your comment, and thought, “Ooh, a discussion of Don Quixote!”
Baud
Rather than making poor kids fill out paperwork, school lunch programs should have a first class section that rich kids can pay extra for.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
SFAW
@Soprano2:
Conservatives/RWMFs and “moral” are not generally found in the same galaxy.
Ken
I’ve heard that a number of these horrible socialist programs, such as feeding children lunch in school and vaccinating them, got their start after WWII, because the military found that so many of their draftees were malnourished or otherwise unhealthy. Does anyone have a reference?
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s the GOP base though. I think we can ask more of media. The fucking herd effect is killing them. They simply exaggerated how the economy was “bad” and they ALL did it, in a herd. They’re supposed to be a competitive market, not this droning (and innaccurate) monolith.
I think Twitter makes it worse. Now they all read one another constantly. Christ- they’ll never find the courage to question any of the narratives they create now. They’re even more of a clique.
Yarrow
@Kay: Me too but I fully expect Zuck to shut it down to lurkers if it becomes too popular. So far no danger of that as use has dropped off significantly since the first few days. I’ve seen big name accounts almost pleading for people to join.
The Threads guy said they don’t want it to focus too much on news and politics. It’s never going to be another Twitter if that’s their goal.
rikyrah
@Baud:
The MSM has a sad. They’ve been wishing for a recession for a good 18 months
Another Scott
@OzarkHillbilly: But taxes aren’t really low there, for most people, of course.
My (very liberal) SIL in Austin is often grumbling about the high property taxes.
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
zhena gogolia
Listening to “Telstar” (inspired by Mad Men). What a great song.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
Two points:
rikyrah
@Kay:
I am hesitant to sign up for Threads because I am understanding that in order to stop having Threads, you’d have to give up your Instagram account too. Not willing to do that.
Kay
@Baud:
Many kids are lovely people so you see this funny thing where the better off ones will pay for others who come up short “just put it on my card”. You hear parents complain – “WTF is she EATING?”
Brachiator
@Baud:
There are some reports that indicate that the Democrats have done better on the economy since World War II.
So, from one study,
A recent story on Medium claims that every Republican president has had a recession. And Democrats, well…
But international events and what happens at the state and regional level sometimes makes it harder to measure the impact of federal policy.
rikyrah
@Kay:
They did it Kay because they truly resent the competency of 46 and his Administration. They have since the beginning. If they tell the actual TRUTH of what 46 and his Administration are doing, without Republican help… Then why would you want any more Republicans. How could they create their horse race 😡
Kay
@rikyrah:
Agree that’s a problem – I did it anyway just because I am vindictive and I wanted to punish Elon Musk.
But it turns out to be fun. I had to prune the Threads account too -block a ton for a week but now it’s 99% my choices. I try to follow political newbies -people who I can tell are less politically engaged by their comments.
Another Scott
@Ken:
USDA.gov 56 page PDF:
It’s got 2 prongs – to support US agriculture and make kids healthier. The first part doesn’t get talked about as much, funny that…
HTH a little.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I feel like Threads is broader than Twitter. Not in the “both sides!” (narrow) sense that media use but in a real-world sense where people vary not just as to ideology but as to levels of political interest and engagement. It reminds me of canvassing.
Ken
@Another Scott: Ah, yes.
“We have no state income tax!”
“Really. Where does the state gets its revenue?”
“Well, we have a 5.8% property tax rate, a 9.5% state sales tax, yearly personal property taxes on cars and boats, a 28.5% tobacco tax, …”
Kay
@rikyrah:
When political obsessives first canvass or otherwise do “voter outreach” they always comment on how nice people are. They don’t expect that. But it’s not that they’re “nicer”. It’s that they’re less engaged and invested -they have things they are passionate about I assume – just not politics. They’re normies. That’s the feel on Threads.
Wapiti
@Matt McIrvin: Arguably Democrats have been better on the economy for the whole period since
FDRHoover.Roger Moore
@Soprano2:
I’m pretty sure if the family were living in a hovel and wearing rags, they’d claim it was a sign they were unwilling to work and thus were undeserving. This stuff isn’t about a coherent set of rules for who is and isn’t deserving; it’s Calvinball to justify never giving anything to anyone.
Anyway
@Yarrow:
Carrots for the haves, sticks for the have-nots…
Matt McIrvin
The NYT story on the labor market is saying things I noticed a while ago. The “Great Resignation” narrative was all about the labor force participation rate permanently going down, but it’s been shooting up, is now level with the local minimum back around 2015 and is probably going to go higher. A lot of Boomers did retire, but non-Boomers aren’t doing that.
I think the “white-collar recession” was specifically a temporary slump in the tech sector that happened in late 2022 and early 2023 and culminated in the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. It seems like it’s over, or at least significantly easing.
The unemployment rate is still creeping along at a bottom in a way that historically doesn’t last, so that’s one thing that makes me hesitant to say there isn’t going to be a recession soon. But I’m not sure it’s anything other than superstition. The big question is really whether the next one comes soon enough to figure in the 2024 election cycle, and it may not.
Roger Moore
@Soprano2:
A big part of the conservative worldview is the idea that rich people respond only to rewards and poor people respond only to punishments. I’ve never seen any of them express it that way out loud, but a huge part of everything they do shows they really do think that way.
Brit in Chicago
@Baud: That would be the same Reagan whose policy of cutting taxes while raising expenditure (on the military) led to huge deficits which led to high Federal borrowing which led to high interest rates which led to a high dollar (people putting their money into $$ to take advantage of high interest rates) which greatly contributed to the rapid decline of a lot of manufacturing industry in this country?
Roger Moore
@Ken:
I wouldn’t necessarily assume Michigan didn’t try to flip any of them. It’s entirely possible they tried but it never made the news. Or the prosecutor may be using the indictments to turn up the heat in the hope at least one or two will flip on the others.
Brit in Chicago
@Kay: Some food in this country is subsidized and therefore cheap, but it’s pretty much all stuff that’s not so good for us—high-fructose corn syrup yes, broccoli no (and so on). Couldn’t have anything to do with the political clout of corn-growers (especially in Iowa, for some reason), could it?
OzarkHillbilly
FTFY.
Roger Moore
@Another Scott:
Yep, the low taxes stuff is just one more lie. For most people, the total tax burden is higher in Texas than California. Texas has no state income tax, which makes it very favorable for ultra-rich people, but to make up for it they have higher property taxes.
Eolirin
@Roger Moore: It’s Calvinistball.
JAFD
@Ken: ISTR it was covered in _G.I. The American Soldier in World War II_ By Lee Kennett – https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/G-I/Lee-Kennett/9781476793139
But I don’t have copy on hand, it’s been a while since I read it.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
Historically it hasn’t lasted in the USA, but other countries have gone for very long times with steady, low unemployment. My gut feeling is the reason we haven’t had that kind of thing is because the Fed tends to kill it, not because it couldn’t survive. Of course the Fed has given signs it wants to kill this one, too, but we’ll have to wait and see.
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: Republican lies about the Economy have been very successful because they are exactly what a lot of white people want to hear. Spending is bad. Those people just want handouts. Etc. Even a very liberal woman we visited on Saturday justified her opposition to Reparations (partly) on the racist belief that the rich are rich because they are just better with their money and that the reason there’s a racial wealth gap is due to culture. Beliefs like these are sadly common even outside of the Left. Also, tons of people mistakenly equate Fed/State Budgets with balancing their check books.
Fair Economist
I don’t think we are out of the woods. With asking prices for rents dropping, we are looking at a real possibility of deflation in the near future, yet the Fed has continued to raise rates. Just like they totally blew it with excess money printing during the pandemic, they are painfully over-reacting now. If they don’t bring them down quickly, we’ll be looking at *real* interest rates over 5 percent and we haven’t had that since the Volcker recession.
catclub
@Baud:
Roosevelt was elected in 1933.
FTFY
catclub
@Roger Moore:
If you are rich, rename your house as a church and get a tax exemption.
Kay
@Brit in Chicago:
I agree generally, but there is plenty of cheap food that is also good for you. My father made this kind of food – dried beans of all kinds, rice, canned vegetables, soup, stews, oatmeal, cheap cuts of meat, muffins, buscuits. He would buy like a case canned tomatoes or peaches. But it takes energy and interest (and some talent-he was a good cook) to make and in my experience poor people have so much going on just surviving they jettison almost everything else. If a dead car battery can sink your whole household (because can’t get to work so get fired, and on and on) you’re just constantly in crisis.
Fair Economist
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Dunno if I should support getting on Threads, because I LOVE Mastodon for the great post quality I get, but on Android you can deny an app notification privileges and then it can’t annoy you.
UncleEbeneezer
@Roger Moore: In my
argumentvery tense discussion about Reparations with my white lady from Malibu friend last weekend it was exactly this. She was just throwing every excuse imaginable out there with very little coherence. I got the impression that she’s never done any actual reading on the topic. Which is extra strange considering she’s a retired historian.Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: If Biden is reelected, I think there’s a pretty good chance he will be the first Democratic President to deal with a new recession since Jimmy Carter, just by luck of the draw. I don’t know if the tendency of recessions to hit during Republican administrations is dumb luck but I can believe that Republican control of government makes them worse.
Yarrow
@rikyrah: The Threads guy said they’re looking into the issue that if you delete your Threads you lose your Instagram. and maybe they’ll change it. It didn’t sound like a big priority.
Matt McIrvin
@Yarrow: It reminds me of the annoying fact that I can’t turn off mobile notifications for YouTube without also turning off desktop notifications for YouTube. I want the second but not the first.
catclub
@Brachiator:
Also this: https://thereformedbroker.com/2016/12/13/every-unified-republican-government-ever-has-led-to-a-financial-crash/
Ken
@catclub: I think Texas also has a loophole where you can designate your property as a ranch to get the lower farm tax rates.
stinger
@Another Scott:
So, a lot like the Second Amendment….
TS
@Baud:
Dems understand budgets, deficits and surplus. The GOP did OK in the 50s 60s because tax rates were high. As soon as they went into the mode of taxes are bad & rich folks shouldn’t pay more tax than poorer folks economics went out the door. You cannot run an economy without revenue but that is 100% current GOP economics.
prostratedragon
@Baud: Since FDR (I realize I’m probably not the first.)
cain
Ha! Yeah – the guy is going on about free lunch and expanding on it for everything else.
Meanwhile these fuckers are doing tax cuts but puts no rules on any of the tax cuts. Society makes a sacrifice for target of the tax cuts, but we only need to be grateful we are doing this. Meanwhile these idiots don’t have to do anything for those tax cuts – we just have a huge debt, that we pay for – which the GOP then use to say we need to tighten our wallets.
What a fucking scam.
Steeplejack
Late to the thread, so I assume someone has already mentioned this, but: Scott Winship—what an asshole.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
Most Boomers are over 65, so they/we should be retiring. (As I will be doing in 143 days, but who’s counting?)
The Baby Boom era, from a demographic standpoint, was from 1946 through 1964, 19 birth years. If you were born in 1958, you’ve just turned 65 or will do so later this year. So that’s 12 birth years already past 65, one that’s right there, and 6 that aren’t quite there yet. The youngest Boomers (such as our MVP) turn 60 next year.
Maybe some Boomers checked out of the workforce a few years early on account of the pandemic, but the effect of that vanishes (as it pretty much has) as they reach the ages where they would have retired anyway. Anyone who thought about it for five minutes could see that coming.
Jay C
@Steeplejack:
certainly agree about the “asshole” part: it never seems to occur to these clowns that providing school kids a free *lunch* might be the easiest thing, since:
1. Lunch is usually a mid-day meal.
2. school kids are going to be (where, exactly??) in the middle of the day.
Dumb-ass
jonas
@Ken: A lot of states do this. There are multi-acre, multi-million-dollar manses in central New Jersey, for example, that are still classed as “horse ranches” and pay a fraction of the property tax you would normally owe on a house that big.
Kathleen
@Dorothy A. Winsor: You obviously have not met the GOP “representatives” in the Ohio state house.
https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2023/05/22/state-budget-set-to-raise-eligibility-for-free-lunches-still-falls-short-of-universal-free-lunch/
rikyrah
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I agree.
Like Brandon,
Something that was turned on it’s head and now is being used as a positive for the President.
Kathleen
@Baud: The power of a media who love fascism.
rikyrah
@Kay:
but, they love the humiliation of kids who can’t pay.
when I read those stories, I become enraged.
narya
@Kay: I’ve cooked on the cheap a lot in my life–and I’ve also recognized that I had, for example, appliances that worked, and the time to do it, plus time to shop, plus some flexibility in buying stuff when it’s on sale. ALL of those things have to be in place to make it workable. Plus, I was never wrangling kids (or anyone else in my household) and I never had to deal with weird shifts, or, especially, weird shifts AND kids. Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickled and Dimed” is a good intro to some of that for people who are uninformed about how expensive it is to be poor. And it’s just tiring. There’s no respite that doesn’t cost even more money
ETA: I know you know all of that; I was just expanding on your point.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: I think a lot of Boomers delayed their retirements because the financial upheavals leading up to the Great Recession hit their nest eggs, hurt their general financial situation and made real estate harder to unload. I know that happened to my father, who was slightly older than a Boomer. And I know one of the great frustrations of the job market in some sectors during the post-2008 recovery was that a lot of seniors were holding onto their jobs longer than expected, and not freeing up positions.
When the COVID shutdowns hit, it seemed like a lot of them who had been waiting a long time took the opportunity to finally retire.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I never bought it for an instant. I must not be a normie. Even when I was not into politics much, I never liked Rs. My mistake was believing in the neutrality of the media until the Supreme Court handed W the presidency.
jonas
Plus a place to cook it. If you’re living in a small studio apartment or efficiency motel room, or couch-surfing at a relative’s house to keep from living on the street, you often don’t have much more than a hotplate or something to cook on. To prepare fresh, nutritious food, you need a fridge, counter space, utensils, an oven, etc.
Sure Lurkalot
@Baud:
IMO Carter responded wrongly to a cycle, but still had the goal of lifting all boats. Reagan upended and reversed middle class growth, shifted the tax burden away from the wealthy, created the winner and loser economic mindset we’re ever so burdened with 40 years later. No comparison who did lasting and maybe irrevocable damage.
Mike in NC
What does Ron DeSantis have planned this week to hurt the children of Florida?
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” is the actual synecdochic phrase conservatives and libertarians use to sagely indicate that nothing in life is free. So literally giving children a free lunch as part of their education is particularly galling to them and feels like some kind of offense to morals.
OzarkHillbilly
Male anti-abortion religious leaders mull murder charges for pregnant people at national event
Because of course they did.
narya
@rikyrah:
Me too. And it breaks my heart. How, HOW, can you weaponize a child’s hunger that way? And, likely, still claim to be a christian.
Kay
@narya:
Agree. My father was a little eccentric and generally disliked people (although the few he liked he was as loyal as could be) so had all his non-work time free to do his obsessive shopping looking for dented cans of green beans and bleaching the garbage cans. He was also a neat freak :)
I think the mental exhaustion and (probably) depression that comes along with being poor is underrated as a factor. He was in a union and had a very good steady 3rd shift job and always had a million little practical chores lined up.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
Where can I get a big bet down on ‘not’?
This stretch of full employment is different from any other we’ve known: usually when the unemployment rate gets in this neighborhood, not only is the unemployment rate just the usual churn of people being in between one job and the next, but so are the job openings, that is, they were filled up until recently, and they’ll almost certainly be filled again shortly. Full employment is usually when a rough balance is attained between unemployed persons and unfilled jobs, rather than there being a lot more of the former.
But this time, there are a lot more unfilled openings for a lot longer than I can ever remember. As I’ve said here before, you really need some new metric for this, but until those excess unfilled openings go away and we’re back to ‘normal’ full employment, we’re a lot further from recession than we were at any other time of full employment in the post-WWII era.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
AP: “One year old, US climate law is already turbocharging clean energy technology”
Manchin: “And if I am elected President, I promise to return the US to a coal economy. Even stuff that didn’t used to be coal-powered is going to burn coal. Your gas heater? Ripping it out, putting in coal. Those street lamps with the solar panels (lord I hate seeing solar panels)? Puttin’ a coal furnace on every one.”
Ken
Just spitballing here, but the Florida agriculture and construction industries are having trouble finding workers due to the crackdown on documentation. And the children are out of school for the summer….
Matt McIrvin
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: When Trump came in I was trying to imagine how he could bring back the coal industry and all I could figure was building giant furnaces to burn coal for no reason. Don’t even bother hooking up a generator.
Maybe they could take a page from Mao Zedong and have everyone build backyard blast furnaces.
Amir Khalid
So this happened in KL last week. White musician tries to express support for Malaysia’s oppressed LGBTQ people (they do suffer real oppression, let’s be clear on that) and winds up making things worse for them.
narya
@lowtechcyclist: I can’t help but wonder how much the Boomer retirements–possibly a few years earlier than originally planned–plus Covid deaths affect this on the margins. We Boomers are a big wad of people moving through, and now out of, the system.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Because who doesn’t like black snow?
rikyrah
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I believe this. I can’t wait to hear the word RICO, when describing what happened in Georgia. Can’t wait to see who really allowed themselves to get caught up in this criminality.
Weapon X
@Sure Lurkalot: Reagan’s tax reform when fully implemented was a tax hike on the middle class coupled with a big windfall for the rich. Of course, that only kicked in for 1988, so he saddled HW Bush with that. Didn’t work out so well.
Yarrow
@Amir Khalid: He sounds nice.
Bill Arnold
@Baud:
My superficial level summary: Fed Chairman Paul Volcker beat the economy to a bloody pulp with a tire iron, then switched to injecting it with methamphetamine.[1] During the same time, a stimulus package twice the size (in constant dollars) of the 2009 “Porkulus” was passed, and Republicans suddenly turned on a dime and started asserting that Republican deficits don’t matter.
[1] The changes in the federal funds rate were enormous.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Too perfect!
NotMax
@Matt McIrvin
Everybody sing1
Bessemer, Bessemer mucho
:)
Matt McIrvin
@UncleEbeneezer: Speaking of the labor force participation rate, another interesting fact is that while Black unemployment is still higher than white unemployment, the racial gap in labor force participation is gone. So nobody should swallow any “don’t want to work” explanations for any such thing.
Matt McIrvin
@Bill Arnold: A thing I remember about that time is that conservatives would suddenly go all Keynesian on the economy if you talked about the defense buildup.
catclub
@OzarkHillbilly: I think charging a woman who gets an abortion with murder is more rational than charging the doctor who performs the abortion and NOT charging the woman. That way means the woman has no agency in the matter.
If they get a majority to agree it is murder that says plenty about our fellow citizens.
I think it is not murder because there is no person to murder.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: It was so sweet when Manchin revealed he had been secretly working with Biden on the IRA after the CHIPS act was passed with R votes. The Rs were so pissed, and now both pieces of legislation are turbocharging the economy, Green New Deal-style.
It’s pretty sweet, so I’m not so down on Joe from WV these days.
Not sure how anyone on the right can trust him again, though, including “No Labels”.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
So I’m sitting here listening to Christmas music. I realized that as I was hearing the final lines of “Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree”. Now it’s “Feliz Navidad”.
Either:
– I’m losing my mind
– I slept through several months and it is now December (hey, how did the fall go? Any new TFG legal troubles? How were the elections?)
– or the staff in this cafe is just being silly
I don’t have enough data yet to conclude which.
(FYWP: If you edit a comment with a bulleted list, the bullets will disappear and you will never convince it to put the bullets back in)
Kathleen
@Kay: The question I pose to them on Twitter is if all they do is copy and paste each other their masters will figure out it would be much cheaper to replace them with bots and they will be out of jobs. Not one of them believes it I’m sure. They all think they’re protected from the vagaries of the great unwashed.
The most interesting thing to me about the CNN debacle was that it seemed most of the “reporters” didn’t pick up any clues about what was happening in their own work place. So many were “shocked” and didn’t see the coming bloodbath. If they can’t grok what’s going on in their faces every day how could they understand other environments/behaviors? It reinforces my contempt for them.
NotMax
@Matt McIrvin
The scene: the pearly gates.
St. Peter: “Name?”
Man at the head of line: “L-L-Laffer, Arthur.”
St. Peter, flipping through pages in a thick book: “Laffer… Laffer… Ah. Here we are. Express elevators down are to the left. Next!”
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
Thanks for this. We knew this would happen all the years we were lectured by ultra sophisticated (and bored by the issue) male pundits and media people that it would “never” happen.
It was and is inevitable. Anti abortion voters want this, too. Some 65% of them want women charged and imprisoned for an abortion. It’s the trained PR people and lobbyists who use the sickly-sweet “care for the MOM” bullshit. The anti abortion base will not be satisifed unless women receive regular, stern state punishment for veering from religious dictates.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: I didn’t know that.
Manchin came to my consciousness again after many months out of it, when I read he was flirting with “No Labels” and a third party spoiler run. I suppose the reality is that it would be damned near impossible to get another Democrat in that seat, especially one a little less likely to vote R on critical votes. But he really pisses me off.
Yarrow
@catclub: Well, yeah. That’s the point. In their preferred world the woman has no agency because women are non-persons. Only men are persons. The fetus is a person until they’re born. Then they need to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and get a job. Hence removing work restrictions for children.
Alison Rose
@Cervantes: What’s going to become of your comments when you can no longer just be a dick?
Oh wait, that’ll never happen.
Steeplejack
@Mike in NC:
Well, he was in a car wreck in Tennessee this morning, but I’m not sure that was planned. (Uninjured, if anyone was worried.)
Kay
@Kathleen:
Twitter is a disaster for them. I watched it happen with the panic over “wokeness”. All you need is one or two influential ones at a prestige outlet and it’s off to the races. Ditto with the crime panic. And the inflation panic. And now the “white men are at risk of hurt feelings!” panic.
It’s what I worried about most when the GOP and Trump were trying to overturn the election. All that was needed were one or two high profile media people at CNN or the NYT or WaPo or a national network news anchor to “raise questions” about whether Trump’s claims were true and we would have been off to the races there too. They’re gonna start a fucking war- you watch.
Jay
Not a library book, not a trans person, not a Drag Queen,
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66301562
NotMax
@Ceci n est pas mon nym
Wouldn’t perhaps be Cafe Preston, would it?
:)
Bill Arnold
@Kay:
This is because Threads is very new, and propagandists haven’t yet built out infrastructure to manipulate people/conduct influence operations on Threads. (Also, some are waiting for it to get traction.)
I expect that some such activity will be large language model outputs crafted to resemble such a less cynical (more normie) audience. Computational propagandists are looking for the next big edge.
Kay
@Kathleen:
I really like Ezra Klein’s podcast because although he is a liberal political person it’s diverse as far as topics and he’s a great interviewer. He wrote that he is mostly off Twitter because he needs to do his own work and his own thinking. I can tell.
Kathleen
@Kay: No doubt. No doubt at all. I think they are fully capable of “both sidesing” a Trump challenge to election integrity.
Kay
@Bill Arnold:
Wow. Had not thought about that. But depending on the person I can see their Instagram too and they seem like real people over there. I mean, that’s where they came from-Instagram.
Kay
@Bill Arnold:
Wow. Had not thought about that. But depending on the person I can see their Instagram too and they seem like real people over there. I mean, that’s where they came from-Instagram.
gvg
@Josie: I hope our Governor doesn’t notice. Our county (and many others) continues free lunches all through the summer for anyone under 18 that shows up even though we don’t have summer school. I am not entirely sure how it works, I just know that the school people worried about the needy kids with nothing all summer and started doing this years ago. No paperwork. I think the have federal funding from the department of ag but not really sure. Its advertised quietly by signs and word of mouth. Don’t even check enrollment so homeless or out of county or homeschooled can partake. Kids have to get there on their own. I do know that enrolled kids can get city bus passes but that takes some adult help I think.
I also know teachers put food in backpacks for weekends during the school year.
Sometimes the school thinks the parents are the problem and just feeding the children directly is a solution.
Kay
@Kathleen:
One of my sisters was as alarmed as I was so we would be not sleeping and texting. She watches cable so she would sort of “report” to me “Jake Tapper is not buying any of it” and we would be relieved. Because if they had gotten some lemming-like contagion going like “butheremails” and started “asking questions” about the white vans full of black people voting in Detroit that’s all Trump needed to get the door a crack open.
Phylllis
@Steeplejack: No one was worried.
Suzanne
It’s clear that he thinks this is a GOTCHA SUCKA statement, and yet I’m like, “Exactly!”
#housing4all #highereducation4all (as much as you want) #healthcare4all
Subsole
@Soprano2:
Republicans are willing to kill 1000 innocents to punish 1 guilty.
America makes a lot more sense when you see that.
Nelle
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Are you sure you aren’t in New Zealand? For those who want a wintry Christmas, instead of a summer Christmas at the beach, there are second Christmas celebrations on July 25.
Elizabelle
Could it have been the heat? To find out.
Bronny James suffers cardiac arrest at USC workout and is in stable condition
Bronny James, the touted USC freshman and son of Lakers star LeBron James, suffered a cardiac arrest at a USC basketball workout Monday.
James, 18, is currently in stable condition after a brief stretch in the intensive care unit, according to a spokesperson for the James family.
West of the Rockies
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
The evangelical prosperity gospel: if you’re rich, you’re right with God.
Heinous.
Chief Oshkosh
@Matt McIrvin: I think it will be an interesting experiment to see what happens if we have a two-term Democratic president, followed by the election of the immediate-past Veep into the presidency.
I hypothesize that the government will do what it takes to prevent an actual recession…just like it did the last time we strung together more than two consecutive Democratic presidencies.
owlbrick
As an aside,
TwitterX is once again no longer functional for non-users. It now allows one to see a singletweeteXcretion, but none of the replies or threads, so the functionality is essentially nil.Elizabelle
More from the Bronny James story:
Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog
@Baud: And especially those who cant.
Alison Rose
@Suzanne: I know, it’s always amusing when they do this “Oh so you think we should just GIVE people FREE FOOD and make sure EVERYONE has housing and can go to the DOCTOR” and we’re like…yep, pretty much.
Kathleen
@Kay: Good for him!
NotMax
@Chief Oshkosh
Steep hill to climb. Has happened only twice.
Suzanne
@Alison Rose: And then they’re like, talking to me like I don’t know what words mean, “Someone has to pay for that, you know…. there’s no such thing as free!”. And I respond, “Yes, we would pay for it just the same way we pay for that “free” road you drove on to get here to make this dumbshit statement.”
It especially grinds my gears when people who attended public schools utter this sort of idiocy.
SiubhanDuinne
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
The other day, I played — by deliberate choice — Dan Fogelberg’s “At Christmas Time.” It’s bouncy and fun and makes me feel happy.
(Attempting a link here, but they don’t always work for me.)
gvg
@Roger Moore: No. Most of the country HAS forgotten why it’s a good idea to educate “our” children. they know why they want to educate “their own” children but they do not understand how everything they need and their children need depends on their being a large crop of educated people growing every year. It’s like not being able to understand why the price of eggs and chicken is so high AND their is a shortage when they heard the news the prior year about a disease outbreak the killed a lot of chickens, plus ignoring LA LA LA I can’t hear you information about the need for inspectors and cleaner chicken farms….They refuse to make any connections.
Our economy needs LOTS of educated people. If our kids are super educated but nobody else is….they won’t have jobs here and will have to move somewhere else. If there are some jobs here and they do all right, they and you still need…Doctors to take care of you for instance, nurses, utilities workers, house builders, etc and THOSE people needed to be educated AND they won’t live here if there are good schools for their kids. You never get to stop paying taxes for good schools till your dead.
Yarrow
@Kay: That’s why Threads is like Instagram but with words. Without some of the key features of Twitter (well, old Twitter before M) – hashtags, desktop option, useful trending lists, etc. – it’s not going to be useful for reporters. If it’s not useful for them it won’t work like Twitter.
Elizabelle
@NotMax: I don’t see how we are safe letting a Republican anywhere near the Executive branch until they are no longer a clear threat to democracy.
I’m serious. We will have to climb that hill.
Yarrow
@Kay:
Didn’t they already do this with Iraq? Didn’t look at it critically. Just cheerleaded and fought to get a coveted embed position.
Alison Rose
@Suzanne: No one tell them kids are given all the free toilet paper they need
(Although TBH I wouldn’t be shocked if there are schools where kids have to bring their own.)
Kirk
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: the argument is that those with money don’t get tempted by more money. It is upheld by those who ignore Bible, fables, myths, and history.
Suzanne
@gvg: Exactly. AND! A more efficient, productive, advanced economy is specialized, and thus requires more education to develop advanced expertise. And that specialization means you can’t just slot people into generic jobs. We have to develop lots of people across a wide range of skill sets.
lowtechcyclist
@catclub:
This. And AFAIAC, the belief that the fetus/embryo/fertilized egg is a person is a religious belief; there’s no evidence that it meets a normal person’s standards for what constitutes personhood.
These laws should IMHO be legally opposed as constituting establishment of religion, and publicly fought (among other grounds) as “they’re forcing their religion down our throats.”
NotMax
@Alison Rose
Unnecessary excess. Isn’t the free kitty litter enough?
//
rikyrah
@Kay:
They called us ‘ hysterical’, Kay.
Snidely too.
gvg
@Roger Moore: The US also used to allow more immigration than most countries so I don’t see how we could keep unemployment low for a long time. We are currently locked in a long term choke off legal immigration mindset which the liberal side is not really fighting yet because labor hasn’t had enough wage gains for decades. A lot of countries just never solve unemployment that way. We do. When we finally defeat the racists (this time) and get some labor wins, we’ll open up immigration again I hope.
Alison Rose
@NotMax: These decadent young furries will be the ruin of us all.
Suzanne
@Alison Rose: I don’t know about TP, but every year, on my kids’ school supply lists, I am asked to provide some stock of tissues, disinfecting wipes, bottled water, and the like. These are not specifically for my kid, they’re to create a shared supply to be used all year. I always contribute, but I also wish I could either #1 just write a check to a general supply fund and eliminate the inefficiency, or #2 just pay enough in freaking taxes that they can order what they need.
rikyrah
@Elizabelle:
only 18!
Old Dan and Little Ann
@Kay: i had 20+ students this past year. One girl didn’t miss a single day. The rest were all absent 10+ days. Some 20+. Some 30+. Sigh.
lowtechcyclist
@Steeplejack:
Life has its minor disappointments.
brantl
@Matt McIrvin: LA Times did a study in the 90s: Dems better on the economy, using 19 leading economic indicators, then re-checked using 21, still Dems, since Hoover.
Suzanne
@rikyrah:
Hell, I try to point out that this is all part-and-parcel in the effort to drive women back into the kitchen, and even some people here can’t believe it.
The agenda is total sexual, reproductive, economic, familial, bodily control of women for the service and pleasure of men. Don’t be fooled. Women see it more clearly than men do. Listen.
Elizabelle
WaPost reader commenters on DeSantis’s car accident:
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: That lead singer is known to be a jerk. I’ve seen them. The girls like him. He has that heroin-skinny body.
Eolirin
@Kay: If the reporting we got on Iraqi WMDs is anything to go by, yes, yes they will.
Old School
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
It’s July 25th. (Christmas in July.)
So the cafe is being a little silly, but there is some thought behind it.
Elizabelle
@brantl: I would love to see a link to that. (I believe you! Just figure you might remember better which stories you cite.)
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
C’mon, man. I scored it three for Biden (though one was very lukewarm), three against, and one corrected Paul (in Biden’s favor) on an error of fact. And in the reader comments to that piece last week Paul got raked over the coals. Turn that frown upside down!
Eolirin
@Bill Arnold: It’s because it’s tied to Instagram and is a cross section of a much larger audience than Twitter ever had. There’s currently less self selection going on, where Twitter has specific audiences and that’s kinda it. Though that may change if usage continues to fall off.
NotMax
Presume y’all are aware of DeSantis’ newly unveiled military strategy?
Among other things, Vietnam wasn’t a war, it was a “conflict.”
lowtechcyclist
@brantl:
IIRC the GOPers argued that the economic effects of one Administration weren’t felt immediately but took 2-3 years to phase in. So they redid the studies with that shift, and Dems still came out ahead.
Ken
@NotMax: Your scenario reminds me of Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal, where a notorious scam artist has been arrested. He’s told that he’s killed three people, and protests he never did such a thing. Ah, but he did, the arresting officer explains. His scams caused businesses and banks to fail and put people out of work, unable to get food or medicine. Statistically, he’s killed three people.
rikyrah
@Suzanne:
You do not lie.
All the dots are there.
That is their goal.
Alison Rose
@NotMax: Ah yes. The famous Vietnam conflict. The Vietnam disagreement. The Vietnam tiff.
Kay
@Old Dan and Little Ann:
It’s why I – like Kamala Harris – support truancy laws. Properly used, lots of due process, not criminal but with eventual teeth. We have a truancy process now that is a mediation where the truant and parents have to attend.
They have to get to school. They have so many other challenges. If they miss a lot they are just not going to succeed. Also-it makes them anxious and unhappy! Can you blame them? They’re constantly behind and playing catch up. It’s the “I’m unprepared!” school nightmare everyone has except in real life.
smith
The Vietnam special military operation.
Baud
@Alison Rose:
@smith:
The Vietnam Hubbub.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Ken: I love Going Postal. A great book to start down the Discworld rabbit hole with.
Eunicecycle
@Old School: my husband and I visited St. Jude’s Children’s hospital a few years ago and they mentioned that they have Christmas twice a year, including July 25 since some of the kids won’t make it until December. I immediately dissolved into a sobbing mess and I still tear up thinking about it.
Yarrow
@Alison Rose: @smith: @Baud:
The Vietnam unpleasantness.
Ken
@Alison Rose: @smith: @Baud: @Yarrow: The usual argument is that Congress never declared war, so it wasn’t a war. This is on the face of it insane, of course.
NotMax
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Also, IMHO, the best of the Discworld movies when it comes to capturing the sensibility of Pratchett.
Alison Rose
@Yarrow: The Vietnam kerfuffle.
rikyrah
ICAM
Tired of folks making excuses for the cult of Dolt45
Renee (@PettyLupone) tweeted at 7:02 AM on Tue, Jul 25, 2023:
Respectfully, this is so reductive.
trump built his cult on racism & entitlement.
To say otherwise:
1) excuses the intolerance that prompted rioters on J6
2) doesn’t hold them accountable for beliefs held before trump was ever in office, and
3) rationalizes their violence.
(https://twitter.com/PettyLupone/status/1683810064325541888?t=oColJ5q4Y2tGfUF3e2RQxw&s=03)
rikyrah
truth
Jeff Timmer (@jefftimmer) tweeted at 6:27 AM on Tue, Jul 25, 2023:
The GOP field facing Trump in 2015-2016 was naïve.
The field in 2023 doesn’t have that excuse. They’re pathetic chickenshits willing to hump Trump’s shin if it means they can maybe get ahead or even just get a favoring glance cast in their direction.
(https://twitter.com/jefftimmer/status/1683801085012504576?t=WHSTU5ea0fisWKzkbIUm3w&s=03)
Villago Delenda Est
The MSM can’t talk about the economy, because it’s not in the interests of their billionaire parasite paymasters to acknowledge that Bidenomics works for people other than billionaire parasites, as Reaganomics did.
rikyrah
I honestly believe it was the pilots saying that they would strike with the drivers that brought UPS back to the table. They were all geared up to use SCAB truck drivers.
SCAB Pilots? No.
Really American![]()
(@ReallyAmerican1) tweeted at 11:13 AM on Tue, Jul 25, 2023:
BREAKING: UPS and the Teamsters have just struck a deal in what the Teamsters are calling “the most historic tentative agreement for workers in the history of @UPS, protecting and rewarding more than 340,000 UPS Teamsters nationwide.”
The tentative agreement, which still must be… https://t.co/sFoU0lRT38
(https://twitter.com/ReallyAmerican1/status/1683873139879444480?t=TPZEMRrf2H87Bk0ujKpDQA&s=03)
rikyrah
John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) tweeted at 11:08 AM on Tue, Jul 25, 2023:
“We demanded the best contract in the history of UPS, and we got it.”
— Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien announcing today that @Teamsters solidarity has won a breakthrough UPS contract with more pay and dramatically improved workplace protections
https://t.co/Kqjen9DY85
(https://twitter.com/NicholsUprising/status/1683871950806958081?t=-fbxTV2jbsNOcsBoaktWHQ&s=03)
rikyrah
@Villago Delenda Est:
No lie told
Baud
@rikyrah:
Too bad for the GOP.
NotMax
@Ken
i can’t really fault the media personalities (including the one I linked to above) focusing on the bullet points of this “plan” but then again not a one I’m yet aware of has spent so much as two seconds on the BS wrapping it arrived in.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: Okay, I refuse to click on Paul, so I didn’t see the comments. But neither did anyone else who reads the paper-paper.
We’re enjoying Down with Love! Very funny!
Baud
@Ken:
So why didn’t Bush call it the Conflict on Terror?
And why isn’t it the Conflict on Drugs?
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Good for the pilots.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
Glad you’re liking Down with Love. A great cast hitting all of the Doris Day-Rock Hudson notes. I still laugh regularly about Sarah Paulson and the predatory couch.
rikyrah
@Steeplejack:
Either you got it or your didn’t.
If you loved those Day/Hudson movies, you loved Down With Love. :)
Kay
@rikyrah:
oh I’m relieved
ups is huge
a strike would ding the economy
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s interesting to look at the labor force participation rate for people 55 and older. It took a 20 year slide between about 1970 and 1990, falling from around 40 to about 30%. It bottomed out during the Bush I and early Clinton years, then rose steadily through the Clinton and Bush II years, including during the dot com recession. It flattened out again during the Great Recession, winding up at about the same 40% it had been under Johnson. It stayed very stable at about 40% through the Obama and early Trump years, then fell to about 38.5% during the shutdown and has stayed there ever since.
That last bit is an interesting contrast with the prime age (25-54 year old) rate. The prime participation rate also fell sharply during the shutdown, but after the first dip it has gradually recovered so it’s higher now than it was in Feb 2020; it’s actually as high as it’s been since Clinton.
That all said, the absolute changes aren’t that big overall. The participation rate for older people is about 2% lower than it was before the shutdown (40.3% in Feb 2020, 38.3% in Jun 2023). That’s noticeable, but it’s not that big. The biggest effect seems to be the changing composition of the workforce. While the participation rates for prime age and older workers stayed about the same during the Obama and Trump years, the overall participation rate fell because the workforce as a whole aged.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack:
@rikyrah: David Hyde Pierce does a great job with the Tony Randall role — and he has to do it in the same movie with Tony Randall! I loved the way they used Judy at a crucial moment. Little did they know Renee Z. would later play her brilliantly.
Bupalos
The tactical political move we need to pull with this Bidenomics term is to get people to contrast it with Reaganomics. Wich Biden does, bottom up and middle-out insteas of top-down trickle-down. We need to extend it with themes like “long term investment in America versus short term selling out (to Asia)”
rikyrah
@Bupalos:
Biden completely understands this. Which is why he’s always talking about the little guy and average American and middle class.
Jackie
The everted UPS/Teamsters strike is wonderful news for Biden and horrible news for the GQP 😁
Kelly
@Matt McIrvin: In the 1990’s I had a bunch of fruitless arguments with a Republican cousin that Jimmy Carter paid the price for Paul Volker’s inflation policy and Reagan was just in the right place at the right time.
Ken
@Baud: It’s also called the Vietnam War, for that matter. Even wikipedia agrees…
Sebastian
@Amir Khalid:
Christ, what an asshole!
NotMax
@Ken
Veterans of Foreign Conflicts on line one.
//
Scamp Dog
@zhena gogolia: Telstar is one of my lifelong favorites!
Roger Moore
@lowtechcyclist:
My gut feeling is that a lot of those unfilled jobs are basically discretionary for the employer. That is to say they’d love to fill them with people who would work for what they’re used to paying, but they can keep their businesses running OK without them. These are things like hotel maids and fast food cashiers and similar low wage, high turnover positions. Employers have figured out work-arounds to keep their businesses running with lower staffing than they used to have: not making up the beds as often as they used to, or having people order for themselves using self-service terminals. If unemployment stays low, businesses will gradually give up on ever filling those positions, and the ways they been working around their staff shortages will become permanent.
I’m personally just fine with this. If employers can work around their staff shortages, it’s a sign those jobs weren’t adding that much value in the first place. As long as people who need work are able to find better jobs, we shouldn’t worry too much about low pay, low value added jobs going away.
NotMax
@Scamp Dog
First single by a British band to hit #1 on the U.S. pop charts.
mrmoshpotato
Oh really?
zhena gogolia
@Scamp Dog: It’s brilliant.
Steeplejack
@owlbrick:
Nitter it! Replace “twitter.com” with nitter.net in any link and you’re off to the races. If you look at a Twitter person’s home page, you need to click “tweets and replies,” not just “tweets.” I think there are browser extensions that will do this automatically.
Roger Moore
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out Manchin was just leading No Labels On and will decide at the last minute that he doesn’t actually want to be their standard bearer. I have problems with his voting record, but I think he’s really a Democrat first. He’s really in perfect position to mess with them that way, and it would be a potentially valuable contribution to the Biden campaign.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
Dan Fogelberg, “At Christmas Time.”
Your links don’t work—or are unreliable, more likely—because they go to a Google search term, not the actual destination you searched for. Once you find what you’re looking for, you need to click on it to get the specific URL. (In this case, a YouTube link.)
Kay
@rikyrah:
I was at the postal service last time they went out and it was nuts.
They carry a lot of parcels and they do “last mile” for USPS so it’s all connected
Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog
@NotMax: Steeling this…
Roger Moore
@Suzanne:
I think this is a great way to make the point. Schools spend on average something like $12K per student per year. Breakfast plus lunch would be something like $6/student per day, or about $1K per student per year on a 180 school day schedule, a big chunk of which is paid for by the feds. Kids who are hungry don’t learn well, so that $1K is making the $12K much more effective.
Putting kids in school but not feeding them is like living in an unfurnished house. The cost of the furnishings is small compare to the cost of the house, but it makes a big difference in how much benefit you’ll get from it.
Steeplejack
@rikyrah, @zhena gogolia:
Damn, I’m going to have to watch It again!
Soprano2
@Roger Moore: I think it’s that they think rich people have earned rewards, and poor people have earned punishment. Same idea.
Brit in Chicago
@Kay: Yes, cheap food can certainly be good and nutritious (and more eco-friendly). But I think the subsidies mostly go to stuff that’s not so good for you (although, as always with food, it depends on how much of it you eat!).
owlbrick
@Steeplejack: thanks for the tip… I’ll give it a try.
Timill
@Elizabelle: Car Wreck. Here’s The Tennessean
Bunch of drivers travelling too fast too close and not paying attention
Ruckus
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Everyone (else) has to pull their own weight. The world doesn’t make them richer if (other) people can get things for free. The world is white and black to them – literally. The world has to be simple because they are.
I believe those 4 small sentences completely describe conservatism.
They want a time when wealthy people got wealthier and everyone else worked for them to do that, or died. Of course as we know that time never existed – or does it?
Ever read the Forbes 400? Last time I did everyone in it was a billionaire. As someone said here yesterday, the concept is to make this a better country for ALL, not just the rich, not just the white, not just the chosen. A better country. Look at our current president. His family is not perfect, he’s not perfect, but then none of us are, but he is working to make this a better country for ALL. In what he does he may be one of the best presidents of my 3/4 of a century. Because his concept is to make this a better country for ALL, not just the rich, not just the white, not just the chosen. A better country.
I always hope that is a presidential goal, the presidential goal. A better country. For ALL.
cain
@Timill: sounds like a perfect description of the DeSantis campaign.
Villago Delenda Est
@Timill: Pretty much what I expect from DeathSentence minions.
Villago Delenda Est
@mrmoshpotato: The “consensus” is more political than economic. That crazy commie Krugman has been pointing this out for decades. Economics is not so much a science as it is a bunch of shamans dancing around a campfire.