Did any of them get asked by what MECHANISM they think any of this works, though?
Because they’re grossly ignorant and still believe the debunked trickle down economics theory that fucking Reagan foisted on us all those years ago. And just like every other time they’ll act shocked when the economy goes even more to shit and find some way to shift blame to literally anyone but the GOP lawmakers that are plundering their wealth.
Every president since Reagan, including Democrats, have been practicing Reaganomics.
Reagan simply rebranded an existing idea; trickle down used to be called Horse and Sparrow economics. This rigged game has been going on for a long time.
Everyone with a reason or responsibility to inform the public about the economy has not been effective enough.
- Why are eggs expensive? There has been an ongoing bird flu outbreak for the past four years. Government policy might be able to mitigate the impact some, but the virus does not care who is president.
- Why is rent expensive? Not enough housing, mostly, with a bit of facilitated collusion thrown in. The president has little to do with the former; if anything, Trump is more likely to tolerate the latter.
- Why is gas expensive? A president does have a big role here, but it’s Putin, not Biden or Trump. It’s also not up a whole lot from 5-6 years ago.
Our domestic oil production is higher under Biden than Trump and we’re a net exporter. What the fuck else would we do?
Lina Khan, best FTC chair in a generation, was also in the process of cracking down on algorithmic price fixing for rentals and other deceptive practices.
For the last point about gas, trump will be happy to give ukraine to russia and impiort the cheap russian gas.
He could also pull out of nato and save lot of money that he could then spend on subsidising fatmers.
also cutting funds to agencies like FDA and social programs allow him to move these funds elsewhere
the TLDR trump will probably be able to “improve the economy” but at expense of significantly weakening the country
On the one hand, our country is essentially doomed and we’re about to death spiral.
On the other, If Trump does even a little of what he wants those of us evolved enough to be considered human will be able to have a really good “i told you so” moment.
I don’t think it’s worth it.
I think it should be mandatory for voters to have knowledge of economics, so that we do not fall into stupidities.
Thats supposed to be part of public education, which is why the party of dumb people keeps gutting it. We have the system in place, its just intentionally broken.
I spent my econ class learning about how tourism is good for the economies of resort towns, and watching travel shows about those resort towns :)
During a visit to a clients family home, I heard his younger sisters bashing their homework assignment because the teacher wanted them to give positive arguments for dropping the nukes on Japan in addition to arguments for not dropping them. I knew I got taught propaganda long ago when I was there but damn that caught me off guard.
I thought that was actually a typical thing done in debating teams, too. Take a position, defend it, then, you might have to then take the exact opposite position and try with all your might to legitimately defend that position.
I wonder what the class was for. There is also the notion of steelmanning and maybe it was about that. I guess it all depends on what the point of the exercise was. I could see it actually being useful instruction.
I’m assuming this is in the context of WWII? How is it propaganda? This sounds like a decent assignment not to try to morally justify the dropping of atomic bombs, but to build (and possibly dismiss) the arguments use for doing so. It can be a long walk, but there were massive geopolitical implication for both for and against at the time. Again, it isn’t a moral argument but an education that there are, for better or worse, people in the world that held both views.
I once wrote an essay about how dropping two nukes was excessive, but one was maybe okay :)
Real talk, these are the things I was taught in those young impressionable years. It’s fucked up. And I’ll bet plenty of my old classmates are still fucked up.
Real talk, these are the things I was taught in those young impressionable years. It’s fucked up. And I’ll bet plenty of my old classmates are still fucked up.
The more learning of history the more fucked up it gets. Geopolitics is cruel, and the atomic bombing of Japan during WWII is a good example of this. When examining the letters between the American ambassador to the Soviet Union, US Secretary of War, President FDR and later President Truman, it paints a story that the bombing had little to do with the people or military of Japan, and not even saving the American soldiers lives, which is often a rationale given for the bombing.
What it looks like is that the cold war with the Soviet Union was heating up even before V-E day, and geopolitical actions were taking place to cement stronger positions on both side before the shaky alliance of the Allies fell part post Axis defeat. Around V-E day the Soviet Union had already controlled much of Central and Eastern Europe taking conquered Nazi Germany territory. The Allies alliance called for splitting control of former Nazi territory. The Western Allies saw the Soviet Union pull right up on their doorstep in Central Europe. Close to V-J day, there were already actions taken by the Soviet Union that concerned the Western Allies in Europe and it looked like the Soviet Union’s success in Eastern Asia taking conquered Japanese Axis territory on the Asian continent was going to play out the same negative way for the Western Allies with a split of control of Japan itself.
The only way to avoid that would be for the Western Allies to defeat Axis Japan before the Soviet Union got close enough to claim contribution to the effort to take the island nation of Japan. Enter the atomic bombs. President Truman ordered them used. These delivered a swift defeat of Axis Japan cementing Western control of Japan without having to cede any control to the Soviet Union.
Further, another geopolitical goal and outcome: The two bombs dropped back to back, so close together were to telegraph to the world that the USA had the capacity to churn out atomic bomb en mass. This was a geopolitical subtext signal to all other nations to not mess with the USA militarily or they too could face unlimited USA atomic bombs dropped on them. This wasn’t true. In reality the USA spent 100% effort for years to produce just enough nuclear fuel for only 3 atomic bombs cores. One was used a the Trinity test, and the other two were dropped on Japan. It would be many months before the USA had enough fuel to make a 4th bomb, but the adversaries of the USA didn’t know that.
There was a good chance that immediately after defeat of the Axis in WWII, that war would have broken out between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. The threat to the Soviet Union of American atomic bombs possibly bought the world a multigeneration delay of WWIII trading it instead for the proxy wars we saw through the second half of the 20th century.
Was any of this worth it? I don’t know. We can speculate on the other possible timelines, but we’ll never know for sure whether this was the best choice and we avoided another devastating war, or did we squander countless innocent lives only to delay the inevitable WWIII, but this time with both sides trading nukes destroying our world and our spieces?
In short; Geopolitics is messy and cruel.
Yep, a standardized test every decade would be nice, but that will never happen. They are under a dicatorship now
That would literally be a fascist move
If you want real answers lets unpack why the Democrats messaging was to insist the economy is doing well when people have stagnant wages and have to spend more of their income by percent on food and housing. Everyone I know who makes about the same as me is completely unsurprised by this election, but the ones well off enough to believe the party line on the economy are completly shocked. This is the disconnect the dems need to address.
I don’t get it though. “My wages are shit, so I’ll vote for the hyper capitalist oligarchs who will make sure my wages stay shit”.
Punching oneself in the face is not the cure for a bloody nose.
Americans have no concept of class or class struggle.
Trump didn’t gain voters, Democrats lost voters. The people didnt see Kamalas message and switch to Trump, they saw her message and stayed home.
I think the idea is “he promises change, when she says there’s nothing to change”. He’s lying of course, but they hear him talking about an issue (without offering any reasonable solution) and threw their support behind him.
When I saw him talking, he only seemed to be telling boring stories about himself or doing his usual rants about his personal vendettas against others.
They didn’t throw their support behind him. He got the same number of votes as he got the last two times. The difference is Democrats didn’t turn out.
If their wages are shit, do they want more of the same or any change at all? Seems pretty obvious to me why they voted that way, especially given they don’t understand economics.
I feel like Harris didn’t even need to explicitly say she would fix the economy or change everything as much as she just needed to come out and say shes aware the economy is not working for everyone. When voters who feel economically dejecected see someone say nothing is wrong, they get the feeling no one is going to help them. A little acknowledgement would have been great.
She did say that at almost every rally. The problem is getting the message out.
Yep. Instead we got them crowing about how great they’ve done and how the stats show things are getting better.
That’s what happens without class consciousness.
The problem, basically, is that people don’t really have any clear sense of how political decisions actually affect things like wages and cost of living, but they have a very strong sense that political decisions must be having some effect on those things.
So when presented with the choice between “The situation we have” (which definitely sucks), and “something else” (which might suck) they opt for “something else”.
Because the objective, non-partisan facts suggest the economy is doing well.
Well for whom? Because it seems not the voters.
What people believe and what is true are two different things. A lot of people believed Trump’s wild rants about people eating dogs and cats, doesn’t make it true.
Are ppl really this fucking stupid, or is it just a front?
Unfortunately, yes. They think the person in the WH sets the prices of eggs.
I’d love to see some Jordan Klepper type of interviews of these people asking some follow-up questions about what they believe the mechanisms are…
They really are this stupid.
Telling us we were not struggling and everything is fine when we can see that’s a lie didn’t help.
Total upheaval is what they’ll get then.
