Inflation rose last month to its highest level since February as Trump's tariffs are pushing up the cost of a range of goods.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) July 15, 2025 at 9:15 AM
But mah ‘sponsive EGGS!… Per the AP, “The tariff-driven inflation that economists feared begins to emerge”:
…Consumer prices rose 2.7% in June from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Tuesday, up from an annual increase of 2.4% in May. On a monthly basis, prices climbed 0.3% from May to June, after rising just 0.1% the previous month.
Worsening inflation poses a political challenge for Trump, who promised during last year’s presidential campaign to immediately lower costs only to engage in a whipsawed frenzy of tariffs that have left businesses and consumers worried. Trump has already declared that the U.S. effectively has no more inflation as he has attempted to pressure Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell into cutting short-term interest rates…
Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core inflation increased 2.9% in June from a year earlier, up from 2.8% in May. On a monthly basis, it picked up 0.2% from May to June. Economists closely watch core prices because they typically provide a better sense of where inflation is headed…
For Democratic lawmakers, the inflation report confirmed their warnings over the past several months that Trump’s tariffs would push up inflation. Their argument on Tuesday was that the situation will likely get even more painful given the size of the tariff rates in the letters that Trump posted over the past week.
“For those saying we have not seen the impact of Trump’s tariff wars, look at today’s data. Americans continue to struggle with the costs of groceries and rent — and now prices of food and appliances are rising,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. “Families were already getting crushed, and the president’s making it worse.” …
Elsewhere on the Trump Smorgasbord of Suxx…
The Appalachian region in Ohio and elsewhere is bracing for a big hit as President Donald Trump proposed a 93% cut to funding for the Appalachian Regional Commission. ohiocapitaljournal.com/2025/07/15/t…
— David DeWitt (@daviddewitt.bsky.social) July 15, 2025 at 8:03 AM
===
BREAKING: Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang says the technology giant has won approval from the Trump administration to sell its advanced H20 artificial intelligence computer chips to China. The White House announced in April that it would restrict sales of Nvidia’s H20 chips and AMD’s MI308 chips to China.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) July 14, 2025 at 11:57 PM
===
The Supreme Court just ruled that Trump can dismantle the Department of Education
Justice Sotomayor:
“That decision is indefensible..The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave”— Adam Cohen (My Personal Views Only) (@axidentaliberal.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 8:42 PM
===
"Five months into its unprecedented dismantling of foreign-aid programs, the Trump administration has given the order to incinerate food instead of sending it to people who need it"
@hana-kiros.bsky.social, on spending $130,000 to burn food worth $800,000
www.theatlantic.com/health/archi…— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum.bsky.social) July 15, 2025 at 1:31 AM
===
Sad trombone coda:
WATCH: House Republicans block a vote to release the Epstein files
— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 11:06 PM
The Audacity of Krope
The question posed in the title implies than any of us expected anything good from Trump.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Wait the Republicans don’t want the Epstein files released? WHO’S THE DEEP STATE NOW!?!?!?
Steve LaBonne
Nobody with any sense wanted to heighten the contradictions, but it’s happening anyway. I guess we will get a thorough test of the theory. Can’t say I’m optimistic that it will lead to anything good.
Baud
Leopards are my face, Appalachia edition.
MattF
“We are so outraged that we must take a day off from our legislative responsibilities.”
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: They wanted the federal gubmint out of their lives and by golly that’s what they’ll get.
Steve LaBonne
I continue to maintain that in the long run the war on science will do the most serious and lasting damage to the country out of all the atrocities, but most people are not equipped to understand this.
mark
The BBB eliminated the tax advantages for green energy. Prices are expected to soar. Iowa, one example, produced 59% of their electricity with wind. That was in 2023. Haven’t heard much about it.
trollhattan
Since it’s still breakfast time I don’t want to rein the guy in, so much day left for fresh new fuckups.
Will he be back in love with Vlad by sundown?
Josie
@Steve LaBonne:
I agree. I also think that RFK,Jr. is probably the most dangerous cabinet member. Of course there is Miller, but he is not a cabinet member.
trollhattan
@mark:
California ISO producing 21 GW of renewables ATM. Hopefully Donny won’t order the Air National Guard to bomb it all.
IDK what his policies do for new installation going forward. We have a zero GHG target date to meet and that requires more solar and wind installations, plus battery banks.
trollhattan
Even for him this sounds demented.
trollhattan
@Josie: Junior is literally promoting unnecessary deaths. Hard to top.
Jay
@Steve LaBonne:
It’s a bit of a toss up as to what will be “worst”. For Americans and America, yeah, the War on Science will be a leading contender, but for the ROW, science will continue and may accelerate. AIDs vaccines, Cancer vaccines, etc, but they won’t be available in the US. Computer Science, less GROK and more targeted LLM’s and Machine Vision. Climate Science, etc.
Another candidate, US Global Standing.
Ned F
Just the other day the CDC and the USDA announced the end of bird flu. So, where are my two dollah eggs?
Ohio Mom
I continue to wrestle with the difference between the news and my everyday life.
I have no doubt that in coming months, I will be affected in terrible ways, that life will get harder and meaner, that I have to do without, that I may very well be intimidated into silence, the list goes on. I understand that there is no end in sight, that if any of this can be repaired, I most likely won’t live in see it (I’m 70).
But today? It’s a beautiful day and I have no complaints.
The contrast makes me dizzy.
Steve LaBonne
@Jay: That’s why I specified that the damage will accrue to the US. Though US research has been so dominant for so long that ROW will be hard put to replace it.
mark
My budget bill went up substantially this month, about 40%. The start of the new budget year is this month. Not sure if the BBB is responsible for the increase but I highly suspect it is. We’ve been in our home for 28 years. Our usage doesn’t change that much.
Rusty
NO support for any democrat that isn’t all in on expanding and reforming the Supreme Court. I’m also for seriously primaring any incumbents that isn’t explicitly in favor of court expansion and reform. No political victory is meaningful in the face of the six reactionary majority and their naked partisanship.
prostratedragon
@Steve LaBonne: I quite agree. It’s what gives me the darkest thoughts about their motivation.
Jay
Just a heads up, so far, 2 of DJTdiot’s 59 “South African Refugees”, have been arrested so far, for violent crimes (assaults, robberies, rapes, terroristic threats). Turns out none of them were “vetted” and many are members of the violent terrorist org NCRM or the Die Boeremag terrorist group.
oldgold
@Rusty: True.
What a price we are paying for the Garland nomination debacle and RBG’s mistake.
Geminid
@trollhattan: That passage probably sounds worse if you listen to it. I don’t view video of Trump speaking, but I often hear him speak on CBS Radio news. I did last night and he sounded tired and whiny, repetitive with poor enunciation. And I see plenty of pictures, and he looks like his face is melting. This is not a healthy man, or a happy one either.
Captain C
@Steve LaBonne: I agree. This damage may not be undone for decades, if ever.
Baud
@Geminid:
Why should we be the only ones unhappy?
Do you realize you have a comma in your nym?
Belafon
@Steve LaBonne: And yet, running all of their scientists and intellectuals wasn’t actually the worst thing that Germany did.
Steve LaBonne
@oldgold: Trump would have won bigger from jail (and the Sinister Six would have made sure that he could take office). Too many people are still not willing to accept that THAT is the kind of country we’re living in.
twbrandt
@Steve LaBonne: I think you are absolutely correct.
Professor Bigfoot
@Steve LaBonne: I thoroughly agree with this.
American basic research was the seed bed for most of today’s technology; but… oh well, fuck it.
Steve LaBonne
@Belafon: Not sure what point you think you’re making. Others seem to understand. Obviously there are things happening that are MORALLY far worse.
prostratedragon
The Gang That Can’t Shoot Straight
Professor Bigfoot
@Belafon: Assuming you meant “running OFF all their scientists…” yeah, fair point.
May the Universe send that we can stop it before the worst happens.
oldster
Some consolation: at least the NYT is willing to say the obvious now:
“U.S. Inflation Accelerated in June as Trump’s Tariffs Pushed Up Prices”
Tariffs are taxes on American consumers. Tariffs raise prices for American consumers.
Trump apparently does not understand this, because he is very stupid. But at least the NYT is not enabling him to mislead others.
prostratedragon
@prostratedragon:
Lord, Lord!
Baud
@prostratedragon:
Fixed.
Jay
@mark:
While the Obvious Big Blowjob for Billionaires hasn’t hit yet, you are probably seeing the effects DOGE, previous cuts, impoundments of Federal Funds, early impacts of Tariffs (FFS), ICE Raids and some anticipatory hikes related to what is coming down the pipe.
40% is nothing compared to what you are going to see.
Baud
@oldster: I hope their usual headline editor is enjoying his summer holiday.
Belafon
@Professor Bigfoot: Yes, that’s what I meant (I hate when my brain gets ahead of my fingers).
@Steve LaBonne: I hate that we’re losing our science work, but I think having set up a system where we’re building concentration camps (did you read that DHS wants every immigrant with a questionable status locked in prison until their issues are resolved?), or sending people to prisons in other countries, is going to be far more damaging. Weakening our science is damaging to us as a leading nation. The other stuff is an actual destruction of our constitution.
Jay
bsky.app/profile/ryanlcooper.com/post/3ltz3qmhofd2o
Geminid
@Baud: Thanks. I fatfinger that box from time to time. I’ll try to clean it up.
Belafon
@Belafon: Germany “recovered” because we replaced the German government.
David Collier-Brown
@Steve LaBonne:
I rather suspect that is because the effect will be in the future.
As Yogi Berra said “Predicting is hard. Especially about the future.” Many people agree with him, and want to see real results in front of their eyes, not predictions.
The Republicans noticed that, and scheduled the worst effect of the bill into the future, conveniently after the next election.
If we ask how to solve the “I don’t believe predictions” problem, however, the solution is implicit in the question: make the predicted event happen in real time.
For example, hospitals are already laying off, because if they don’t cut back to the pittance they will get in future, they will go bankrupt and have to close entirely.
For every future ill, there is a present ill.
Bring those to people’s attention: “My sister is a nurse. She was laid off this week because her hospital is getting a budget cut”.
All legitimately in the present.
Harrison Wesley
Can’t wait until lysenkoism becomes official Merkin science.
Old Man Shadow
I get why they do it, but doing this is like me saying, “Hey, you know, if I don’t include rent and food and utilities in my budget, the numbers look fucking amazing!”
JML
@Rusty: Yes, let’s make sure that in response to the GOP doing even more twisted shit that we focus our energy on looking for Democrats to primary.
The only thing that matters right now is winning elections. Take back the House and block as much garbage from these incompetent fools as possible (and try like hell on the senate too). I was one of the loudest voices around in 2016, 2020, and 2024 that the Court was in play and we simply couldn’t mess with that and was frequently laughed at and told other things were more important. But now we’re here and ain’t no way we’re getting judicial reform without taking back all the branches of government, one at a time. Want to reform the Supreme Court? Let’s go win some general elections, not run purity tests and circular firing squads on Democrats.
Steve LaBonne
@Belafon: And the postwar West German government and Establishment were still thoroughly infested with Nazis. Germany turned the corner- I would have said permanently before the rise of the AfD- only when a majority of Germans truly set their faces against Nazism. We won’t begin to recover until a majority of white people experience a similar epiphany- if they ever do.
Baud
From Elizabeth Warren’s Blue sky
hueyplong
@Jay: I think you’re actually giving us a heads up as to the identities of the next pardon recipients.
Chetan Murthy
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: I don’t know what’s happening over in that fetid swamp, but at least the larger gators seem to be changing their tune: reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/1m0ajf4/so_the_cult_was_and_still_is_ok_with_dear_leader/
Which, so predictable.
Steve LaBonne
@Belafon: @Belafon: It’s not just damaging to our influence but to our future ability to make good lives for our people. The cost to future economic growth will be ruinous. Ditto the cost to public health, where we were already lagging badly.
Harrison Wesley
@Jay: Sounds like they’re auditioning for ICE jobs.
Jay
@Old Man Shadow:
Like Unemployment, the way the US “measures” Inflation is hotly debated as many critics point out that the “numbers” aren’t what the real world, the American Consumer see.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Geminid: They were showing him at FIFA and his ankles are swollen.
Professor Bigfoot
@Ohio Mom: I suspect it’s always like that as things fall apart.
Even in the midst of the Troubles, people had to go to the market, people had to go to work, and there were of course beautiful Irish days to be enjoyed.
Until, of course, “the bomb in the baby carriage was wired to the radio…”
Professor Bigfoot
@Jay: Wasn’t hyperinflation one of the things that killed the Weimar Republic?
RaflW
I personally think it’s reasonable to blame Trump for the historic North Rim Lodge at the Grand Canyon burning down.
He’ll just throw the Forest Service under the bus, but he’s the president and for these four years it’s his Forest Service. And especially it is Brooke Rollins (formerly head of the America First Policy Institute. Barf) as USDA head who bears responsibility.
As I understand it, the whole North Rim may be closed for the summer. It is freaking terrible what MAGA is doing to our National Parks and other wildllands.
And letting a fire just rip seems so exactly like Trumpism. Why intervene? The god-botherers can say it was “His plan” and the money pinchers can say firefighting is ‘too expensive’ (how much does rebuilding that lodge cost? Don’t expect it to happen before 2029, IMO).
Chetan Murthy
@Professor Bigfoot: Turns out, no. The hyperinflation was long gone by the time the NSDAP rose to prominence. It was the Great Depression and Weimar’s ham-fisted approach to it, that did for ’em. And even that wasn’t really the coup de grace: the NSDAP was actually trending down in by-elections, losing members, losing money, close to bankruptcy, but then von Papen convinced Hindenburg to appoint Hitler chancellor. Thought they could control him — make him squeak. Ah well.
Timill
@Professor Bigfoot: No. The Weimar Republic lasted from 1919 to 1933. Hyperinflation was a problem in 1921-23 (mostly 1923).
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
“Es macht keinen Unterschied. Alle Parteien sind gleich.“ — von Papen
frosty
So based on comments some time ago (weeks, months?) about student loans, my understanding is this: The student signs a promissory note to repay the Department of Education. The note and the obligation can’t be transferred to another party, say HHS. If the Dept of Education is abolished, then the note is invalid and the loan does not have to be repaid.
Have I summed up the One Weird Trick correctly?
Old Man Shadow
Stat-us quo! Stat-us quo! Stat-us quo! Who’s with me?!? Woo?
Old Man Shadow
@frosty: The “one weird trick” of the people with the guns and the immunity to use those guns is “Fuck you, pay me!”
prostratedragon
@Baud: I’m hip. Nothing more along those lines I need to know, for sure.
JML
@Old Man Shadow: no one is saying “status quo”. but the instinctive reaction to every awful action by the GOP has got to stop being “go after Democrats”.
Wanna make sure voter after voter doesn’t like the Democratic Party? Always run it down, even in response to what the Republicans are doing.
Of course, maybe this is what some people want. If you never win, you’re never responsible for anything and can spend all your time complaining about other people.
RaflW
@oldster: “Tariffs raise prices for American consumers. Trump apparently does not understand this, because he is very stupid” and none of his advisors dare cross him by uttering the truth. (He is also notoriously unteachable.)
They all go on TeeVee and praise his economic genius. Even the handful of people who are not idiots do it. Scott Bessent is such a utter trash. He made his fortune in the markets, but now he dances a jig for his master. The cravenness is disgusting.
BellaPea
Virginia Foxx is such a stupid, backwards-ass idiot. Seriously.
Librettist
@Geminid
They’re got minders from the cabinet with him constantly for clarification.
Jeffro
“I JUST WANT TO ROB AMERICA BLIND AND PLAY GOLF, OK? IS THAT SO WRONG?”
Donnie…half of this country is going to get absolutely BLITZED on champagne within an hour of you croaking, amigo! How about you resign and go play even MORE golf?
Jeffro
@oldster:
And once America’s corporate overlords realize that the word is out, and inflation’s gonna go up ANYWAY…I bet they choose to stop ‘eating the tariffs’, even partially. That’s what’s kept inflation in check so far. Not so much once everyone knows.
prostratedragon
@RaflW: Hasset and Bessent are the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of this administration, both with their carefree smiles.
Chetan Murthy
TL;DR you think the damage to science and productivity is gonna be bad, you think damage to our -hegemony- is gonna be bad, wait’ll you see the civil war!
I’m an immigrant (Bangalore ’65, came to the us in ’69) and brown enough that I entertain no illusions of “passing”. I know what MAGAts think of people who look like me, and the content of my character is irrelevant to them. So, that said ….
I can understand the urge to look at the “long-term”, where what matters is productivity, our economy, American hegemony, etc. And on those counts, it’s pretty awful, and it’s an obvious thing for us to notice first. Heck, I notice it first, and that’s with me worrying every day “how am I gonna act when they come for me?” Every day, and yet, yeah, the toll on the things I listed is still high in my consciousness.
But Belafon is right, and I think we can go further. An actual war on immigrants in this country will produce one of two things:
Either will be massively destructive. We’ve got 24.5m naturalized citizens, 47m immigrants, 40% of the population is nonwhite, and Latinos are the largest group. Immigrants make up 1/3 of home health care workers and other long-term care workers. 26% of doctors in the US are foreign-born&trained. 73% of farm workers are immigrants. 73%. 73%! And on and on.
And all those, all of -us- are at risk, b/c as Tom Homan said so well:
You can’t put the boot of oppression on brown farm workers, without also putting that boot on brown tech workers, doctors, and health care aides. Your garden-variety MAGAty ICE thug isn’t going to google somebody’s linkedin profile before they put the boot in.
And at that point the whole society goes off the track.
Eolirin
@Ohio Mom: It’s important to find beauty where you can. In the end that’ll be all that’s there to sustain any of us.
Bill Arnold
MA GA! MA GA!
MAGA Demands Trump Use Teen Sex Accused Gaetz to Probe Epstein – WHO BETTER?! – The push comes as the idea of a special counsel is being war-gamed in the White House. (Farrah Tomazin, Jul. 14 2025)
Jay
@RaflW:
Fighting brushfires and forest fires are a mix of science, policy, money and luck.
The policy used to be put every fire out. That is how the Western States and Western Canadian Provinces wound up with an over burden of fuel. Of course, they made the traditional Indigenous practices of using controlled burns to reduce wildfire risk and shape the land, a serious crime with lengthy jail sentences.
Indigenous peoples in North and South America had been using fire for between 36,000 and 20,000 years, to manage the “wilderness”. Not just to reduce wildfire risks, but to create and promote wild crops, game environments, etc. That so called ” vast wilderness” the White People claimed to have discovered, was actually the largest actively managed permaculture farm the world has ever seen.
Now, the highly resented policy, (amongst redneck Westerners), is to let the forest burn where possible, to reduce the fuel load.
And this is where luck comes in. A small fire, with the right conditions, the wrong weather conditions, can explode into a monster and move in unexpected directions in mere moments.
Now here is where money comes in. The National Park Service has been gutted by DJTdiot’s cuts and DODGed. Ditto for the US Forest Service. Ditto for the Wildland Firefighter Programs.
Chetan Murthy
@Baud: Whoa, did von Papen really say that? “bothsides” avant la lettre, boy howdy!
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
I don’t know. I don’t speak German.
hueyplong
@Jeffro: Haha, I’ll be on it at the “nearing death” announcement.
Ruckus
@Harrison Wesley:
Isn’t it already for a not insignificant percentage of the population?
prostratedragon
Some of this is also on States and localities. But the federal government is now being stripped of its capacity to monitor and co-ordinatenin this area.
Jay
@Baud:
You can thank Britain, Canada, Australia, India, New Zealand, South Africa, the Free French, the Soviet Union, the Burmese, the Nepali’s, the Greeks, the Poles, the Ukrainians for that.
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
Just so I’m not spreading misinformation, I made that up. If he did say that, it’s just a coincidence.
Kirk
@Steve LaBonne: I am not sanguine about that epiphany.
Germany had two sources of pressure the US will (probably) avoid. 1st is that they got invaded in response to a war they started. Invaded and occupied. Second (reducing the effectiveness of any resistance) they had significant interaction with other nations due to the close proximity.
The US defense of two long coasts is a good part of what allow(s, ed) US Isolationism to thrive. In their minds Canada is “just like us” (hence the 51st state stupidity), and Mexico is a weak third world nation that we could crush without consequence if we wanted.
As long as these people believe that they’re mostly untouchable they’ll have no reason to change.
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: I seem to bring up Melinda Cooper’s Baffler interview ( thebaffler.com/latest/extravagances-of-neoliberalism-kunkel ) a lot, but it seems so relevant!
A thing that we don’t measure is -asset inflation- even though inflation in the cost of housing is an important factor in cost-of-living. Cooper’s interview (and her book, mentioned in the interview) was where I got my first introduction to the idea that all the deficit spending the US has done hasn’t contributed to goods&services inflation (sure, sure) but it -has- cause massive asset inflation. Just -massive-. And (haha), -asset- inflation is the same as goods&services (and -wage-!!!) DEFLATION.
It’s possible that the kind of inflation we get is of this sort. OTOH, it’s -also- possible that they’re simply too -incompetent- to manage that, and we’ll get good ol’ stagflation, or even hyperinflation.
Citizen Dave
The OBBBA effects on electricity are a bit overblown by the media and partisans. It does kill the production tax credit/investment tax credit for facilities entering production after 2027. But all the existing facilities generally have and use these credits for 10 years. Solar, wind and storage will still be a huge part of our future, and still be economic over other sources of electricity. None of this is affecting anyone’s bill today.
Wind/solar with credits offers into markets with a negative price. Without credits their offer will be zero dollars. They will still be the cheapest source of production and will operate, barring congestion on the transmission system (local/regional).
CaseyL
@Ohio Mom:
Thank you for saying this. I’m grappling with much the same sense of disconnect: my life, right now and so far, is going well. I like to think I won’t be intimidated into silence, but the reality is I have to weigh how much good I can do versus what I’d be giving up.
Someone I know has been setting up a disaster support-and-shelter group, and asked if I wanted to be part of it. I had to say no, on the basis that I just would not be bringing much to the table. I’m not a mechanic, an electrician, a plumber, or anything like that. I can grow a few fruits and veggies in a deck container garden, but not enough to feed myself much less anyone else. So what would I be contributing?
That’s my quandary regarding resistance, too: I just don’t know enough, or am not physically capable enough, to be an asset for anything serious.
Plus, to be completely honest, the few people I know who are talking about serious resistance are not people whose judgment I trust: they sound like they’re finally getting to live-play a war fantasy they’ve nurtured for many years.
Baud
@Citizen Dave:
Thanks for that information.
Jay
kenklippenstein.com/p/i-triggered-another-federal-investigation
piratedan
considering DJY is mostly about the grift, with the abolishment of the Dept of Ed, my guess is that DJT would mandate that any and all outstanding loan payments should now be paid to him, directly. He’s got exactly the type of SCOTUS that would sign off on that travesty.
Ruckus
This post is rather unsettling – mostly because it’s true.
We are a country divided. Some seemingly want the country to run in reverse for a century or 2, because of course it was better in the way back. No one knows how or can explain this but still backasswards is backasswards. Life had to be better when the wealthy ran the place and the one’s that needed to, knew their place. It’s bull and shit on an epic level but then what does this level of humanity have going for it other than last place in the order of humanity?
Bokonon
In contrast, Fox News has taken to outright lying about the current economic results (i.e., claiming that joblessness is down rather than up, etc.)
I think we are getting a taste of what’s coming. Trump is going to f*ck up the economy – and then his administration will be simultaneously corrupting the data and then getting high on their own supply, by believing the distorted material that THEY THEMSELVES ARE PLACING IN THE MEDIA.
Chetan Murthy
@Steve LaBonne: Susan Neiman’s _Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil_ discusses how and why Germany engaged in “Vergangenheitsbewältigung” (“struggle of overcoming the past”) and she gives a lot of credit to the military occupation authorities that restructured Germany’s government so that The Big Lie found sterile ground, and more generally ensured for decades that the forces of reaction (who were there for sure) could not take hold. And of course, Germany’s undeniable defeat in WWII had a big role to play: I’ve read that the Allies refused any overture for an armistice, and specifically demanded unconditional surrender, so that Germany and Germans could not delude themselves into another dolchstosslegende.
P.S. I feel like it’s necessary to say how impressive Germany’s reckoning with their past has been (even as AfD surges). It’s so different from our own unwillingness to even ban the Dixie Swastika.
Jay
@Citizen Dave:
Roughly 97% of all solar panels and attendant infrastructure are made in Asia, with China amounting to a mere 77.8% of Global Manufacture.
The US currently makes 1.9%, enough for a couple solar farms a year.
Currently, median tariffs on those imports are 141%.
Kirk
@prostratedragon:
Some of us who grew up in the flatlands learned the history of the almost-war of the Cache la Poudre. Simplifying a LOT, in a hot and dry 1874 upstream users took all the water in the Cache la Poudre, and downstream marched with weapons to disagree. I think it relevant to note these farmers on both sides were civil war veterans. They knew the potential costs of gunfire. It’s my opinion that this fact is why they agreed to try – and actually succeed – in creating a compromise that is at heart of most US water law today.
“First in time, first in right” aka prior appropriation. Based on date of existence a right holder can draw a proportion of water based on “shares” that are obtained at time of creation – so long as it’s used for beneficial use. Beneficial use is a source of much friction.
If you grew up in the great plains/great American desert, you learned about water rights and water wars. If you live in certain other areas (Los Angeles, Chattahoochee waterway of GA/AL/FL) you’ve also had historic and current experience with how close we are to things breaking.
I’m thinking these data centers may push us over the edge in a couple of places.
I’m thinking these data centers might be what actually
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: There is one part of me that feels very strongly that these are technologies of the future, -high technology-, and the US cannot be an importer of these things. But I’m rational, and realize that the way to achieve this goal is via decades-long industrial policy, and not some crazy slapping-tariffs-on-’em foolishness. Sigh.
Professor Bigfoot
@Chetan Murthy:
@Timill:
Ahhh, thank you both, gentlemen. I hate being wrong (no shit! ;) and appreciate the correction.
Soprano2
@Jay: So I assume they will be immediately deported because of this? Ha who am I kidding, they’ll probably be coddled and the charges against them dismissed because it goes against the Republican narrative.
Gvg
@Chetan Murthy: I need to point out that as I was coming of age in the 80’s Germany seemed NOT to have come to terms with it’s past, and was having some problems with the young seeing movies or reading things and realizing their nice grandparents had participated in murder. There were suicides and a lot of arguments about how to address it. In other words they had put off facing the truth and denied it. Since then, they seem to have come to terms with it, at least the western German part. East Germany had a different experience and a harder time so I am not sure what happened with integration. But it was not a one generation choice. I think there were several crossroads and the best one was not always chosen. That is sort of hopeful really. We can be wrong, but still ho right.
Rusty
@JML: I will politely disagree. Winning elections means getting to exercise power, but the current partisan SCOTUS blocks the use of power by Democrats and refuses to hinder the exercise of power by Republicans. We can get elected and pass laws protecting the trans community, but if SCOTUS declares it unconstitutional because discrimination is a first amendment right, then having the power to pass the law is meaningless. We can reconstitute the international aid agency, but if the next Republican president can unilaterally destroy it, it’s a meaningless power. If every regulation created is bottled up in the courts for years, then what is the use of the power to promulgate the new regulation? We are no longer ruled by neutral laws and courts, so winning g elections isn’t enough. We need to return to a rule of law, and that can only happen with a reformed SCOTUS. It is fundamental to everything else.
Martin
The H20 wasn’t just about a chip that Nvidia wanted to sell to China and Trump blocked it and now approved it.
H20 was designed to not violate Biden’s block of AI chip sales to China. It was also designed to be manufactured in the US – and is made in Arizona. In fact, a pretty big chunk of the TSMC fab in Arizona is dedicated to making that chip. And no sooner does Trump go on his policy vomit regarding tariffs, suggesting that he wants things made in the US, and US exports increased, does he ban the thing made in the US, and exported. Huang even ran down to Mar A Lago to lobby Trump on tariff policy around the industry and the very next day is when Trump banned the chip.
Why? Nobody fucking knows. It did literally the opposite of the thing he just said he wanted to do. And now it’s reversed. Why? Nobody fucking knows. How do businesses plan in this environment. It takes 2-3 years to get a product like H20 to market. If the policies are going to change 6 times during its development, never knowing whether that last roll will be a 6 or a 1, why the fuck would you make it in the US?
Chetan Murthy
Neiman discusses this in her book: that it was sometime in the 80s, around the time of the Holocaust miniseries, that consciousness really started to rise. Or as one might put it pithily, “Uncle Franz finally shuffled-off, so we can talk about this stuff now”. And there’s Anna Rosmus, who studied the hushing-up of what happened to Jewish people in her hometown (Passau) and (late 70s, 80s) got a ton of resistance.
Chetan Murthy
Hope is important: without it, what do you have? For myself, after reading Neiman’s book, I’m rather dour. She tells us all the history, and then tries to draw hopeful lessons. But ….. it feels like reaching, really reaching, and utterly unconvincing. I came away feeling …… pretty without-hope.
Professor Bigfoot
@Jay: The Americans get an assist, though. Thousands of Studebaker trucks made the Red Army a mechanized force while the Germans still relied on horses and donkeys for their logistics.
(but not the main character syndrome they try to claim ;)
Ohio Mom
@CaseyL: The type of resistance you think of when you think World War II belongs mainly to young people, those who are the age when you feel immortal and invincible, you are strong and agile and energetic. I’m an old lady.
One of my mother’s Hungarian cousins was in the resistance. I never found out what he did though. He and his sister ended up in Los Angeles and lived well into their nineties.
Your friends sound like a cross between lefties and preppers.
I keep thinking we should be looking at Hungary and Argentina for a sneak peek at what lies ahead for us.
Old Man Shadow
@JML: Put up good candidates who believe in something and will fight for it with passion.
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
AfD’s peak was in 2022. Covid had an effect. Since then, they have dropped 2%.In the EU Parliament Elections, the successfully ran 4 “stalking horses” who have since been exposed.
They are under investigation for terrorism by the German State, ruZZian money laundering, and ties to a “Royalist/Group” that plotted an armed coup. Their members are now banned from Police and Military service and programs have started to root them out of the Security Forces.
Yes, they are up in recent polling amongst young males by 12%, down amongst all females by 45%, and that was before Felon Husk, the US Ambassador to Germany and Rubio opened their yaps.
Their future does not look bright.
Professor Bigfoot
Just the perfect typo, and NOMINATED!
prostratedragon
@Kirk: This is definitely a difficulty we face, and why we’re mostly on our own.
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: Jay, that’s great to hear! Imagine that G(r)OP getting investigated for real for all their Russian money! Ha! Dreamin!
Jay
@Gvg:
Austerity happened with East German Reunification. That and West Germany’s reliance on Turkish Guest Workers.
CaseyL
@Ohio Mom:
I’ve been thinking the US is most likely to be a combination of Russia and Mississippi. Hungary or Argentina look…less bad, compared to that.
I am an old, too! I still work FT because… well, it doesn’t look like I’ll ever be able to retire and fortunately I really like my job. (I could go on a long disquisition on how I need the kind of structure in my life a job provides, and therefore do not mind having to work until I drop dead, but that may be a rationalization. I do surely like the income!)
Maybe I should take up knitting, and learn to hide code in the stitches :)
Professor Bigfoot
@Rusty: I think the point is that you’re putting the cart before the horse.
I think most of us agree that the Supremes <spit!> need- DESPERATELY need expansion; but should we get bogged down in a discussion of THAT when our first aim has to be getting our hands on SOME power?
Yes, that’s something we’d like to see, but it’s not something worth primarying anyone over at this point?
We have to get the ability before its profitable to talk about how we’re gonna get there.
ETA: How are you to reform the Court when you run neither the House nor the Senate nor the Executive?
skerry
EPA cancels off-shore wind permit in Maryland
Jay
@Professor Bigfoot:
The US was the “Arsenal of Democracy”, of course, it sucked that they demanded cash and gold upfront and basically bankrupted their “partners” from 1939 on, only brining in “price controls” after Pearl Harbour to lower the gouging and usury interest rates.
Britain’s last payment on the WWII debts was December 29, 2006, 61 years after the end of the war.
The debts crippled Britain’s post WWII recovery until 1958, after which, small amounts of the budget were available for public projects. The economy did not fully start to grow until the mid-1960’s.
prostratedragon
@Kirk: Interesting story that I ran across years ago. Time to read up on it again soon. The Atlanta-region area in that article is not directly part of the Chatahoochie — that household is on well water, and it’s not over the major aquifer to their south and east — but the ongoing Chat. matter is the first thing I thought of. Water could become a flashpoint in that area as soon and easily as in some more obviously arid places.
prostratedragon
@Ohio Mom: Those are two similar cases, along with Chile. Don’t know yet how Hungary will shake out, though the people there have been stirring lately. The other two collapsed, though it took years, and for Argentina something like 1 percent of the population in lives.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: Yeah, having all of their industry bombed to hell and back had no effect on the lack of growth.
prostratedragon
@skerry: Oh fucking naturally!
artem1s
It took a couple of years the last time before he started to wear his frustration on his sleeve and show the world how miserable he was with everything connected to being POTUS. Sorry, not sorry, I’m glad it’s only taking a few months this time. I never expected him to end up in jail – knowing he is always going to be miserable and unhappy and unliked will have to be enough probably. He can end it anytime he wants. If he wasn’t so addicted to the grift he could have walked away in 2020, moved to some shit hole country and enjoyed whatever scraps Putin threw at him. He is a failure at everything, his own worst enemy and everything he touches turns to poo.
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m certainly no historian, but from what I understand, the bombing was pretty much the case all across Europe. But in mainland Europe, what debt there was, was forgiven or turned into things like Fulbright fellowships ? The Brits do seem to have gotten it in the neck worse than the rest of Europe.
CaseyL
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah, this is one of my hobby horses when people talk about how robust the US economy was in the 1950s-1960s, how one man’s salary could support a middle class lifestyle, and how can we get back to that?
My answer is: We can’t get back to that, because one of the big reasons our economy was so insanely robust after WWII was because of WWII. The US was the only industrialized nation still standing, the only one that hadn’t been bombed to hell and back.
That is no longer the case. There are other industrialized nations now, and barring another global war, they’re not only competing with us, they’re overtaking us. Particularly now that the US has dismantled its research and development institutions.
Martin
@frosty:
Kinda. There’s a complication in that the feds don’t necessarily service the loan. One of the Obama/Biden policies was to change that so that students didn’t need to pay an additional amount to line the pockets of some servicing bank – and they both largely succeeded in that, but Trump kept undoing it. I’m not sure the current state of things and how the 3rd party factors into this.
But at the end of the day, I’d imagine this will wind up in court in much the same manner that some homeowners were at the end of 2008 asking the court to verify that the bank foreclosing on them actually held the title (because the industry had moved so fast and recklessly, that wasn’t clear in a LOT of cases – possibly most of them).
I don’t see any scenario in which the USSC 6 don’t just invent new law here even if it’s black and white that the fed discharged the loan inadvertently. It’s quite obvious that the procedural era of government is either over or at least suspended so that Trump and the GOP Congress and the GOP courts can just will a restructured state into existence without having to follow any rules. We did do a fair degree of that in 2008 because the alternative was wiping out the entire investment banking and mortgage industry (which, you know, might have been worth a go).
So, there might be a few individuals who sneak one past the courts, as happened in 2008, but USSC won’t upend the status quo on this.
Baud
“Please don’t misinterpret my recent Kabuki to mean I want you to hurt Putin.”
RevRick
@Jay: The vast majority of the effects won’t take place until after the midterms. The continuation of the Trump tax cuts will mean that the vast majority won’t experience any changes in their take home pay. The no tax on tips, on overtime, on Social Security are really more show than substance, and will have little impact on the bottom line for most who work for tips, earn overtime, or receive Social Security benefits. Save for the wealthiest taxpayers, the benefits are meh, and the pain is put off until late 2026.
Martin
@Professor Bigfoot: I don’t even think that’s the operative problem. Let’s say we expand the courts – what’s stopping the GOP from just capturing ⅔ of the expanded court? Democrats don’t have a mechanism to deal with the GOP just doing the Garland trick all over again and Republicans refusal to follow rules and norms combined with Democrats insistence to follow them will just land us back where we started, but with 9 GOP and 4 Dem justices.
These systems operate through mutual consent and we don’t have that. And without that, we won’t get better outcomes because we’re playing by different rules. That’s the problem to be solved. Solve that, and the question of an expanded court kind of solves itself.
Chetan Murthy
@CaseyL: Just now, I saw (don’t remember where) the poverty rate in the US over time, and there’s a -precipitous- drop in the mid-60s (due to, I’m assuming, the War On Poverty); before that, including in the 50s, it was pretty damn high. I found this on wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
and this graph: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Number_in_Poverty_and_Poverty_Rate,_1…
25% of the population in 1959! America sure was great!
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
Yep. I hate fake nostalgia, and especially when it’s on our side. But I see it a lot.
Ruckus
@Citizen Dave:
I live in SoCal and the amount of solar panels I see on homes and businesses is not insignificant and growing. It’s a tad expensive to purchase/install but the concept of making electricity by burning stuff really needs to change. And as we don’t have a huge amount of moving water generation here, this is the next best thing. Over time the cost of electricity generated by burning stuff will of course grow. And with the growth of electric cars once again (look at automotive history…) I ride the electric transit train her in SoCal and it costs 25 cents to cross LA County. The bus ride on each end of my trip is 50 cents. That beats the cost of driving by quite a bit, around $14-15. And that’s in a car that gets 25-30 mpg.
Our lives are going to change. Now I’m an old so the change won’t be so much for me but for folks significantly younger than me, life will be different. If we burn too much gasoline, there won’t be enough left in not all that long from now. If we don’t go solar for as much of our electricity generation as possible, we won’t have electricity. It’s like cars. Those heavy, far less than economic big barge things we had in the lifetime of many of us did not get the job done. Creating electricity by burning stuff will not get the job done when there is not enough to burn and/or the results kill us. Solar will not always get the job done, electric storage is/will be needed. Life goes on but it changes significantly at times.
This is one of those times.
CindyH
@Steve LaBonne: agreed
Omnes Omnibus
@Chetan Murthy: I am not saying they didn’t, but any analysis of British political economy after the war that doesn’t factor in the bombing is suspect. Also, what were the effects of choosing to spend on the NHS and the nationalization of some industries? How much of enforcing payment of the debt was due to Britain refusing to give up its empire. Contra Jay, it’s not all the fault of the US.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
That “loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires” is doing a number on this country, that’s for sure.
Tenar Arha
@Professor Bigfoot: I don’t think you can’t talk about it or not campaign on it though. Otherwise it’s a total surprise when you do get power.
IOW, you have to start by repeating the problem endlessly, saying “unpack the Republican Supreme Court!” Otherwise normies will not accept that it’s a real and serious problem that absolutely requires that the 1st 2 or 3 things the Democratic President & Congress will do is: expand the Courts, restore x,y,z. We’re not going to be able to fix everything at once, but ignoring that the GOP SC will invalidate EVERYTHING Democrats do is a non-starter that a candidate understands the depth of reforms required.
Geminid
@artem1s: A friend of mine believes Trump had to win last year in order to avoid bankruptcy. That’s hard to prove because Trump’s business empire is privately held and only a few people close to him know the facts. In any case, he won and if he was in trouble before he isn’t now.
Martin
@CaseyL: Kind of. That explains why the US was able to move up the industrial ladder so quickly – the US could shift its economy to more productive activities because all of our factories were still standing. That made the country very wealthy. But we haven’t fallen from that spot (we’re about to, though). We’re still 20% of global GDP off of 4% of global population. From a productivity standpoint, we’re still the king of the mountain and we’re still extraordinarily wealthy. But in the 50s and 60s wages were still tightly coupled to GDP. As GDP grew, wages grew, so that postwar period directly benefited workers – like in a 1:1 way. But in the 70s that started to break. Automation was a big part of that, but policy was as well – a shift away from businesses main responsibility to create a new customer and to it maximizing shareholder value. The role of workers and labor more broadly shifts dramatically in that shift in philosophy. It’s a shift from workers being the vehicle that you use to get customers through better experiences, new products, new services, etc. to workers being a cost input to be managed. Automation allowed that input to be managed and changes to policy regarding how money could be funneled to investors reinforced that as the correct way to run the economy. As such, US workers earn about 65% of what they were earning in the 50s/60s relative to GDP, and of course our buying power is tied to GDP.
So yes, WWII is how we got to this state, but under a different set of polices, we’d still be in that state. Nobody has unthroned us. It should still be like that.
Note too, that graph explains why SS/Medicare are in such trouble. When those programs were created (before computers) the easy mechanism to collect money was to tax it off of wages (payroll taxes). And at the time, wages were interchangeable with GDP – they both increased at the same rate, so inflation wasn’t a variable. But that gap now means that what we collect for those program scales with wages, but what those program pay for (healthcare, and retirees buying power) scales with GDP. We’re only bringing in 65% of what we should for those programs. No wonder they’re going bankrupt.
That also turns into a kind of subsidy for automation because robots and computers don’t pay payroll taxes. So not only does the employer not need to pay a wage, they don’t need to pay a tax based on the wage. What Democrats should propose doing is changing how the safety net programs are paid for by eliminating the current payroll taxes for companies over a certain size and replacing it with a value-add tax on the company that replicates the actual cost to service these programs (it’s currently 6.2% for both the worker and company on payroll, and if the goal was 12.4% of labors share of GDP, maybe that equates to a 3.1% tax on value-add, assuming that labor is 25% of costs – some economist can use real numbers). That way if a company automates, money is still being paid into these programs off of the value add created by the automation. For small companies let them choose the lessor of the current 6.2% contribution or the value add tax. For individuals have them pay 6.2%. Bias the system in favor of individuals and small businesses. In each of these systems workers get a 6.2% raise, and these programs would raise more revenue because the FTE equivalent of a robot would also be paying 6.2%.
The Democrats goal should be to close that gap through one policy or another. That can be minimum wage increases, it can be my scheme above, and it’ll need to be a whole bunch more. In the end, worker buying power would increase upwards of 50%. Some incentive to automate jobs is undercut. Safety net programs are shored up financially, etc. That entire cap between GDP and wages is occupied by investors. They lose, and yes, that’ll be people’s 401Ks, but they’ll get enough benefits in return to come out ahead.
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
During WWII, British Industrial output grew by 55%. Like other Allied Economies, it took a big hit in 1946 with the shift from a War Economy, to a Peacetime Economy and the return of soldiers. Recovery took a lot longer from 1946 on in Britain, because unlike in the US, the population and Government was broke, where the US recovered fairly quickly.
During WWII, Germany had grown it’s industrial output by 74% by the end of the war. (Wages of Destruction, Adam Tooze, 2006).
There is this funny thing that happens when you bomb the hell out of, say, Krupp Works,(1887) or Bristol Aircraft, (1910). Old production lines, tools and processes that were old, but good enough, are modernized, because in 1941, (Bristol) you replace 14 people wielding brushes to dope fabric with a roller tank that predopes the machine cut to shape fabric, which used to be cut and trimmed by hand*. And of course, Krupp is going to replace a foot operated treadle lathe with the latest and greatest.
*Yes, until the end of the war, some aircraft still used fabric coverings, mostly on control surfaces, because it did the job and was easy to repair in the field.
Martin
@Chetan Murthy: I suspect you are seeing an effect from civil rights in there as well. Much of the mission of Jim Crow was to keep black people in poverty.
Jay
@Baud:
Well, he did give his BFF Pootie-Poot and Master the 60 days he asked for.
They Call Me Noni
@Geminid: He ran to avoid the J6 trial and prison time. I don’t think bankruptcy bothers him at all because he’s done it seven times. Has even bragged that it made him a smart businessman because it allowed him to write off losses and not pay his debts.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Ned F: bird flu is not gone. The number of cases decreased recently. So, the trump administration, in conformity with its general dislike of anything resembling work, thought or “strategery”, stopped supporting efforts to combat it. Bird flu is still circulating widely in wild flocks and domestic chickens.
America’s poultry farmers are on their own. Good luck with that! Develop substitutes for your egg use, perhaps?
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: Yes, I know that the European countries replaced their old bombed equipment with more modern stuff. BTW increasing your industrial output from what it was at the height of the depression does bear some consideration. I was just saying that Britain’s slow recovery was due to more than just debt payments to the US.
Scuffletuffle
@Baud: Wow, it really DOES sound better in the original German…
Martin
@Ruckus: CA shifted its incentives off of solar because we were overproducing at times there wasn’t sufficient demand. In 2023 we produced (and grounded) enough electricity to power the entire state of Vermont for the year.
The shift has been to battery storage and grid upgrades. Last year California installed more battery capacity than China did, and our % renewables is skyrocketing now that we’re balancing the equation better. A lot of that overproduction now has demand to charge batteries which discharge when demand outstrips supply.
The risk, and in the US only CA seems to have any kind of tool to avoid this (Europe is able to manage it pretty well), is that in a traditional market, demand usually finds a way of consuming excess supply. Texas generates 2.5x as much renewable power as CA despite only having ¾ of our population, but is still building fossil fuel generation because AI datacenters and crypto have moved in to consume the renewables rather than having them offset non-renewables. Despite all of that wind power, Texas is still going backward because they can’t/won’t control the market.
But in the state, if you want solar incentives, you have to install batteries along with them. The strategy for the state so far has been conservation to allow the fossil fuel generation to be replaced, but we’re entering a period where the state is looking to offset other kinds of fossil fuels – gas appliances, gas cars, etc. which will require significant increases in grid generation. The state’s generation hasn’t been growing, just transitioning from gas to renewables, and now it needs to grow – a lot. About 1 nuclear plant’s worth every 3 months for the next decade is the plan. And they’re trying to do that in a way that won’t lead to the previously seen problems (overproduction means you can’t recoup your investment because the value of electricity goes to $0) and problems like what Texas is seeing – they want the growth to make gas go away, not make crypto show up. Not easy to do.
Martin
@Geminid ,: There’s a lot of evidence to suggest your friend is correct. I think that is true as well. His traditional business is pretty radioactive, and he’s got a LOT of suits and judgements against him, and he’s always been cash poor – like REALLY cash poor.
Jay
@RevRick:
If he is seeing a 40% increase in his monthly budget, in just one month or even since January, he ain’t seen nothing yet.
As various local Media and many commenters have noted, the Obvious Big Blowjob for Billionaires is already taking effect.
Sure, if you are a Small Business Owner, you might wait until after the Mid-Terms, when the Bank kills your line of credit, your suppliers are suing you for non-payment, before hanging up that “Going out of Business Sale, No, It’s Real this time!”, locking the doors and walking away, leaving what can’t be sold on the shelves, behind, or loaded up in the back of your truck for sale on E-Bay, but,
When you are a Clinic, a Hospital, an Extended Care Home, a University Research Program, Planned Parenthood, a Government Contractor, etc, you need to start winding things down now.
You start by not hiring, then layoffs, etc.
Geminid ,
@They Call Me Noni: Oh, I was not excluding Trump’s legal problems and I considered mentioning them because they were an obvious motivation to run. But I was speaking to the proposition that he could have walked away from politics and still enjoyed his wealth; the economic side of his motivations and not their entirety.
As for the 7 bankruptcies, he managed to skate past them because they were bankruptcies of entities he set up so as to insulate his personal wealth. My friend was talking about Trump losing his core assets; golf courses, Trump Tower, Mar-a-Loco etc. Like I said, we’ll never know if they were in fact in danger because now he’s vacuuming up more money than he’s ever made before.
WaterGirl
@Geminid: I cleaned it up in the last 5 threads, but you’ll have to fix it before you comment again. If you haven’t fixed it already.
Martin
That was always my sense as well.
Martin
@They Call Me Noni: But you can only do that if you have some rising prospect. Trump always had his name to leverage for the next act (The Apprentice, etc.), and he still does, but not in the same way. MAGA isn’t going to help get a hotel built, but they will buy sneakers. And I don’t think that exists without some transactional benefit for MAGA, which he wouldn’t have if he wasn’t President or running.
The GOP fucking ghosted W, and I think MAGA will ghost Trump the moment he’s not useful to them, and without that, he’s got no real opportunity for another act
I’m not saying you’re wrong about the prison time – I think that’s correct as well.
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
By 1936, the Depression was over in Britain, 1932 in Germany. Adam Tooze’s numbers are from 1939 on.
Britain still owed debts from WWI to the US and the Independent Colonies. While the Former Colonies and Colonies extended Britain lines of Credit, the US did not. The US even embargoed Military Sales to France, Poland, Finland*, etc, (*well so did Britain and France) when they were trying to ramp up in the late 1930’s, only allowing sales in 1939 on a “Cash and Carry” basis, (gold, cash, no bonds). The US did not extend Credit until mid 1942.
Post WWII, Britain’s key problems were The Debt, the loss of the Colonies as a cash cow, The Credit Crunch, and the Social Welfare programs to support Veterans and War Workers.
A really “dumb” thing, is that the weapons Britain and France wanted to buy in the late 1930’s, were all obsolete by 1939 and even in US Service, (in the early days of the Pacific War, were around in only handfuls, as they had been replaced by more modern equipment, and had little impact, such as the Brewster Buffalo and the M3 Light Tank). Britain went so far as to try to get the US Government to allow US Factories to make their more modern tanks and aircraft, with a technology share.
Martin
@Jay: Yeah. I think the disconnect is a lot of people think of businesses as isolated things, and for healthcare they tend to be networks. You have 20 clinics, some which are really strong and some which are right on the margin (business tend to expand to the point that the last expansion is breaking even). When you get a threat like this, if you aren’t careful the ones on the margin take the whole operation down because their losses exceed the gains from the strong entities. With uncertainty the smart play is to close up the marginal ones, consolidate all of your resources around the strong ones, preserving capital, etc. You don’t know what’s coming – you’re buying a form of insurance. You can always look to reopen clinics after the crisis arrives and you can better assess their viability.
This is why looking at immediate economic indicators doesn’t predict behavior. Sentiment is a big part of it. One of the things democrats missed in their defense of the economy during the election is that the step taking to address inflation was to raise interests rates. Yes, it kept the price of eggs from continuing to go up, but the average American credit card interests rate jumped from 16% to 23% in less than a year. Their debt service increased an average of $1500 per household without that household getting a single thing in return. Yeah, the price of eggs stopped going up, but households took an effective 2% (compounding! because your ability to pay down your debt was now much harder) cut in wages just due to credit card debt service (never mind the effect on other debt) and Democrats wouldn’t even acknowledge that. Consumer outlook was kind of shit, they pulled back on spending and the legitimately worried about whether they could afford eggs in 6 months and a lot of the democratic narrative was ‘they’re full of shit, look how low unemployment is, look at where inflation is’. Yeah, those things were good. That wasn’t the problem. Sentiment was bad for valid reasons and they made decisions, including for president, on that sentiment.
Jay
@Martin:
What remained of the Colonies, were “Cash Cows”, which allowed Britain to continue to pay it’s WWI Debts. Canada, Australia and New Zealand extended credit to Britain. The US started before and in the early years of WWII with an embargo on Military Sales to France and Britain. When the Us lifted the embargo, a) it was too late, (most of what France bought was still in the US when France was over run) and b) it was Cash and Carry, (cash, gold, no bonds, no treasury bills, basing rights in perpetuity in exchange for some WWI Destroyers). The US only extended credit in early 1942 when WWII finally became serious for the US.
Post War, France, despite not giving up her colonies, got the Marshall Plan, Britain got nada, so I don’t think the Colonies factored into it at all, and of course, the US was still a Colonial Power and still saw them as a “good thing”.
Reverse tool order
@Jay: I largely agree with you (@ 74, in reply to #56). However, continuing the 100+ year suppression is still the dominant, but not entire, policy. It was becoming obvious in the field by the 1980s that the viability of it was about played out. Yet we persist, so why is that? I think it was in large part an understandable response to what came before. Citing two of many examples, see Wikipedia for the Peshtigo, Chicago, Michigan, etc under “Great Fires of 1871” and The Big Blowup under “Great Fire of 1910”. Perhaps a new and old perspective on recent notable fires.
We have worked ourselves and our lands into quite a predicament that can’t be resolved easily or painlessly. Hazards and risks such as burned buildings and deaths are built in. Like every other human endeavor, dealing with woodland fire is more complex than what first meets the layman’s eyes.
The National Park Service has been the leading fire agency seeking to manage “let burns” to back away from pure suppression for at least 45 years that I know of. And they have been burned for it both literally and figuratively, pun intended.
A couple technical notes to wrap up. Wildland fire behavior (intensity, rate of spread, & more) are very sensitive to a number of variables. Ignition source is not the sole cause of fire. Without available fuel and available oxygen, there is no wildfire (aka The Fire Triangle). Oxygen is in our surrounding atmosphere. Ignoring building fuel loads while fixating on ignition is delusional kicking the can down the road.
lowtechcyclist
@Chetan Murthy:
Interesting how heavily poverty in the U.S. is still concentrated in the old Confederacy.
I know a lot of it must be that where whites are running things (still most everywhere), they’re still tilting the playing field against Blacks. I’m also willing to bet that there’s still a lot of white poverty down there, since not everybody can afford to send their kids to the segregation academies, and they’ve done such a great job (/s) of investing in their public school systems. But as long as the whites have a curtain rod and a sparrow and the Blacks don’t, it’s still good from their POV.
LAC
@JML: Amen! The purity sparkle pony brigade is always at the ready …FIRE … aim!
Ramona
@Old Man Shadow: Except that in this case the inflation rate is higher with food and energy excluded. This leads me to guess that food and energy prices rose at a lower rate than 2.7%.
rusty
@Professor Bigfoot: Asking everyone to work hard to elect people, invest their money, time and soul, and then accomplish nothing from it because everything is effectively blocked by SCOTUS will be a complete failure. Yes, we need to win all three, president, senate and house, and that will be extremely hard. But if the result is nothing changes, then average folks will abandon the party. It’s not one or the other, I think we need to do both. We are all on the same side, but if the result is a pyrrhic victory, then that is no victory at all.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: Thank you WaterGirl. I’ve knocked that comma out but it pops back up again. I’ll have to stay on it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: Okay, the US was anti-British and just want to fuck over that one particular country. I am sure that is a far better explanation.
Professor Bigfoot
@Jay: That sounds like what happened to the people of Haiti… France demanded payment for loss of its colony and its slaves (heh!) in 1825 and Haiti made the final payment in 1947.
Yeah, that will jack your economy for a minute.
JML
@rusty: average folks will never join the party in the first place if every response to GOP fuckery is to take a shot at the Democratic Party and start demanding purity tests.
and while I want every candidate running for federal office to be on board with judicial reform, I don’t expect it to be what they run on, because for most people it’s going to be a loser of an issue. It’s too inside baseball, too technical, and too removed from most people’s every day lives. It requires a LOT of explaining. It’s also the sort of thing that you elect people to just fix as part of their jobs.
Professor Bigfoot
@Martin: That’s just it, though— Is the Constitution even in force any longer?
I think things were less dependent on “norms” than on “MFs following the MF LAW.”
At this point, I see a “slowly then all at once” collapse of the United States government because it’s been taken over by a criminal conspiracy.
Professor Bigfoot
@Tenar Arha: Fair point, but we’re not going to start advocating to primary every Dem who’s not talking about that.
We’re not going to make it a “litmus test” because it takes all kinds to win in different places, and if we don’t have the seats, if we don’t have the wins, we can’t do jack shit.
Talk about it, ABSOLUTELY.
But we’ve had enough purity test bullshit to last thorough the rest of the century.
Professor Bigfoot
@rusty: We’re not primarying sitting Democrats because they don’t say the correct shibboleth about your particular concern.
Beyond that, by all means carry on.
Rusty
@Professor Bigfoot: I don’t think, and agree it would be a bad idea to have everyone run on this. I have never been a “purity pony”. Running gun control advocates in purple or red states is a guaranteed loss. That is true of lots of other issues. Manchin drove me nuts, but I also understood that anyone more liberal couldnt win WV. We are a big tent and there are and will be disagreements, lots of disagreements. But electing people, particularly senators, where will at best have a one or two vote margin, who are against court reform will be a failure of every other issue. Senators that are wedded to the sanctity of a nine member court should be primaried. We probably will have more latitude in the house.
Kathleen
@Ohio Mom: The greatest act of rebellion is to cherish self and the joys in the moment, Put them in your joy moments bank to withdraw when needed. These ghouls could not exist without fear and hatred energies. My job is to not be an entree on their Fear Buffet. Also, as Ralph Warnock pointed out, evil contains the seeds of its own destruction. It’s only a matter of time. Yet I’m still fearful and angry but that’s OK too.
Since I clicked on the “bitchin’ song link in the other thread I’ve rolled into a You Tube playlist with my faves starting with Joe Jackson to Booker T and now Brothers Johnson. Life is good. I’m and OLD boomer but I love me some 80’s music.
Kathleen
@Steve LaBonne: I think you’re right.
Ramona
@Omnes Omnibus: Britain did give up its Empire or was 1947 too late to affect war debt negotiations with the US.
Ramona
@Martin: CA installed more battery power than China per capita or in absolute terms? Where can I go to read up on such information?
Rusty
@Professor Bigfoot: For myself, I will agree to disagree and would prefer to focus on those items where we can work toward common goals. We are over a year from the next elections, I think the ground is going to shift under all.our feet and the issues may well look very different from now.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ramona: India won its independence. There was more to the British empire than just India. And was renaming it the Commonwealth that much of a change. Just think of the number of countries that still have Charles III as their head of state.
ETA: I believe that the post war loan agreement was hammered out in 1946.
WaterGirl
@Geminid: You should only have to make the change once in each device you use for BJ.
So if the comma is showing up in the nym field, delete the space and the comma and immediately post a comment. That should leave the nym field with Geminid.
Do that on all the devices you use for BJ. If that still doesn’t fix it, and it should, let me know.
Ruckus
@Martin:
As an ex employee and an ex employer I’ve seen both sides of this. Paying for each employee’s benefits (which included my own benefits) is a cost factor which either comes out of profits or out of costs. And I guarantee that it comes out of costs. Which means costs go up – which most of us understand. What the situation is today, as I see it is that a lot of big companies want, as all companies do, make a profit after all costs are put into the math. But some of them seem greedy and want a lot of profit off the least cost. And one of the places to get that is employee wages, while another is that a lot of say manufacturing businesses can be more automated, thus cutting the number of employees. And because all costs go one direction – up, automation can be a way to control large wage hikes. Now of course not all business is manufacturing. Retail, etc takes bodies. Of course we also have on line purchasing which cuts some level of manufacturing employment. Take computers. How many are manufactured in the US? I’d bet almost none. Phones? Cars? I drive a 9 yr old car made here. A large percentage are not made in the US any more.
Ramona
@Jay: “Britain still owed debts from WWI to the US and the Independent Colonies”- what is meant by “the Independent Colonies”? Did these, for example, include Indian principalities who might have lent money to Britain during WWI?
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: Lend-Lease began in early 1941.
Ramona
@Omnes Omnibus: My question might have seemed like I was trying to argue. I wasn’t. I am truly ignorant of the conditions the US put on the debt it extended Britain.
I am Indian and the first thing I was taught in India (1971) was our fight for Independence. What I noticed after becoming an adult was that this struggle took something like 6 decades. I doubt we would have succeeded in gaining Independence if it were not for the ruin WWII did to the British economy. Even the post WWI destruction were not enough for Britain to let go of India.
It’s true that there were other colonies, but India was the jewel and letting go of her would surely have meant the death knell to holding on to the other colonies.
Martin
@Jay: Britain got nothing because Britain had largely intact colonies to support them, which the US had been one of! Britain was supposed to get their recovery from Canada, Australia, India, Egypt, and so on. Granted, their relationship with these were strained – some were already sovereign (as were we!). Our focus was not on just rebuilding – it was on keeping these countries from starting a third war. How do we rebuild Japan so it’ll stop terrorizing its neighbors, Germany and France so they won’t keep fighting, holding back the USSR from their territorial ambitions. This wasn’t just a welfare program. There were very real geopolitical goals, and we met those goals apart from not containing the USSR as much as we wanted. The UK wasn’t a big part of that project. Rather, the UK was busy just putting out fires it had itself started and that would continue for the next few decades. The US had no interest in helping the UK maintain that empire, apart from a desire to have it wind down in a peaceful manner, and not contribute to global instability (which we didn’t entirely succeed at).
France didn’t give up her colonies, though I think the US saw the writing on the wall on that one, but let’s be honest – Algeria, Vietnam, and Guinea were not going to contribute much to the rebuilding of France. The UK had modern industrialized colonies, and relatively large ones at that. There was plenty of currency flowing around the world with George VIs face on it. And the UK didn’t have a disruption of government unlike like every country we helped. The UK simply wasn’t in the same category in almost any way. And let’s be additionally honest here – until just before the war, the UK was the country calling the shots on the global stage. The US was not motivated to return them to that position. That’s the cost of having held that position – nobody is going to bail the US out when we fall either, our fate is going to be a lesser geopolitical and economic player, by design.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: I think the problem is fixed on my phone, which is the only device I use. This comment should tell the tale.
Thanks again for your help.
I don’t know if you noticed, but Annie Laurie featured Rep. Nikki Budzinski in one of her posts a couple weeks ago. Your Representative does not make much national news working on the Agriculture and Veterans Committees, so it was nice to see.
Kathleen
@JML: Bravo! As Marc Elias said, the only way to even begin to stop this is to elect Democrats. Does anyone else state this fact so clearly? I don’t hear it. He (I think it was Marc) said the Democratic Party was the only institution that’s not been compromised by Russia. Yet everyone else is hell bent on demonizing and maligning the Party including wait for it people in the party. I wonder if Bernie/AOC ever outright said “vote for Democrats” in their “Fight The Oligarchs And Send Us Money” Tour. If they did I will stand corrected and do penance.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ramona: I did not mean to come off as confrontational with you. My apologies if I did. India was obviously the big prize but the British fought a colonial war in 1982 and only gave up Hong Kong on 1997.
ETA: Martin is basically correct about the geopolitical reasons for who got what from the US.
Kathleen
Deleted duplicate comment
Kathleen
Deleted duplicate comment
Martin
@Ruckus: Yeah, but US manufacturing workers are among the most productive in the world. The way that manifests is that we stop doing things like assemble computers, because that’s a low productivity job and those companies outsource that work and replace it with more productive work – we tend to consolidate at the tip of the spear, which is a lot of defense work.
It’s not a mystery why almost all semiconductor design happens in the US while the manufacture has been outsourced. TSMC who makes most of the world’s advanced semiconductors has an annual revenue in line with Apple’s services segment. In terms of GDP, it’s better to have a worker making the F1 movie than making the semiconductors that rendered the special effects for the F1 movie. If we were willing to kick the immigration doors open, we could do both. Without that, we in effect have a choice. The market reallocates labor toward productivity, because companies want the revenue and profits. We do agriculture because we have immigration with the skillset to do that work. It’s a marriage of convenience. But a LOT of farms in the US – like a LOT – will make more money covered in solar panels than what they’re doing now. When CA farms pack up for Mexico due to lack of labor, that’s what pops up on the land. The notion that the US will have this robust agricultural system is I think more fragile than people realize.
There are real and serious strategic benefits to maintaining US manufacturing (which are not aligned with the market) and I think those should be invested in and supported even if that does undercut GDP potential.
The only alternative I see to this system is to break with GDP as the ball to chase, and that’s functionally to ask the question ‘what if we didn’t do capitalism and markets at all?’ and at the very least, we are not ready to ask that kind of question, never mind whether we have an answer to it. I think one of the little notes we need to keep pinned is that if you wealth taxed the entire US national debt out of the top 1%, they’d almost all still be the top 1% afterward. We are an extraordinarily wealthy country in terms of GDP and assets. It’s just VERY poorly allocated with respect to social stability.
That leaves the strategic
Ramona
@Omnes Omnibus: You did not come off confrontational at all. And even if you had, I only mind confrontational when it’s not logically connected to any statement I may have made. I was impressed that you knew I was talking of India when all I’d said was 1947.
I was surprised to learn that the US may have imposed the condition on Britain that they divest themselves of their colonies. Did this happen? I read what Martin said. It makes sense that Britain would not have needed a Marshall plan unlike Japan, Germany and France. But, that’s orthogonal to the 1946 debt negotiations.
Ramona
@Omnes Omnibus: I saw the Falklands war as Thatcher distracting from her unpopular domestic policies and the 100 year British lease on Hong Kong came due in 1997.
I suppose the point you are trying to make is that the protracted struggle for Indian independence did play a huge part in Britain surrendering it after the economic devastation of WWII. If so, then you are right and I am surprised that I had only been thinking of India’s having achieved independence as either because of WWII or because of the decades long struggle when of course both played a factor. Thanks for widening my brain.
Martin
@Ramona: Britain *did* get a lot of Marshall Plan money, and squandered most of it. But it remains that the US was not likely motivated to clear the UKs ledger here and was not going to give the UK everything they wanted because their need was quite small relative to their want, unlike the other nations whose need were quite significant. I mean, we had to help them tip up new forms of government with the goal of that new government being a good one. And that’s not just a product of technocratic know-how but also leaving a population hopeful enough for a future under such a proposed government that they will support it. They need to see things rebuilt. The UK was not in that state – it had a continuity of government, the public was not in this unstable state, its need was much less and its resources much more.
Ramona
@Martin: Thanks for this. I’ve learned so much from reading you, Jay, Omnes, Bigfoot, Chetan and others in the comments.
Ramona
@Martin: How did Britain squander the Marshall plan money it received?
schrodingers_cat
@Ramona: I am on the second last lecture of Lal’s History of British India course.
Have you heard any of the other courses?
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Back in the 30’s, until about 1942, there were these pretty powerful Political Groups, America First, (everything old is new again), the American Bund, (Nazi’s, ho hum) and a political half baked idea called Isolationism, (yup, welcome to the rerun).
As Europe lurched towards war, Anschluss, Spain, Czechoslovakia, a prominent US attitude was “It’s another European War, Fuck Europe”.
And by Europe, they meant Holland, Belgium, France, Britain, Norway, Denmark, Lichtenstein, Finland, Greece, Yugoslavia, Romania, Hungary, etc.
They did allow US Industrialists to do a booming trade with Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union, just not “Democratic Europe”.
Then came Poland, and some in the upper offices of the US had an “oh shit” moment, and decided they could after all, sell Europeans weapons, for cash or gold.
Then came the Fall of France and pretty much every NatSec person worth owing a brain, pissed their pant’s and decided that “yeah, maybe we should sell them some weapons on the cuff”.
Then Japan entered the chat and the Genius Bar in the US decided that maybe, arms sales to Europe, (it was just Britain, the Soviet Union and the Commonwealth at the time), could be made on a delivery now, pay later agreement, but with interest.
We see this same attitude with the “America First” crowd and Ukraine, but they haven’t reached even the “Fall of France” stage of grief yet.
Jay
@Ramona: Australia, Canada and New Zealand were “independent”, India, South Africa, etc were not.
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
The Lend part started in 1940 as 50 old UUS WWI destroyers from the Mothball Fleet, surplus an obsolete to Us Requirements, were “leant” to Britain, and that Britain had to modernize, (guns, aa, ASDIC), upgrades like engines and other systems were impossible.
The Lease part was for a 50 year Lease of 12+ bases from the North Atlantic to the Indian Ocean in British and Commonwealth Territories.
The formal “Lend Lease Act” passed in March 1941as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States.
Martin
@Ramona: In 1944 the US became the global reserve currency with the Breton Woods agreement, displacing the British Pound. This would create significant monetary challenges for the UK who derived a fair bit of the economic stability from that position. That shift didn’t mean that suddenly everything is done in dollars and the UK wanted to keep trade across the commonwealth done in sterling to the extent possible. This meant that they needed to be able to print currency which meant they needed gold. They also had to hold onto their trade and remaining non-independent colonies (having just lost India before the Marshall Plan started in 1948) and that requires maintaining some amount of a military. And so rather than spending the Marshall Plan money to bulk up the domestic economy, they used it to shore up their part of the global economy.
A decade after US occupation, Japan had a bullet train, Americans were buying up Volkswagens, and the UK were, uh, overthrowing the Iranian government and fighting with Iceland (and losing).
To be fair, the UK and France were hauled into all manner of problems they couldn’t really avoid, particularly after the formation of Israel which was not exclusively their idea but to which they had a certain responsibility. But I think the 2nd half of the 20th century has been the UK in a constant state of conflict of some magnitude, managing a declining empire and coming out weaker than it entered. And while that’s not something they could have just not done, it is a problem they created for themselves. The US did intervene in some of these just as we did with France but when we felt it served our interests – Vietnam, for instance.
And the UK did often have the option to wind down colonies more than it pursued and rid itself of maintaining that burden. I’m not going to be overly critical of the UK here – these are challenging problems to address. But they don’t get to come whining that the US didn’t bail them out better. Like, sorry, let’s start with the fact you aren’t speaking German right now.
Ramona
@Jay: Thanks for answering my question. From the comments following your mention of “Independent Colonies”, I gathered you meant Canada, NZ and Australia.
What can I say? I have a tendency towards being thick as two bricks.
Ramona
@schrodingers_cat: Which courses do you mean by other courses? I found on YT and started to watch “The Story of India” which Dr Lal had mentioned but I got distracted by the very opening part where he mentions a gene (M213? IIRC) found in a particular male line in South India and stopped watching after going down rabbitholes pertaining to genetics.
Did you like the Mahatma’s answer to the British journalist asking about his attire when going to meet with the British sovereign?
Ramona
@Martin:Thanks Martin. So, the UK has been whining about not getting enough from the Marshall plan? I expect they squandered the money on building out their mercantile navy fleet and colonial factories?
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: Believe it or not, some of us do have some notion of history.
schrodingers_cat
@Ramona: Lal’s other classes. He has a class on the History of Indian Civilization another one on the Indian Diaspora and another one on post Independence India.
schrodingers_cat
@Ramona: Yes that was a witty retort. Gandhi had a great sense of humor!
Martin
@Ramona: I don’t think the UK is whining. Well, some Brexiters probably are. But Jay is the one asserting we hamstrung UKs recovery by treating it unfairly.
Sorry, the UK did a LOT of sewing and going to have to reset their expectations now that it’s time for the reaping. We treated the UK pretty well after the war. We built a new alliance with them, we supported them having elevated status, all that. We were not responsible for carrying an unsustainable colonial economy to the place they wanted it to go.
I don’t know enough of postwar domestic politics there to know if the UK government was anything less than thankful. My assumption is they were overall extremely thankful for just being in the place they were and were focused on having a strong alliance given looming challenges and this idea that we hamstrung them is just some outsider view.
Ramona
@Steve LaBonne: This makes me think of the old adage about the wise learning from the mistakes of others while fools may learn from their own.
Ramona
@Martin:Nor did I get the idea that the UK was anything but extremely grateful to the USA. I got the impression from my last visit in 2007 that many English people had an over-fawning view of the US as some kind of a superior entity.
Ramona
@schrodingers_cat: I was unaware of what a great wit he was. Do you know of any similar utterances. Noam Chomsky may have paraphrased Gandhi when asked while book signing about Capitalism and said something like capitalism would be a good thing to try but I forget what Gandhi was asked when he said, “That would be a good thing to try”.
Ramona
@schrodingers_cat: Ooh! Thanks for letting me know!
Ramona
@Omnes Omnibus: Hush now. These are things I need to hear.
Jay
@Ramona:
The UK is not “whinging” about the Marshall Plan, they scooped up almost 25% of the funds.
Just pointing out historical precedents that the US might face with it’s current “America First” and “Isolationist” programs.
Kayla Rudbek
@CaseyL: knitting does soothe a math part of my brain (knitting is like linear algebra, crochet is like differential geometry, quilting is Euclidean geometry, weaving is also very mathematical)
Kayla Rudbek
@Ramona: that was when Gandhi was asked about Western civilization, if I recall correctly