Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 396: America's Mid(terms)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Is Thorn not an LotM alt?

I had him tagged as LotM.

Maniac64 posted...

Is Thorn not an LotM alt?

I had him tagged as LotM.

*Points at sig*

I was xp1337. Changed my user name a few months back.

Fixed that tag.

Thorn posted...

I'm saying the narrative of inflation gave them a scapegoat to pin it on and act like they were forced to by the economy and not making a conscious decision to just raise prices. idk maybe I phrased it poorly

https://www.epi.org/blog/corporate-profits-have-contributed-disproportionately-to-inflation-how-should-policymakers-respond

Some economists seem to be starting to argue that corporate profits are driving inflation, the above was April and then the other day...:

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/3715725-rising-profits-are-driving-inflation-ubs-economist-says/

I guess the way I'm looking at it is that if you're a company selling a product, there's some optimal price for that product to maximize profit. And since as a company you're always trying to maximize profit, your product is already going to be at about this price (with some caveats; you're presumably not going to be updating it every day or in one cent increments or whatever and dealing with the overhead involved in doing so). So generally, raising prices from this optimum is going to lose you money, because the extra profit per item is going to be more than counterbalanced by the loss in sales. Now if inflation is high, your optimal price is of course rapidly rising (at least in terms of nominal dollars), so you're going to up your price to meet it. I haven't done any of the math, but it wouldn't surprise me if that process of raising prices (if all of your competitors are also doing it, because they're seeing the same inflation) that naturally leads to higher profit percentages. But in any case, in a competitive market you generally can't just decide to be greedier and make even more money because if you could then you would have been doing so already.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

lol oops, that was the wrong tweet.

The one I meant to share I cant find anymore, but it was about how the auto-fact check on Elons tweet about activist groups messing up his revenue has disappeared.

https://twitter.com/BeauTFC/status/1588569641772670977

This appeared on my feed. Doesn't mention it disappearing that I saw but maybe it's in there later.

kevwaffles posted...

This appeared on my feed. Doesn't mention it disappearing that I saw but maybe it's in there later.

They're from an experimental feature Birdwatch, currently limited only to the US and I hear it's only testing 50/50 users

https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1588633034173349888?t=f1RpbIHEa1UPAvLHTrMJ_A&s=19

Conservatives hate capitalism more than leftists do

Between next week's red wave and the uncontrollable anti-semitism, I honestly think this country's beyond saving

colliding posted...

Between next week's red wave and the uncontrollable anti-semitism, I honestly think this country's beyond saving

https://images.app.goo.gl/ZzZXRHV59iBFNmz66

Oh yeah we're fucked. Likely way too stupid of a population to recover in a meaningful way.

https://twitter.com/abtnatural/status/1588682105240047618

threatening advertisers to give you money or you'll sic your stans on them is surely gonna help your brand

colliding posted...

Between next week's red wave and the uncontrollable anti-semitism, I honestly think this country's beyond saving

honestly what's equally disheartening is that no one around me notices or cares. I keep waiting for something to happen to shock the country out of its stupor, but I think we're just dead.

I don't really see why you guys are doomering so hard. There is a better chance than trump winning in 2016 that the democrats still win the senate, and even if democrats lose the house and senate we aren't in full doom mode unless democrats also lose the presidency in 2024 which I think is probably impossible if republicans do half the crazy shit they are threatening to do.

Like we are freaking out that a democrat might lose a senate race in Georgia. Think how completely insane of a statement that would be as recently as 2018. The reason 2020 was even remotely close was because Republicans went completely crazy, and that is going to be full steam ahead going into 2024

Even if the supreme court authorizes states to choose their own electors (Big if) you would have to accept that Joe Biden would give up power to allow that to happen.

Would that cause the country to civil war? Possibly, but even that isn't as bad as some of the crazy scenarios I have been reading people freaking out about such as a descent into complete fascist government purging.

You guys seriously need to take a deep breath and realize it is impossible for the world to end on tuesday regardless of how voting goes. That happens 2 years from now and it is probably less likely to happen if republicans get to go full batshit insane in the house

I don't particularly like to call people out here, but I'm pretty sure this is the second consecutive time corporate profits have come up in this topic, you've dismissed it as nonsense and it's really just inflation making the numbers bigger, and I've replied presenting you the data that profit margins as a % are at a 70 year high and should that not debunk your idea that it's a false narrative because the measurement by % would account for inflation and have been completely ghosted.

It happening one time, I mean, whatever, that's fine if you didn't want to keep talking about it or the conversation had moved on by the time you read my response. But it happening again now is a bit frustrating for me, honestly.

So, just restating it again so I can get an answer one way or another:

Profit margins are at a 70-year high or so.

Is that not controlling for inflation since it's a % rather than just the raw number of dollars? I feel like the evidence is pretty compelling that a fair deal of the higher prices atm is corporate greed using inflation as a cover story and excuse to raise/keep prices high. Not to say there aren't underlying issues that would legitimately pressure prices upwards but there's a lot of smoke.

Which, incidentally, is why people care. If they're price gouging people that's typically going to affect the poorest the worst and they're doing so with naked greed.

masterplum posted...

You guys seriously need to take a deep breath and realize it is impossible for the world to end on tuesday regardless of how voting goes. That happens 2 years from now and it is probably less likely to happen if republicans get to go full batshit insane in the house

not necessarily worried about the world ending on Tuesday, just expressing general distaste with the world as it currently is

masterplum posted...

I don't really see why you guys are doomering so hard. There is a better chance than trump winning in 2016 that the democrats still win the senate, and even if democrats lose the house and senate we aren't in full doom mode unless democrats also lose the presidency in 2024 which I think is probably impossible if republicans do half the crazy shit they are threatening to do.

Like we are freaking out that a democrat might lose a senate race in Georgia. Think how completely insane of a statement that would be as recently as 2018. The reason 2020 was even remotely close was because Republicans went completely crazy, and that is going to be full steam ahead going into 2024

Even if the supreme court authorizes states to choose their own electors (Big if) you would have to accept that Joe Biden would give up power to allow that to happen.

Would that cause the country to civil war? Possibly, but even that isn't as bad as some of the crazy scenarios I have been reading people freaking out about such as a descent into complete fascist government purging.

You guys seriously need to take a deep breath and realize it is impossible for the world to end on tuesday regardless of how voting goes. That happens 2 years from now and it is probably less likely to happen if republicans get to go full batshit insane in the house

You think this makes you look smart but I think it makes you look like a child

Thorn posted...

so I can get an answer one way or another:

I didn't see the profit margin thing before which is interesting. I still think the link to greed is extremely suspect because the assumption being made is that corporations both

1. Are able to charge more because of greed
2. Were unable to charge more because of greed in the past but now can

Which are both pretty tough hills to climb. There have been studies that show the price of gas for instance is almost completely dependent on the price of oil and no extra profit is purposefully being made on it.

So while I may have been wrong about corporate profits, I don't think that changes anything in regards to thinking corporations are doing anything different now than they were 20 years ago

Paratroopa1 posted...

You think this makes you look smart but I think it makes you look like a child

No, I simply have done a lot of thinking about it recently because I was also very concerned, and that was the conclusion I came to.

masterplum posted...

I didn't see the profit margin thing before which is interesting. I still think the link to greed is extremely suspect because the assumption being made is that corporations both

1. Are able to charge more because of greed
2. Were unable to charge more because of greed in the past but now can

Which are both pretty tough hills to climb. There have been studies that show the price of gas for instance is almost completely dependent on the price of oil and no extra profit is purposefully being made on it.

So while I may have been wrong about corporate profits, I don't think that changes anything in regards to thinking corporations are doing anything different now than they were 20 years ago

Thanks. I disagree, obviously. (Well, on some points. Like I said with LotM, I may have phrased some of this poorly and later linked to some articles from economists concluding that corporate profits are now disproportionately driving inflation which is obviously better spoken than I am)

The republican party is openly anti-democratic and pushing an evil agenda, and they are poised to take over the house and the senate (and may I remind you, senate seats are held for six years). It would be idiocy to not be worried.

TBQH, even if Dems hang onto the Senate here, the 2024 map is like the worst possible map for them.

They're defending 23 seats to 10 for the GOP, including West Virginia, Montana, Ohio, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Maine.

GOP's most vulnerable seat up is...probably literally Florida. Followed by Texas. Seriously.

So if the GOP starts with gaining a majority in 2022 and then 2024 goes poorly (or SCOTUS just fucks elections up in Moore)...

I know a bunch of grocery stores got slammed for conspiring to keep bread prices higher. The perception that inflation is causing the price increases is letting them raise prices faster than inflation without being called out on it in a lot of cases.

Thorn posted...

TBQH, even if Dems hang onto the Senate here, the 2024 map is like the worst possible map for them.

They're defending 23 seats to 10 for the GOP, including West Virginia, Montana, Ohio, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Maine.

GOP's most vulnerable seat up is...probably literally Florida. Followed by Texas. Seriously.

So if the GOP starts with gaining a majority in 2022 and then 2024 goes poorly (or SCOTUS just fucks elections up in Moore)...

A R+3 or +4 swing in the senate election in 2024 is near-assured; winning as many senate seats this year is necessary. If the dems lose the senate in 2022, I do not think they will recapture it anytime soon.

the best we can hope for is that we keep the presidency and just block all the awful crap Republicans want to do. We'll never get another Supreme Court justice though. Might as well disband the whole thing.

It's going to be difficult to keep the presidency after 2 years of a lame-duck Biden presidency and 2 years of people forgetting what Donald Trump did.

https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1588696157794242560

Small thread that actually unpacks the specifics of why Elon is acting the way he is more than just "lol Elon". Not that you necessarily need more, but basically Twitter has been fucked for FY2023 for a while because of his antics.

Sorry if I missed this earlier.

JeffreyRaze posted...

I know a bunch of grocery stores got slammed for conspiring to keep bread prices higher. The perception that inflation is causing the price increases is letting them raise prices faster than inflation without being called out on it in a lot of cases.

That's exactly the point. We understand inflation is happening. But if circumstances dictate at 20% increase to maintain the same cost/profit ratio and instead prices go up by 50%... Yeah that's corporate greed.

https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1588739470601654272

https://twitter.com/mediaevan/status/1588638643081850880

https://twitter.com/lisabloom/status/1588359669843513344

For the legal people here, is this thread true? If it is Yikes!

We would need more data to completely assess the situation, but it's dangerous to draw a conclusion from a Twitter stat snippet.

Profit margins will always be up with low supply items. This is a very basic supply demand curve you learn in basic economics 101.

I feel like people like to spout numbers with zero understanding of what it means.

For example, you have the wage growth charts vs productivity over time. It is explained by automation. Productivity rose but wages stagnated. Because automation increased productivity by streamlining processes. A worker can now do less work and produce more.

https://history.house.gov/Institution/Presidents-Coinciding/Party-Government/

I just want to point out from 1933 to 1995

62 years.

Republicans had full control of congress for just 4 years.

Democrats had full control for 52 years.

And it was split just 6 years.

20 of those 52 years had a republican president. Which means 32 years democrats had all of congress of and the presidency.

Of the 4 years Republicans had full control of congress, just 2 had a republican president.

Its kind of amazing that democrats controlled stuff for so long and squandered so much.

Corrik7 posted...

Its kind of amazing that democrats controlled stuff for so long and squandered so much.

it's their specialty!

Paratroopa1 posted...

It's going to be difficult to keep the presidency after 2 years of a lame-duck Biden presidency and 2 years of people forgetting what Donald Trump did.

On the one hand, I doubt people will forget what Trump did given he's still a fixture of the news, and if anything, it seems his poor pandemic response might even overshadow all his other controversies. On the other hand, I think lots of Republicans simply don't know or don't care about what their party has become, to say nothing of those who will never vote Democrat on principle because f*** SJWs.

Corrik7 posted...

https://history.house.gov/Institution/Presidents-Coinciding/Party-Government/

I just want to point out from 1933 to 1995

62 years.

Republicans had full control of congress for just 4 years.

Democrats had full control for 52 years.

And it was split just 6 years.

20 of those 52 years had a republican president. Which means 32 years democrats had all of congress of and the presidency.

Of the 4 years Republicans had full control of congress, just 2 had a republican president.

Its kind of amazing that democrats controlled stuff for so long and squandered so much.

I'd like to indicate the exact point where things started going wrong for the Dems. You'll note that after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, you see a Republican president (who got impeached for crimes), then Carter had a united legislature for his single term, and from then on, the GOP of at least one of the three levers of power every national election, except for the first two years of Clinton, Obama, and now Biden's terms.

I mention the Civil Rights Act (and I know, you don't like talking about racial inequalities...but it IS important in the context of what you're pointing out) because it is objectively a good thing. It is the BARE MINIMUM that we as a country could do to give legal equality to an entire race of people who were subject to slavery for two hundred years, and segregation for another one hundred. It wasn't even MAKING them equal (as evidenced by the fact that multiple laws had to be passed after the CRA to dismantle continued discriminatory practices), but just giving them the legal potential to achieve equality in a way that was denied to them before the CRA. It's objectively a good and necessary law...but it's also the law that fucked the Democrats in the long term.

Now, the first reason for this is obvious: the Southern switch. Democrats held an overwhelming majority...but then the Civil Rights Act drew battle lines and drove "southern" voters away from the party and into the arms of the Republicans. They lost the strength of their coalition, while the GOP banded together the voters most susceptible to identity politics...namely those in favor of WHITE identity politics.

But the second reason, and perhaps the more important of the two in terms of understanding why the Democrats struggle so much with legislation NOW, is that if you look at those early years on your timeline, you correctly see an overwhelming degree of Democratic control (outside of the first two years of Eisenhower's first term). It's important to note that this period of history was prior to the Civil Rights Act. In fact, as people like Smuffin (or was it SephyG) loved to point out: FDR was pretty racist for the Japanese internment camps during WWII.

My point is that it was far easier to govern and push progressive policy in this era, because policy only catered to white people. Social security? White people (in fact, they carved out job exceptions that largely employed black people). Medicare? White people. Welfare? White people. Unions? White people. Labor laws? White people. Politicians didn't need to worry as much about austerity fears, because you didn't have alarmists making arguments about "welfare queens" getting rich off of YOUR tax dollars. But once the CRA passed, suddenly, the working class that the Democrats unequivocally benefited during the FDR/Truman/Eisenhower/Kennedy/Johnson years included black people...and those Southern Democrats who jumped ship stoked racial tensions.

Essentially, the CRA gave Republicans a silver bullet they could fire whenever they wanted. The Democrats want to pass a law that benefits everyone? Suddenly, the conversation turns to "The Dems want to give you $100? Well, that SOUNDS great, but they also want to give 'him' $100. 'He' doesn't work as hard as you (or some other racial stereotype that isn't OVERTLY racist), so why should you support a policy that gives 'him' $100?" So, then the voters start to agree with this and start to aggressively vote against any policy that would personally benefit them, because it would ALSO benefit "them".

I say all of this because you can look at that listing and see that EXACT cutoff point. Johnson may have lost the presidency because of Vietnam, but that doesn't explain how the GOP were then able to gain such a powerful foothold afterwards...especially after Nixon the CRIMINAL was removed from power. It all goes back to the CRA and the easy-to-stoke racial resentment that it carried with it. Democrats fucked themselves by showing compassion towards black people. And I'm not saying that compassion was a bad thing. It's just fucked up that demonstrating basic human decency seems to consistently torpedo Democrats and progressive policy in America.

Corrik7 posted...

https://history.house.gov/Institution/Presidents-Coinciding/Party-Government/

I just want to point out from 1933 to 1995

62 years.

Republicans had full control of congress for just 4 years.

Democrats had full control for 52 years.

And it was split just 6 years.

20 of those 52 years had a republican president. Which means 32 years democrats had all of congress of and the presidency.

Of the 4 years Republicans had full control of congress, just 2 had a republican president.

Its kind of amazing that democrats controlled stuff for so long and squandered so much.

This is flawed for a whole host of reasons, the biggest of which is that democrats and republicans of the 1960s, 80s 2000s werent the same parties as today

The democrat party for better or for worse is a lot more leftist than it was then and the Republican Party , for worse, is a lot more fascist than it was then

Blaming the Democratic Party's failures for 50 years on the (bipartisan) Civil Rights Act is ridiculous. Maybe the problem is Democratic voters don't hold their politicians accountable, instead blaming everything on the GOP, or the CRA, or other things that they can't control.

HeroicCrono posted...

Blaming the Democratic Party's failures for 50 years on the (bipartisan) Civil Rights Act is ridiculous. Maybe the problem is Democratic voters don't hold their politicians accountable, instead blaming everything on the GOP, or the CRA, or other things that they can't control.

Weak troll attempt. Try again?

https://twitter.com/moreperfectus/status/1588589412262158337

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1588316045982535685

I hate this man.

RaidenGarai posted...

https://twitter.com/lisabloom/status/1588359669843513344

For the legal people here, is this thread true? If it is Yikes!

From what I understand, the solution Musk wants to do is to just continue to pay them to not work for the rest of the 60 days

Jakyl25 posted...

From what I understand, the solution Musk wants to do is to just continue to pay them to not work for the rest of the 60 days

Fair.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

https://twitter.com/moreperfectus/status/1588589412262158337

bruh

Grimlyn posted...

bruh

If I wanted to give him a tremendous benefit of the doubt (and to be clear I don't), I could assume he means this in a positive civic duty sort of way and not what they're basically already known to be asking for.

But I don't believe that.

https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1588726911760732160

https://www.thedailybeast.com/south-dakota-state-senate-candidate-joel-koskan-accused-of-molesting-family-member

Always. Projection.

Details in these kind of things are always sickening but we're talking "installed cameras in her room" level of sickening.

Before this topic ends, I think we should once again all give credit to FD for his fantastic work earlier in this topic.

Anand Giridharadas made a great fucking point I hadn't really thought about before. Paraphrased, it's that, isn't democracy already dead if we've stopped trying to convince each other of our beliefs? Democracies are predicated upon that very idea. And while it's very easy to say, Americans are just dumb (agreed) and one-party is insane and the other isn't at all (objectively true), and in fact instead of being Marxist as they're painted to be and most right-wingers seem to actually believe the Dems aren't even hardly left at all by European countries' standards (also objectively true), and on and on, it's much harder to spend precious time debunking right-wing misinformation and genuinely changing minds. Essentially what I'm also advocating for here is my apparently unpopular-in-this-topic belief that right-wingers are victims of the right-wing propaganda machine more than innate assholes. Sorry, no one is born racist and sucking the teets of capitalism every chance they get. They're just not.

In fact, my mom, a former Fox News loving conservative turned Bernie voter in 2020, is maybe the best argument for that case and symbolism of hope against doomerism. When her husband died in 2012, she stopped watching Fox altogether because they usually just watched it together. Like 7 years later she tells me "so I put on Fox News and they're kind of crazy." 3 years later she tells me she's voting for Bernie. I had nothing to do with it, to my conservative dad's disbelief. Her deprogramming was simply that - deprogramming by tuning out of the programming. And now, when I tell her factual things like "mom you hated immigrants and said plenty of racist shit back then" she literally refuses to believe me. But like, it happened because again, she was indoctrinated by Fox News. Being racist was not in her nature as it's not in anybody's nature, and it saddens me that people in this topic series said things like "oh their beliefs are just an excuse to justify their racism" when I tried to have a modicum of empathy with their being genuine victims of propaganda.

Anywho, rant over. By the way, the podcast episode Anand made that argument on is well worth a listen:

https://youtu.be/_FreA8mFCf4

Damn fine work once again, FD!

https://twitter.com/julianfeeld/status/1589144095993528321?s=46&t=gqPA8N7nq71mTBFp6oJTzQ

_Blur_ posted...

Essentially what I'm also advocating for here is my apparently unpopular-in-this-topic belief that right-wingers are victims of the right-wing propaganda machine more than innate assholes. Sorry, no one is born racist and sucking the teets of capitalism every chance they get. They're just not.

Nah people are innately afraid of things they see as "different" and generally have to learn otherwise. They can learn otherwise but if you reinforce their ideals its just people being fucking stupid.

And Americans are incredibly good at being stupid in our current complacency.

I'm completely exhausted of trying to convince people who don't want to be convinced of anything, fuck it

I've mostly been reduced to what I'm good at, passive aggressive insulting comments making fun of their mental capacity.