Jobs numbers in today:
America’s jobs recovery gathered some steam last month as US employers added 531,000 positions in October.
The unemployment rate fell to 4.6%, the lowest level since the economic recovery started in May 2020.The number of jobs added in October easily outpaced economists’ prediction of 450,000 jobs. It marked the first month since July that the official number didn’t undercut the consensus estimate.
The US economy gained jobs across the board last month, with leisure and hospitality, manufacturing and transportation and warehousing leading the job gains. The leisure and hospitality sector was hit hardest during the pandemic recession and is still 1.4 million jobs short of its pre-pandemic level.
Also, I really do not understand the fetish with inflation. Again, I am not an economist, and the current numbers of 5 or so for the last few months are higher than the norm, but they are completely inline with the numbers in 2008 after the 2007 economic crash. So to a layperson (that would be me), it looks like after there is a shock to the economy like say an global economic crisis or a global pandemic, there is some reorganization and a short term boost to inflation. Looking at inflation from 1960, it appears the outlier was the 70’s, and other than that it has been remarkably steady and at some points almost too low.
Again, I am not an economist, but it doesn’t seem like anything is completely out of whack, but every day I open the news and see things like this:
It really does feel like whenever a Democrat is President the narrative is always “Heads I win, Tails you lose.”
Baud
That’s exactly what it is. And, unfortunately, it’s not only the media that does it. As long as anyone, anywhere is struggling, Dems have failed.
ALurkSupreme
Yup. You understand the situation just fine.
rikyrah
It’s very good news :)
RobertB
On several non-political forums (yeah, fora, whatever) I visit there are doom and gloom inflation members, and for them there is only one possible cause of inflation; Democrats spending too much money.
guachi
April 2020 after a major drop in prices because of COVID, real hourly wages were up 7.8% YoY.
April 2021 with a booming economy and the April 2020 price drop off the books real wages were down 3.7%.
September 2021 and YoY wages are still down 0.8%.
In other words, actual drop in wages that’s slowly winding its way out. But the jobs created will still remain so that’s a definite plus.
Kristine
I follow economist Diane Swonk on Twitter. She explains things well. Seems to be more liberal given the tone of her explanations and concerns.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Just like “recession” means one thing to economists (two consecutive quarters of negative GDP, I think? IANAnE) and another thing to normies (my personal economy sucks, see also “deficit” in 1992), “inflation” means one thing to economists and business journalists (a formula involving a the varying retail prices of a basket of goods in different sectors and regions that may have long term consequences and yada yada yada) and something else to regular people, mostly, the picture you’re showing. The vast majority of Americans drive every day or close to it, and when you drive around, you see those numbers in big letters on big signs every few miles if not every few blocks, unless you’re out in the boonies (whether because that’s where you can afford to live based on what you make, or that’s where you choose to live so you can have five acres to ride your ATV around on) in which case you’re even more sensitive to it.
So Stephanie Ruehle or that smarmy aging frat boy at CNBC (Sorkin?), see a poll that says people are concerned about “inflation” and start talking about increasing wages and 1977, and the vicious media spiral goes on.
guachi
I’ll also add that the stock market is going crazy. I own about 25 individual stocks. My Nvidia stock went up 10% yesterday. The day before my Albertsons stock was up 10%. Nvidia makes and sells video cards and Albertsons sells food.
I know the market isn’t the economy but 5.6 million new jobs AND a booming market should be an easy sell to people.
Major Major Major Major
The thing is that core inflation excludes housing and food where prices are getting pretty wacky. And 3.5 or wherever we’ll end up for the year is still a lot higher than people are used to, even if the theyre wrong about an ideal target because they don’t understand Econ (but are nevertheless having a hard time affording meat). You can’t just tell them the prices they see are fake, or that their neighbor got a big raise so it’s ok.
lowtechcyclist
The irritating thing is, by any reasonable measure, the Dems have managed the economy much better AND much more prudently than the Republicans over the past 40 years. And they get exactly zero credit for that from the media.
Meanwhile, the Republicans, to use that old formulation, are neither the Mommy Party nor the Daddy Party, unless they’re the Drunk, Abusive, Unemployed Daddy whose family would be in better shape if he’d just go away and never come back.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major:
That goes to my first point. We’ll never make everyone economically happy all the time. We should at least the neighbor’s support.
Old Man Shadow
The owners of the media hate the idea of paying more in taxes and absolutely fucking hate the idea of having to pay the drones more.
Thus they are doing everything in their power to ensure that Republicans come back.
And the journalists who work for them are happy to do it because it all fits into their horse-race narrative of politics.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Major Major Major Major:
So then what are we supposed to tell them?
Baud
@Baud:
at least = at least get
zhena gogolia
@Old Man Shadow: And because they do as they’re told.
Matt McIrvin
Rising gasoline and food prices genuinely hurt people. I don’t like to make light of it.
But part of it is that many are looking for a repeat of the Carter administration whenever Democrats are in (note that Carter inherited stagflation from Nixon and Ford, but it’s Carter who gets it pinned on him today).
And libertarians in particular have this faith that evil fiat currency will inevitably lead to Zimbabwe-level hyperinflation and will bring it up over and over. I had a Rothbard-quoting friend who was fretting about hyperinflation during the post-2008 recovery. At one point he made a prediction that Paul Krugman would be calling for wage and price controls within the year.
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): well we can probably do better than this post, or having the Secretary of energy go on teevee to laugh at the person who asks her if Biden has a plan for gas prices. Sometimes it feels like Dems have the political instincts of a goldfish.
Anonymous At Work
Inflation is a leading indicator that eats at held wealth and eases debt. Hack economists serve those with inherited or held wealth/assets and fear inflation. Non-hack conservative economists believe in a quick business cycle so that leading indicators like inflation can and should be used to adjust interest rates because trailing indicators like unemployment will immediately, or shortly, catch up. Problem is that the downside of high inflation is relatively mild (held wealth depreciation) compared with the downside of high unemployment (dead people from despair, murders, neglect, health care, etc.).
The second reason for fetishization of inflation is that it is easier, by far, to measure than unemployment or GDP growth. Sure, there’s about a million ways to slice inflation but you build the models based on Price A at Time X vs. Price B at Time Y. People don’t report retiring to work side gigs at home, companies don’t really announce routine churn-and-burn, people have to apply for unemployment to show in those numbers, etc. And conservative economists love clean, mathematical models based on flesh-covered robots.
Kent
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): That pandemic-related supply chain problems are causing temporary price spikes. So do your part to bring the pandemic to an end. But that it doesn’t represent long-term inflation.
Villago Delenda Est
This is why the Village needs to be nuked from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Fair Economist
In addition to this month’s employment gains coming in well above expectations, both Sep and Aug numbers were revised up substantially, with an additional gain of 235,000. So 786,000 more jobs than we thought we had a month ago. An incredibly strong report. *And* this happened with a pandemic still underway, thanks to antivaxxers and their ReGermAgain friends. Come next spring, when Biden’s vax requirements are in force and the holiday wave is over, things are going to get nuts in a really good way.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist: Remember, the debt-ceiling bomb is still sitting there–the Republicans could just decide to torpedo the economy at any time by forcing a default.
Sure Lurkalot
During the Obama/Romney election cycle, Republicans had a bumper sticker aimed at high gas prices here in O&G country. Something like, “drill here, drill now, pay less.” A few years later, gas prices hovering around 2 and 1/2 bucks or so, “Aaaach! That’s almost less than it costs produce. Obummmer!”
Lyrebird
@Villago Delenda Est: Well I certainly don’t have your gift for phrasing, but I definitely do not know what is wrong… saw NBC in a restaurant yesterday, what was it?
Some chyron or something, or maybe the CC text, about Rand Paul and Fauci resuming their “rivalry”
WTAF.
Rivalry????
So Ayn Rand Paul wants to risk even more needless deaths in his own state because he is jealous that Fauci is a better man, a more impressive man, and a better public official than he will ever be? or what?
Another Scott
+1
The Fed went nuts in the late-70s/early-80s because they thought that one-time shocks caused by big step increases in oil prices (73-74, 79) would mean continued ever-increasing inflation rather than setting a new higher baseline for prices. The fact that the Fed found it impossible to hit their “2%” inflation target for decades afterwards shows that they really didn’t have control over it, other than being able to throw the economy into a recession when they thought unemployment was “too low”.
They’re slow learners, but Yellen and Powell seem to have actually figured it out that both their statutory requirements – maximum employment and stable prices – are actually important.
Progress!
Labor being strangled for decades (and consequent lack of COLAs) is a factor too. That is finally changing, also too.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
Too many people, even those too young to have been aware of the ‘70s stagflation at the time, have absorbed the idea that all inflation is always bad. Some inflation is necessary for an economy to grow.
Another Scott
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s also necessary to get money circulating from those who are hoarding it. Interest rates on savings being 0.05% and 30 year mortgages being less than 3% shows that there isn’t enough inflation now.
“I better do something productive with my money or inflation will eat it all!” needs to be a thing.
Cheers,
Scott.
Fair Economist
@Matt McIrvin: The debt bomb won’t go off in December – with a choice between nuking the filibuster and causing an economic crash, Manchin and Sinema will nuke the filibuster. Which is why McConnell won’t force it and will look for another delay.
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Scott: Yep, low inflation creates as a many problems as high inflation. The Great Depression was a deflationary period.
Kent
Only if Manchin and Sinema decide to let them.
WhatsMyNym
The financial markets are upset at the Bank of England today (BOE) —
ETA: from Bloomberg (n/a to link)
Barry
“Also, I really do not understand the fetish with inflation. ”
Wage increases for the bottom 90%.
zhena gogolia
I found this interesting.
Baud
Gas prices over time adjusted for inflation (through August). Scroll down for chart.
WhatsMyNym
Welcome to Japan!
Major Major Major Major
@WhatsMyNym: We really did get incredibly lucky that Bernanke was literally an expert on NOT doing what Japan did for their Lost Decade, and that future Fed chairs have been of the same mind.
surfk9
The ten year bond is currently at 1.43. Last month it was at 1.53. I don’t think the professionals in the bond market see crippling inflation ahead.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist:
Or, one or the other could choose to bring that crash, announce “the party left me” and be the keynote speaker at the 2024 Republican Convention.
Ksmiami
Democratic Party is better on the economy and actually the reason for a bit of inflation is not just the pandemic economy rising from a coma but tbh we had a deflationary environment with low growth under Trump so prices were artificially cheap.
Suzanne
This does sound like good news.
In shitty news, COVID here is climbing, not falling.
Baud
@Ksmiami:
An economy, if you can keep it.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Winter wave.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: depends on the place. Booming in eg Colorado but down most places. I’ll be going there for Thanksgiving so I’m glad I got my booster yesterday!
I’d be curious to know how many people are even left to infect. At some point it’ll all be breakthroughs.
dave319
@lowtechcyclist: GOP loudspeaker: in-house propaganda network with baked in cable bundling advantages ensuring millions of viewers, owned and controlled by a foreign national. Democrats’ loudspeaker: Oliver Twist to legacy media’s Fagin–“Please, sir, can I have some more?””What? Why, you sissy little piss-ant! Nothing for you!”
topclimber
Gotta love the cnn formulation that the October results were only the first month since July to beat the consensus!
That would mean August and September were below consensus and October not.
Glad we turned around that HUGE two-month trend! Particularly last quarter’s numbers probably will be revised, amirite? Gee, maybe the village ought to look at the bigger trend, or even just YTD.
H/T Fair Economist, #41.
Betty Cracker
Two pieces of discouraging news for Florida Democrats:
Can’t really blame DGA, as the state-level party has been a fucking basket case for more than two decades and shows ZERO, and I mean absolutely ZERO, capacity for change or inclination to adopt a strategy beyond “pay consultants lots for bad advice and then lose.” Again.
Old Man Shadow
Also, don’t you know how this is supposed to work? There is never good news.
We’re not supposed to feel good or optimistic. Only the utter darkness of the howling void of despair and misery or emptiness within.
EmDeeBee
@Anonymous At Work nailed it:
Bingo. Wages have to rise (somewhat) with inflation or you get the French Revolution. So while your $2 gallon of milk now costs $4, it still takes roughly the same part of your budget. But the $2000 you owe your bank is now the cost of 500 gallons of milk instead of 1000. And the guy worth $2 billion can now only buy half what he could before.
Ergo, rich people and lenders hate inflation. Someone else mentioned how the Great Depression was a deflationary period. Think about how vehemently the rich fought against FDR, up to and including the Business Plot.
Another Scott
@Fair Economist: Agreed. I continue to think that we’re on our way to a new “Roaring 20s”. I’ve been regularly putting a little in a Vanguard S&P500 fund for a few months now. I won’t be in the poor house if it goes down, but I expect excellent gains over the next 5 years+.
(Standard Disclaimer!)
Cheers,
Scott.
topclimber
@topclimber:
#21 FFS
Enhanced Voting Techniques
That’s not just the pandemic. Work we’re having problems with the getting stuff because of China’s electricity shortage. Aluminium takes electricity and is used in a lot of stuff.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: The silver lining in the DGA cloud is that Val Demings’ campaign is still raising a lot of money. The voters she will bring to the polls will vote for the Democratic nominee for Governor. And while that candidate will not have the DGA money, I suspect he or she will do well with small donations from negatively partisan Democrats nationwide who hate DeSantis’ guts.
Roger Moore
I think there are several things going on:
Ken
@WhatsMyNym: You see that a lot in financial reporting, except instead of the Bank of England it’s “Company X’s stock down sharply after failing to meet analysts’ expectations”. It’s always reported as if X was the problem, and not the analysts who made the wrong predictions.
Ken
“Gee that news I just heard was depressing, I’m glad they broke for a commercial. The people in the commercial look happy. Maybe if I buy that product, it will fill my howling void of despair.”
Kent
@EmDeeBee: I don’t think it is accurate to say that rich people hate inflation. Conservative rich people who hold their wealth in fixed income securities like say muni bonds certainly hate inflation. But more ordinarily wealthy folks who hold their wealth in things like real estate and the stock market don’t necessarily lose during periods of inflation. If you are rich you can win in any economic environment.
During a period of inflation if you are wealthy, you can buy a $10 million Manhattan condo with 10% down and then 5-10 years later sell it for $20 million, all while only investing $1 million of your own money.
Who gets hurt by inflation are the rich little old ladies who have several million invested in bonds that pay out a fixed dividend year-in and year-out, all while seeing the value of those dividends decline over time while everything else gets more expensive. But they are not super rich, just old and wealthy.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Betty Cracker: Kind of hard to make gains against this kind of mentality.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/republican-primary-winner-ex-felon-183457535.html
A criminal who ran on a get tough of crime platform, and won the GOP primary.
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes. And the <2% inflation we’ve had for the past 10+ years is a lot closer to the dangers from low inflation than it is to the dangers from high inflation.
Glory b
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: As I understand it, isn’t some level of inflation to be expected in a dynamic economy?
DCrefugee
There’s your problem
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Inflation is the boogey man they pull out whenever it’s useful. By which I mean whenever Dems are in office.
Feathers
The MOTU (Masters of the Universe, for those who don’t remember the 80s) hate inflation because they currently have built a business model that counts on money being essentially free. When there is inflation it isn’t.
Also, lots of people these days don’t really know what inflation is, so it can be made scary. When I worked at the business school, they hired a new faculty assistant. Professor so happy because she had undergrad and master’s from Ivies. (This was during the Great Recession.) Then, about a week in, she asked him what inflation was. She had no idea. He was stunned. She didn’t last long. (Got caught giving herself an inflated job title on LinkedIn.)
Baud
Breaking: Due to inflation, President Biden has ordered that clocks be turned back two hours this weekend. Sleep well, America.
Roger Moore
@Another Scott:
We’ve had a roaring stock market since it was clear the global financial crisis was over. Yeah, there have been a few hiccups along the way, but stock market indices are at 4-5x what they were in late 2009. People who were able to put their money in the stock market back then have been handsomely rewarded for their good fortune.
Ken
@Feathers: Reminds me of this classic Foxtrot.
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: So people have decided they like the cut of DeSantis’ jib and are turning Republican? That’s…disturbing.
Ken
@Baud: I think we had a thread a few months back where we decided that was technically and legally possible? Something about Pete Buttigieg, as Transportation Secretary, being able to set the time zones.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: Good point! Demings’ haul last quarter was very promising. I can’t blame the national orgs for not pouring money down the Florida rathole until the state party proves it can get the job done. If Demings manages to knock of Lil’ Marco, that would be a statement.
Still, it scares the shit out of me to think about DeSantis as the GOP nominee for president because that would mean he had a less than zero chance of winning. If he did, we might rue the day we didn’t give it our best shot to stop him at the state level. He is an evil motherfucker. Worse than Trump.
Leto
@Betty Cracker: Ah, another state abandoned in the 50 state strategy. I hope some of the BJ posters yell at them for “giving up”. That should also be an effective strat.
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: the number of criminals and Jan 6th insurrectionists who won seats to office this cycle… pretty damn high.
Fair Economist
@Glory b:
Yes; many papers on that, like this one (which is arguing for price targeting).
Roger Moore
@Kent:
I think the best summary is that rising inflation is good for debtors, bad for creditors. The key there is “rising” rather than “high”. Most debt has inflation priced into it, so inflation doesn’t favor one over the other. But inflation that’s higher than people expected is good for debtors and bad for creditors because it eats into principal. ETA: The reverse effect also happens, but it’s reduced by the ability of debtors to refinance to lower their interest rate.
It’s also true that the combination of inflation and capital gains taxes is bad for rich people. The real interest rate needs to be higher than the real inflation rate just to break even because capital gains taxes treat inflation on the principal as income. In effect, the combination serves as a kind of wealth tax. The erosion of that wealth tax, both by decreased inflation and decreased capital gains taxes, has helped the wealthy to grow their hoards.
topclimber
@Baud: There are also rumors that our public schools are teaching about economics (well, not much, TBH). It’s a bigger leftie plot than CRT.
Geminid
@Cameron: These may not be voters turning Republican. They may be new voters that the party is industriosly registering. Other information on the voting rolls may tell the tale.
Soprano2
I think part of this is that raises that should have been done gradually over at least 5 years are happening all at once in a year. Prices are trying to keep up. I swear, too many people thought wages could go up $2-3/hr or more all at once but all the stuff they buy would stay the same price. I’m sorry, but when WalMart raises their wages $2/hr their prices will have to go up some. Same way with all those restaurants y’all like to slag on – when you have to go from paying $9/hr to $15/hr, prices have to go up! You can’t get around that.
I remember my mother talking about the big raises she got every year in the late ’70’s – early 80’s. They were getting 10% COLAs every year at GE. It was not a good time.
brendancalling
“It really does feel like whenever a Democrat is President the narrative is always “Heads I win, Tails you lose.””
This is why I no longer watch television news, turned off NPR/PBS, and take a grain of salt with what I read in the newspapers. I take particular pleasure in saying “no” to NPR, because it gives me a chance to remind them that, all things considered, they used to be pretty good. And yes that awful pun was on purpose.
Betty Cracker
@Cameron: I think it’s more a matter of FL Reps investing in voter registration drives while passing laws that hamper groups like the League of Women Voters that Democrats used to depend on. We’ve been losing ground for nearly a decade.
Eduardo
@Leto:
Florida Democrats stood up to support Cuba protests. 40 of their colleagues disagreed
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article255540091.html
No further comments
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Florida Dems need a party-building czar!
Roger Moore
@Geminid:
It’s also possible these are the numbers catching up to where people actually are. A fair number of people stick with their old voter registration even as their real world voting preference has changed. Pushing people to reregister with their real affiliation would make the numbers shift without necessarily changing the votes.
Soprano2
@zhena gogolia: I made the point on the 1A FB page today that they’re characterizing Murphy’s win as a “squeaker”, while saying McAuliffe’s loss was an indication of big trouble for Democrats. It could end up that the margins of these two races won’t be that much different, but the press will never tell you that. They’ve got their narrative about the election and by God, they’ll stick to it no matter what!
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: The votes for Senate and Governor should track pretty closely. But if this one is as close as some recent Florida contests, it’s possible that one Democratic candidate could win and the other lose.
From my lofty perch 800 miles away, it seems to me that Nikki Fried could be a dynamic candidate for Governor. She seems to have pizzazz. But I might just feel this way because I’m a guy.
Soprano2
@WhatsMyNym: I find things like that fascinating. I always point out to my husband, when he talks about gas being $0.20 when he was young, that people always remember those prices but never remember how much money they were making! When you’re making $1.20/hr that .$0.20/gal gas wasn’t cheap.
Burnspbesq
@guachi:
There are stocks across all sectors going bat-guano crazy. My favorite (because I’m both a shareholder and a customer) is Dexcom, the manufacturer of continuous glucose monitoring systems. I bought at around $280 right before the pandemic. It closed at around $630 yesterday.
Soprano2
@Major Major Major Major: No, because people who aren’t vaccinated and got Covid can be re-infected as soon as 3 months later according to some studies. I think it’ll mostly be those people getting it over and over.
Leto
@Eduardo: not sure why they voted against it as the article doesn’t talk about that. But from Betty’s Tampa Bay Times article:
I also saw a tweet by AOC talking about how disinformation via social media is much more prevalent in the Latino community, and basically no fact checking is done there. I’ve also listened to some reports talking about the same thing. Then there’s also the fact that a number of radio stations in FL were bought up during the run up to the 2020 election and just dumped massive amounts of disinformation into the community. Basically just a ton of things going on here and it always seem like we’re playing behind the 64 ball.
catclub
I think the fear of inflation is totally a rich person problem.
IN 1923 Weimar Germany had hyperinflation, so rich people who owned loans – banks?
were ruined by this. Nonetheless, the economy recovered in a few years, it was no worse than other European economies by 1929.
In 1933 there was 47% unemployment, deflation, and they got Hitler. Unfortunately the lesson learned from these two events – as evidenced by german treasury ministers is: Inflation is bad, avoid it at all costs.
don’t worry too much about unemployment.
which kind of seems like the wrong lesson.
Burnspbesq
If gasoline prices are freaking you out, go electric. Not all electrics are north of $40k; you can get a totally reliable Nissan Leaf for as little as $28k.
Yes, I am fanboi. My VW ID.4 is the best car I’ve ever owned that wasn’t a Porsche.
Kalakal
@EmDeeBee:
There’s a lot in that, moderate inflation is great at reducing fixed debt like mortgages, while racking up property values. However people notice gas and food increases far more than the relative cost of servicing debt, espescially in the short term.
At the moment there’s a crazy amount of money looking for a home which is why the very wealthy are running around buying crap like NFTs
Soprano2
Yep, as I said in another thread my first loan for a used car had an interest rate of 16%. Can you younger people even wrap your minds around how much in interest I had to pay just to have a decent car? My husband had to sell his 4 print shops in 1980 because he needed to expand but couldn’t borrow any money because interest rates on loans were as high as 21%! You’d be traumatized too…..
topclimber
@Geminid: It also helps when thousands of probable dems or at least poor folk don’t get the voting rights restoration that Florida voters backed quite nicely a few years back.
Seems you need to pay back all the nuisance fines in your live even though the state has not clue what they all are. Every jerkwater municipality has to be contacted, if I am correct.
Burnspbesq
@Villago Delenda Est:
Too much risk of collateral damage. How about targeted drone strikes?
Soprano2
@Roger Moore: I’ve always said I wish I’d had $10,000 to invest in the stock market in 2009. So many stocks were at such amazing low points – Citibank stock was $1.00 at one point, Bank of America was at $3.50! Today Citigroup stock is $67.13, Bank of America is $46.82.
Soprano2
@Burnspbesq: I can understand that, my husband got one of those systems and he LOVES it. No more fingersticking! He can measure his blood sugar 100 times a day if he wants to, and get a better handle on how to manage it.
Leto
@Soprano2:
Considering how the starting rate for most first time military buyers is around 21%, you got fucking lucky. We actively tell our people to avoid used car lots anywhere within a 50 mile radius of a base, yet our people still need transportation. Young people are hyper aware of this.
Betty Cracker
@Leto: My guess is those who voted against the resolution did so to express opposition to empty symbolism as a substitute for policy changes that might have an effect on Cuba. Easy for them to do from other states. In Florida, most if not all Democrats reflexively condemn the regime along with the wingnuts because they’re afraid of backlash.
Sometimes I wish one of them would have the courage to say, “We all agree the regime in Cuba sucks, but it’s certainly no worse than our ‘ally’ Saudi Arabia, which contributed the majority of the 9/11 hijackers and still executes people for sorcery. Let’s try something other than doubling down on an embargo that has failed to move the needle for longer than most of us have been alive.”
Anyone who would find that disqualifying was already going to vote Republican no matter what.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: And until the last part of that period, you couldn’t even take out a bank savings account that would get YOU some of that sweet sweet high interest, so people had no good way to hedge their savings against inflation–which drove them to spend it on stuff they couldn’t afford, driving up prices further.
Then, in the late 70s-early 80s, it started to become possible to save with a high return, and some economists think that contributed to breaking the spiral. Of course it also contributed to a recession by cooling everything down for a while.
Eduardo
@Leto: the resolution is here if anybody wants to check what is that they were voting against: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-resolution/760/text
I read something that really hit me about politics being the art of managing salience, importance and principles. You may take a BS position if something is salient, not important and not against your principles, for example.
Of course it is not always easy to determine how salient and important something is — not to talk how hard can be to weight the 3 variables.
This case though should be as easy as they come — unless, as Sanders said, you don’t know what is so bad about the Cuban regime. The resolution was even written by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, is not important and wasn’t going to be salient if the whole House except your couple of oddballs voted in unison. It seems though that for those 40 –AOC included– it was a matter of principle. And now — trust me on this one — is going to be important.
New Deal democrat
Ok this is something I know a lot about.
Not only did we add over half a million jobs added in October, but August and September were revised up by almost 250,000. In the past 6 months, the average jobs gain has been 655,000 per month.
The inflation front is not so sanguine. Wages for non-managerial workers are up 5.8% year over year, but inflation is up 5.4%. So real wages are just barely positive. Families got their real boost from the March stimulus and the child care tax credit.since then real income is flat to slightly down.
eversor
I grew up in the DC area in all the zipcodes “the village” folks live in. The painful reality as while all of them are socially liberal they are vastly more right wing economically than most want to admit. Most them of the are Democrats as well. So the entire thing is always “let’s have gay marriage and cut social security” with a side of “I’m pro choice but medicare costs too much” and this goes through EVERYTHING there.
The issue is if you have a political party of nice urban and suburban social liberals it’s main priority and mission is going to be curb stomping anything that could help the bottom 20% of the population at all costs. Because that crowd is even more status crazed than the billionaires. I live in those zip codes and in that crowd still though on the lower end of it. I look straight over the river from my window into Georgetown. And I can say that any sort of policy that helped the “lower class” compete with their kids would cause a wine mom and tiger mom riot that would shred the party in two and might even put Jan 6 to shame.
So Semanchin, they are covering for all the reps and senators that represent those zipcodes and the party and taking the heat and everyone knows it. And all the “how will you pay for it, the deficit, inflation” is to prevent the condos and townhouses (it’s not just gated communities) from emptying.
And they don’t see this as a problem. Because they all check all the right boxes on social issues and are very active there. But the moment anything passed that just might cause more competition for their slot in life or their kids, look out because the fur is going to fly.
Roger Moore
@catclub:
It wasn’t just that the economy recovered magically. They were basically able to roll back the inflation and restore the debts to where they had been before the big inflation. So it was scary and caused a lot of temporary dislocation, but it didn’t actually save debtors or ruin creditors.
Geminid
@catclub: One thing that should be noted about the German hyperinflation of the 1920’s was that it was at least in part intentioned by the government. Germany needed to get out from under the onerous reparations imposed by the Versailles peace treaty. Inflating the mark was a way to do this. At least, that is my understanding.
Geminid
@New Deal democrat: Do you think that level of inflation will persist very far into next year?
Hoodie
@Roger Moore: People buy into bullshit narratives. I came of age during that period and don’t recall being particularly traumatized by it, it paled in comparison to what my parents went through in the Depression. There is a whole mythology built up about that period due to decades of crappy media blowing it out of proportion and Republicans wanting to create a narrative that Reagan was the second coming. He was an incompetent jackass. The most traumatizing things were gas shortages and Pinto fires, and neither lasted very long. Volcker was already reining in inflation when Carter was president. Colleges were cheap in real terms compared to today. Housing was pretty inexpensive except in the usual places (CA and NY). Wages were pretty good, union carpenters were making $17/hr in Atlanta, I made $10/hr as a nonunion apprentice electrician. The worst thing about the 80’s was the GOP and corporate destruction of unions and the wage effects of that over the next few decades.
Roger Moore
@Soprano2:
I didn’t have a lot to invest in 2009, or at least I was keeping a lot of the money I had to invest for a down payment on a house. I had wanted to buy a house starting in the mid 2000s, but I could see the market was crazy and didn’t want to buy into a bubble. After the bubble popped- and I kept my job- I figured it was time to buy. That seems to have been a good choice.
That said, I had some stock I had bought before, and I decided it was better to ride the crash out. My stock tanked, but it bounced back quickly enough that I think the decision not to sell was justified. Maybe I could have done better by trying to time the crash, but I did well enough that I’m not going to complain.
Geminid
@Burnspbesq: The BBB bill, if they can ever pass the damn thing, has extended tax credits for the purchase of new vehicles. The physical infrastructure package has a provision to build 700,000 charging stations ( as well as electrifying the school bus fleet, mass transit, and $60 billion for investment in passenger rail). These will help the clean energy transition in transportation once they really kick in.
Hoodie
Anyone notice how the media doesn’t give two shits about Afghanistan any more?
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: Gee, you think the Democrats might learn something from the Republicans? I know a couple years ago I was talking with some of the folks running the Manatee County Democratic Party, and they were convinced that things were going to swing their way soon. I went to the county supervisor of elections’ website and saw what a pipe dream that was.
I really like Florida, but if DeSantis represents what the voters think they want – or maybe actually do want – and the Democrats continue to be unable to find their own buttocks with both hands and a GPS, I’m thinking of going back to Philly. I guess I’ll see what happens next year before having a fit of the vapors.
Baud
@Geminid: Someday.
@Hoodie: I don’t watch much media these days, but I thought they were still talking about it in connection with Dem polling.
Hoodie
@Baud: That’s kind of the point. All they care about is horse race, not what is actually happening in Afghanistan.
Baud
@Hoodie: It wasn’t just inflation. The economy shrunk, there was a lot of bad stuff going on internationally, and (not to be forgotten), the right-wing rage machine over culture finally came together.
Baud
@Hoodie: Oh, right. Of course, they never really cared about “Afghanistan” per se.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Matt McIrvin:
What, nobody remembers the WIN buttons(Whip Inflation Now)? Zombie Jerry Ford is having a sad.
Cameron
@Geminid: Whatever the case, I find it puzzling. It’s not like the Republicans have done some great job running things here. They seem to be hell of a lot better at attracting voters than doing anything productive in governance.
taumaturgo
@Hoodie: This was all before Reagan and then the Democrats bought into the idea of handing over to corporate power the legislative power they once had, for the correct bribe amount. Today, the R & D duopoly fight each other to show the real owners who would be more compliant and subservient. As I have said several times and the BBB stripped-down bill screams this, nothing is approved in congress w/o the approval of the corporate overlords.
Eduardo
@Betty Cracker: The resolution was about supporting the right of the Cuban people to protest a regime that has made mass protesting a one-day-in-more-than-a-half-century event. Some things are just black and white.
The 40 can come up with a bill ending the embargo is that is what their issue is.
Tony Gerace
Yes, I agree. I am a retired old geezer (the type of person who, in the inflation-ooga-booga narrative, should be frightened of inflation) — and the mild inflation that’s going on now doesn’t bother me at all. I’m happy that my sons are employed in not-too-bad jobs and I’m happy when other young people are not unemployed. For what it’s worth, the high inflation (but nowhere close to real Weimar Republic style hyperinflation) of the 70’s didn’t bother me much when I was a teenager and young working guy. Prices went up. So what, as long as wages more or less kept pace? I’ve always been of the opinion that mild inflation is a rich person’s concern, whereas high unemployment is a disaster for the rest of us. My father had been young during the deflation and crushing unemployment of the 1930’s, so I guess I inherited that point of view from him.
Betty Cracker
@Eduardo: How about not taking a BS position at all? Seems like that might be an option to consider.
Soprano2
@Leto: But I bought from a new car lot and got a loan through a bank! None of that “buy here pay here” crap, this is the loan you’d get from the Honda dealership’s used car side.
Cameron
@topclimber: And the cherry on top of that particular sundae is that some of these municipalities claim their records are unreliable or nonexistent. A perfect way of keeping somebody from registering to vote by making them terrified of getting busted for fraud over a debt they didn’t know they had.
Hoodie
@Baud: Yep, the stuff that sucked in the 70’s and 80’s was middle east violence (that’s still going on), the legacy of a pointless war in Viet Nam (now we have the end to Iraq and Afghanistan and their legacy costs), racial strife (still kicking) etc. Thus, there really was nothing particularly more traumatic about the 70’s and 80’s compared to the 00’s and the 10’s. In fact, now we have existential problems like GCC. Different decades, world still sucks. The most respite we got was in the 90’s when Goodtime Bill was in charge, and we still had crap going on then. Point being that stuff like saying people were particularly traumatized by coming of age in a particular era kind of depend on which people you’re talking about and what you mean by trauma. Having to pay a bit more for a gallon of milk is not necessarily traumatic. 70’s US was not like the Weimar Republic by any stretch of the imagination.
Leto
@Hoodie: regular MSM, sure; sites that actually give two shits about the military, such as Task and Purpose, are still covering Afghanistan and the aftermath. T&P, which receives pretty heavy traffic, receives no play here. Local news still talks about resettlement of Afghan refugees. WaPo had a story the other day about the humanitarian crisis that’s emerging, and the Taliban asking for the unfreezing of funds from US banks.
I’d ask the olds here how much detailed coverage did the fall of Saigon garner after the last evacuation occurred? US evacuated 130k Afghans, 140K Vietnamese. How much time did the media spend going over everything after that?
Major Major Major Major
@Soprano2:
Which I’m including as a ‘breakthrough’ in my comment
New Deal democrat
@Geminid: I do not think inflation will persist, partly because the supply chain issues will gradually be worked out*, and partly because there won’t be the continued income growth to demand it. With one important caveat: house prices are up 20% YoY, and if that finds its way into rent increases, then “owners equivalent rent,” which is 1/3rd of the entire CPI, will shoot up too.
*shipping prices and industrial metals prices have already peaked, and oil (not gas yet) may have peaked 2 weeks ago.
Major Major Major Major
@Leto: Misinformation on Latino WhatsApp didn’t make 40 House Dems decide to further alienate the Cuban population. Again: we have the political instincts of a goldfish.
Soprano2
@Hoodie: I guess you didn’t drive through Oklahoma on June 29th in 1979 and see that there were NO gas stations open. NONE. (Strangely enough, as soon as we hit the Texas border, there was gas again!) I’m sure you’re right that it wasn’t as traumatizing as the Great Depression, but neither was the 2008 recession, and yet we call it the Great Recession. It was not a good period economically no matter how you slice it.
Leto
@Soprano2: Oh, you’re wanting a bank. As a first time new car buyer at the age of 18 with no employment record? Ok, here’s this. Head over to USAA, bank expressly setup by service members/for service members, and look at their loan rates. Looks fucking amazing doesn’t it? 1.84% for cars newer than 2020? 2.79% for cars 2014-2019. Look at all the addendums after that. Ask me what the quoted interest rate was for a brand new Airmen (hell, we’ll give them 2 years of college so they start at E3), and then let me refer you back to my original post. The 1.84% is for people like me. That’s not the 18-21 demographic. Again, the kids are hyperfucking aware of how shit this system is and how powerless they feel. But we tell them, “You live in America where infrastructure, outside of a few major cities, absolutely sucks balls. You need to purchase these things in order to do anything.” Auto companies, banks, and insurance complies know all this and charge accordingly.
Soprano2
You made the right decision. Most people sell when it goes low because they panic, and buy when it’s high because everyone else is buying. It’s kind of like that right now.
Soprano2
@Hoodie: I was just thinking about that this morning. LOL
Baud
@Major Major Major Major:
I do wish that worked the other way. I’m trying to recall the last Republican was punished for what other Republicans in other states and districts did.
Leto
@Major Major Major Major: Nope, but that vote occurred after the 2020 elections. Jul 2021. The disinformation system prevalent in Latino communities is already up and pumping shit out at break neck pace, and has been for at least the past 18 months. That’s not even taking into account social media. I’m sure this’ll be fed into the puke funnel but as always, we’ll have more outrages between now and 2022. Between now and then: are we doing anything to combat AM/FM radio messaging? Doing anything to make Fuckerberg put in more Spanish language fact checkers to debunk this bullshit? How about on any of the other Fuckbook controlled platforms? Anything else? We definitely need to work on our messaging, but just like everything else, we’re being killed via the GQP media arm taking over every available platform.
Soprano2
@Leto: Sure, but I had a co-signer for my loan. I know that new buyer loans are more expensive, but under the conditions you cite today a loan in 1983 probably would have had an interest rate of 30% or more. The gold standard loans were charging around 10%. I was 23 and had a full-time job.
taumaturgo
@Cameron: Corporate Democrats attack corporate Republicans and they attack each other not to protect the working class, but to show how subservient they are to corporate power. They become bipartisan when they take turns attacking the left, which is more despicable coming from your own team. Ironic how the only hope to preserve Biden’s BBB rest on the shoulders of the only political group that’s pro-working class, for justice and equality. One thing is sure, if Biden’s agenda comes crashing down due to corrupt democrats once again cowardly betraying the base, the blame finger will be pointed at the left.
Betty Cracker
@Major Major Major Major: You know who has the political instincts of a goldfish? Debbie Wasserman Schultz. She did a shitty job as DNC chair, and she’s still scattering rakes for Democrats to step on in the name of one-sided solidarity with South FL GOP colleagues. Because that’s what this was — Republicans using Schultz to generate anti-Dem material.
Soprano2
@Leto: The Obama boys on Pod Save America were lamenting that some right-winger paid $300,000 for an AM radio station in Florida and wondering why some Democrat didn’t do that.
Roger Moore
@Hoodie:
I won’t argue that everyone who grew up during the ’70s and ’80s was traumatized by the inflation. My parents actually did really well by it, since they took out a mortgage in the late ’60s. But there were clearly people who suffered from the stagflation and will always be looking over their shoulders waiting for the next round to hit. You may be right, and some of that may be because the right wing has deliberately blown the situation out of proportion, but the people who bought the Republican version of events are still freaked out about it and will still freak out at the slightest hint of inflation.
Matt McIrvin
@eversor:
In Massachusetts, these are the tech people with advanced degrees who mostly vote for Democrats, but see “bipartisanship” as a virtue and are kind of itching to support a Charlie Baker Republican type whenever he pops up. And a lot of it is that they really don’t like taxes.
They see themselves as representing the vast American center but they’re not–they’re a small elite and they don’t really realize it.
RaflW
“Republicans are the party of business” is absolutely not borne out by decades of data. But it is probably one of the most pernicious zombie ideas that is absolutely baked into virtually all political and business reporting in this country.
Trump was a fucking disaster for the economy. And the recovery act passed just after Biden’s inauguration is absolutely playing a role in the boom, as is his competent roll out of mass vaccination. But it is utterly against the unwritten roolz that the press give him credit for this. So we have recent polling that voters still ‘trust the gop more’ on business. Its god damned malpractice. But I have zero hope that it will ever change.
Our media is very rigid in this false notion.
Cameron
@taumaturgo: I don’t think you can get much more of a disconnect between politicians and public than with BBB. Polling shows it’s insanely popular, even with self-identified Republicans, yet it’s proving far more difficult to get a bill (even one that’s been slashed several times) passed than that polling should indicate.
catclub
@Burnspbesq: Used ones were much cheaper. Not sure if there are still used ones available.
Geminid
@New Deal democrat: Thanks. That’s kind of what I thought. But my economics knowledge base is pretty average.
Matt McIrvin
@RaflW: Republicans absolutely are the party of short-term prizes for business. They could be shafting themselves past the current quarter but most of them are not going to see that or believe cause and effect when it happens.
It’s like the way that Republican small-business owners mostly see their employees as greedy, lazy leeches trying to bleed them dry, and not as the people who actually make the value they’re selling, or as the members of the public who buy their products. Pass laws that screw over workers nationwide, demand for goods and services goes down–who can say why?
Hoodie
@Soprano2: I was there. It sucked but, honestly, it lasted a relatively short time before we were on to the next set of problems. What I’m saying is that it’s ridiculous is to call that era “traumatizing” to the white folks who are now harping about a relatively modest amount of inflation and shortages due to supply chain disruptions mostly attributable to a global pandemic because of the supposed spectre of the bad old 70’s and 80’s, which were a kickass era in so many other ways. This is also insidious because it plays into the GOP narrative that somehow Reagan saved us from all that trauma. He didn’t do jack, the economy adjusted, OPEC fell apart, etc. The trauma is mostly in their heads. This is often because the MSM blows stuff like this up into global catastrophe in their endless pursuit of a storyline to sell, just like they did when Biden decided to pull the plug on the Afghanistan adventure. Now Afghanistan is an afterthought. In a couple weeks it will be something else. You don’t want to make policy based on the imagined crisis of the moment.
Geminid
@Cameron: Republicans may just be applying resources to register those new voters. I would be interested to know if they are using social media. They seem to be exploiting social media to their advantage, especiallly in Florida.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Burnspbesq: Keep in mind, electric doesn’t work for many folk(myself included), like folk who have to street park and may drive places that don’t have a recharging infrastructure.
Roger Moore
@Soprano2:
That’s more or less the way I felt in 2008. By the time I was seriously thinking about selling, all the really smart money had sold already. I figured a lot of the selling was from panic, and we now had a plan to right the ship. Stocks were as likely to rebound quickly as to continue falling, so selling would be a mistake. Again, I might have done better for myself by trying to time the market, but I did just fine. One of my big rules for investing is not to beat myself up over missed opportunities, and I will apply that to not successfully timing the market during the financial crisis.
Leto
@Soprano2: Good question, but I guess none of our people want to take on the full time money losing prospect of AM radio. We’re not out to grift people out of every penny they have, so…
@catclub: the used car market is basically bone dry. Had a neighbor who needed a newer used car as their 15 year old one finally gave up the ghost. This is probably the last vehicle they’re buying, but they had to go into the New York region, from the Philly region, to find something. Again another one of those buying patterns that was severely disrupted because of the pandemic.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
Here in California, the big issue is development. There are people who are socially liberal but will turn into the worst kind of NIMBY- actually what I’ve heard called BANANA for Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone- at the slightest suggestion that their neighborhood might support a slightly higher density than it currently does.
Roger Moore
@RaflW:
“Republicans are the party of business” really means that Republicans are the party of incumbent businesses that want to shut out the competition.
Cameron
@Geminid: This is one of the things that baffles me. It’s not like Republicans have a lock on social media in Florida or anywhere else. Yet my contact with the Florida Democrats is limited to emails I get from Manatee County Dems (and that’s only because I requested them) and candidate signs I see around election time.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
wow, apparently Aaron Rodgers is having (or had) a full-on meltdown. I’d been idly wondering if he’d keep that endorsement he has for I forget which insurance company, I doubt it can survive this
Eduardo
@Betty Cracker: First let me clarify that for me the resolution is not BS: Cubans on the island are planning protests on 11/15 and the government are openly showing groups of “Brigadas de Respuesta Rápida” in which their members appear with wooden sticks — plus they are doing all the beautiful things they always do. Think you know. So for the people in Cuba is very important to know they have support elsewhere even if it is symbolic. I was in the 80s in Cuba and still hate the Mitterrands guts: Francois’ and Danielle’s
But suppose you are a *democratic* socialist and think that hey, free Education and Heath, and, I don’t know, things are worse in Dominican Republic. You also may think —this time agreeing with me— that 2024 can bring some serious fascist winds to the US and that there is a big group in FL —not only Cubans— that may feel that you are rooting for the bad guys. Or at least not in their side. That’s 2024, but there is global warming etc. And you are a politician not a priest. So yeah, you go vote for the BS bill that will pass anyway. it is political malpractice not to do it.
Not for you in specific:I want people here to understand that I don’t want you to understand that Castrism is evil — foolish endeavor after 6 decades— but that is completely stupid alienate a group that keeps getting bigger — while you are not getting anybody else by antagonizing them
there is a Hugo Chavez in Peru’s presidency — I am more optimistic there cause there’s not one single dominant industry there that you can take over. But Peru is a big middle income country with a large high and middle high classes in absolute numbers. How many would make Florida home if they win?
Anyway
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Increasing or switching to EV doesn’t mean the end of ICE and existing infrastructure.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Hey look! some voter fraud! serial voter fraud!
Leto
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I was told Greg Abbott was paying good money for actual voter fraud. Wouldn’t get my hopes up as John Fetterman is still awaiting his Sheetz gift cards.
Cameron
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Sounds like a very Trumpy preview of what the good folk of Virginia can expect.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Anyway: Of course not, but my point is that going electric doesn’t work for everyone. BTW, I drive a Prius.
Geminid
@Leto: I think that liberals also tend to discount AM radio as “old media.” They and all their friends have moved on to podcasts and digital news. Of course, if you aggregated all the people who catch podcasts in a given area, it would be a small fraction of the people who hear the twice-hourly news on radio.
I have friends who get their information from podcasts and documentaries, and have no use for broadcast tv or radio news. I think of them as deeply informed, but not broadly informed. For instance, I have found that I know more about what goes on in their own town than they do, just by catching the local radio news during my drivetime. And I don’t even live there.
Hoodie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, he’s worse than Kyrie Irving. Got caught in a lie and now is doubling down. That always works.
Geminid
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Electric vehicles will work for more and more people as this decade goes on. But charging will be limiting factor, at least for a while.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: Not just a California problem. The new NY Governor had a twitter thread the other day about how she wants lower density IN MANHATTAN.
Roger Moore
@Hoodie:
It also sounds as if he’s claiming to be allergic to something in the mRNA vaccines. I suppose it’s possible, if extremely unlikely; they’re actually far less prone to producing allergic reactions than conventional vaccines are.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Geminid: True, and I noticed EV charging at one of the rest stops I use on my trips to the eastern Sierra last month(Fall Color).
Barry
@Sure Lurkalot: “During the Obama/Romney election cycle, Republicans had a bumper sticker aimed at high gas prices here in O&G country. Something like, “drill here, drill now, pay less.” A few years later, gas prices hovering around 2 and 1/2 bucks or so, “Aaaach! That’s almost less than it costs produce. Obummmer!”
These people spent years saying that tightening up on immigration would increase wages.
Now that wages are increasing, they are made at that.
Leto
@Geminid: back when I was still in the military, I got a ride to work a few times with a coworker. He was in his late 50s and basically kept it on AM all the time. I mean… it was just non-stop Trumpov puke funnel stuff. I did a quick search right now for AM radio market numbers and I saw an article from 2017 saying that 1-in-5 radio users listened to AM, approx 21% of the market. That’s still a really big number. I know sports news is still broadcast via AM, so if you have those listeners staying on… I think the only way to remove AM radio is to have radio manufacturers remove AM as an option, both car and home. Ajit Pai, the fuck weasel, had a plan to do that (phase out AM) but don’t know what the results of that were or how it’s being handled. But for the time being it’s still up and a fairly large disinformation system that’s running in parallel with Fox News as the two have a good bit of host crossover.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Was it State Farm he used to shill for?
wasn’t there some talk a few years ago that Rodgers was one of the rare left-leaning white NFLers?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Barry: Remember “Drill, baby, drill!”? I think that might actually have been coined by current MSNBC Dem-scold Michael Steele before it was picked up by The Dumb Lady
Leto
@Geminid: @?BillinGlendaleCA: that’s at least one of the good things in the BBB but it’s still going to take time to build those out. We also need to keep investing in it so that further rural areas aren’t left out (aka internet or anything nice in life). In my head I’m hoping it won’t be like the UK’s fiber infrastructure plan, but it probably will be. Ugh.
Hoodie
@Roger Moore: I’d bet dollars to donuts he’s not allergic to anything in the mRNA vaccines; that’s just more flailing, like “woke mob.” If anyone is acting like the caricatured “woke,” it’s the guy talking about his precious bodily autonomy like General Jack Ripper. He’s just another entitled rich white dude with a woo fiance who gets to indulge in nonsense like that.
Major Major Major Major
@Leto: Rural broadband is in the BIF. Probably my favorite part of it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Hoodie: I’d bet the woo fiancee didn’t get him talking about “woke mobs” and “the left was anti-vaccine until Biden was elected”. That’s a pre-existing condition.
Hoodie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: No doubt, she’s pretty lefty from what I understand, but there’s a chance that’s mostly a pose and she’ll come out as a closet Trumptard. Now he’s saying he’s taking treatment advice from Joe Rogan. I hope the Packers line just forgets to block for him.
artem1s
Inflation means the Fed may raise interest rates and the banks won’t get to borrow interest free anymore. Also, the stock market and housing boom bubble will pop and someone’s going to get stuck with a bunch of undervalued and underwater assets. The market has been overdue for a correction since before COVID. The banks know they don’t have the cash on hand to cover their liabilities, just like in 2008. Not sure if the fall will be as hard, but it’s long overdue and those multi-billionaires are going to lose their spots in the Fortune 500 listing – boohoo.
Roger Moore
@Hoodie:
I completely agree. He probably doesn’t know what’s in the mRNA vaccines but thinks they’re scary and has picked allergies as the reason not to take them. If he were really allergic to something, the first thing he would have done is to show the message from his doctor telling him not to take the vaccine because of his allergies, because that would have been effective at shutting up his critics.
Leto
@Major Major Major Major: what I’m referencing is the UK had a similar roll out plan. Ton of money to wire up the country with broadband. They skipped all the rural sections because it didn’t provide the return on investment, even though half the reason for the funding was to… wire up rural underserved sections of the country. Took another equal sized investment, and BT (British Telecom) not being involved, for the actual rural component to happen. (Reason I know most of the background on this is because I helped get my last base, Croughton, receive actual broadband internet after BT wouldn’t engage with us. Separate company, Gigaclear, came through the area, I went to the local town hall as the singular American rep, and was like, “Hey, what can you do for us?”. Future families there won’t have to decide: school work or streaming service?)
What I’m saying is that I hope the EV charging station investment won’t be like that, even though it probably will be. Incremental progress and all. If people see more charging stations around them, they’ll probably be more likely to make the switch as they won’t feel “stranded”. Agreed that the rural broadband component of BIF is great. We still need more, but again, incremental.
Eduardo
@Betty Cracker: I am going to agree with both Major and you. Plenty of goldfishing to go about.
DWS has something to win politically, yes: Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguan are anxiously awaiting to see what happens on 11/15 so this was an opportunity to tell the community that the Democrats also are with the Cuban people in the island. The Republicans do not need to do that. It is a given.
Her political malpractice is assuming that the principled 40 would not play with them. To her defense, I do not recall other time in which such a thing happened.
By the way, we are going to get many, many symbolic resolutions about Latin American dictatorships brought forward by the Republicans — and DWS and the other representatives in SF will have to cosponsor them. And there will be always a few dozen of dems voting against them. Joy!!!!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Roger Moore: also, that would not apply to the J&J, no?
Geminid
@Leto: Fleet vehicles, light trucks and some medium ones, are best positioned to go electric. UPS and Amazon are planning to convert to electric. UPS has plans to use hybrid vehicles for the longer routes. The same is expected for school buses in rural districts with long routes. The physical infrastructure bill includes plans to shift 20% of school buses to electric this decade. That’s one target I expect will be exceeded once people see the benefits of cleaner air for school kids.
Roger Moore
@Leto:
One thing that’s likely to help with charging infrastructure is mandates. ISTR that California was considering requiring every apartment with assigned parking to provide chargers at that parking space fed from the apartment’s meter, and condo associations with assigned parking to allow members to build their own. That won’t help everyone, but it will help a lot of people. I also expect existing gas stations to start providing paid charging stalls for people who can’t charge at home.
Geminid
@Leto: Broadband is badly needed in some urban areas like housing projects, as well as rural areas. The physical infrastructure bill should address both needs, and I’ve read that it does.
Major Major Major Major
@Leto: Ahh, gotcha. Yeah. My mom really wanted an electric car but then she rented one and realized she couldn’t go very far outside of Denver, and even the routes that did have chargers would have required her to take hours of downtime. It’ll take a while before they’re general-population general-use vehicles. Great for cities but without a rapid charging network…
Betty Cracker
@Eduardo: If the resolution was as simple as depicted in this thread, i.e., “we support the right of the Cuban people to peacefully protest on November 15,” then maybe signing it would be a no-brainer?
But we both know there’s a lot more to it than that, including baggage from decades-old arguments and provisions that invoke policy disagreements, e.g., the implication that the economic pain in Cuba is due solely to their shitty government and not exacerbated by U.S. policy that is propped up by cynical Republicans who need Cuba as a domestic political wedge.
Here’s where I see the political malpractice: she’s not stupid, so Debbie Wasserman Schultz had to know there would be House Dems who would vote against that resolution for whatever reason, and not all of them would be self-identified DSA people. If you KNOW that, then why do you allow yourself to be used as a tool to manufacture FL GOP talking points? Because that’s what she did.
I’m not sure it makes a difference anyway. Anyone who suspects a Democratic Party headed by Joe Biden is out to convert the U.S. into a Castro/Maduro-style socialist hellhole isn’t going to realize just fucking dumb and insane that idea is because House Dems back a symbolic resolution to support protests in Cuba. They already voted for Trump and DeSantis, so they’re apparently okay with fascism.
ETA: I wrote this before I saw your comment at #175; sounds like we mostly agree on DWS.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Wow, someone found a series of tweets were some Republicans were explaining to each other that they chose to target CRT because no one know what CRT was so the Republicans could imply CRT was whatever thing that frightened the person they were talking too.
Explains why it got their base out and why the independents and left was meh on it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: The hours of downtime is a big deal when I go out on shoots, even if charging stations were available. I have to jam as much into my trips as possible and can’t afford to have that downtime.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Christopher rufo? not that hard to find
Leto
@Geminid: Oh, def agree. I think all of those will help push the EV population forward quite a bit. Regarding broadband: agreed. Another section of underserved communities which absolutely need it. Include into those Native American reservations. A good number of those don’t qualify because their libraries aren’t designated as libraries (they’re qualified as like museums?), so they don’t qualify for those subsidies.
@Roger Moore: When we lived in the UK, they basically had charging stations almost everywhere. The medium sized village next to us, Banbury, had charging stations at their large scale parking garage which was connected to their shopping center. It was a four story garage with charging stations on each floor. Head over to Milton Keyes (larger), similar. Oxford? Same. Agreed with apartments and condos. The apartment we just moved out of, no charging spots for any of the 7 buildings. Def an issue. I think what’ll def push us forward is having charging stations at your shopping centers. Wal-Mart? Here’s 8 spots to start with. Grocery store? Another 8-10. Mall? Same. As far as gas stations, I think we really need to see charging stations at interstate gas stations. I think those are going to be the best places. Quick charge station, say 30 mins, connected with a nice place to eat/rest.
@Major Major Major Major: exactly. Burns recommeneded the Nissan Leaf, but if you read any of it’s reviews the first thing they tell you is to upgrade to the Leaf Plus just for the increased range. Regular Leaf is only 149 miles, while the Leaf Plus is 220 miles; which then also starts to put you closer to that $40k mark, which then sort of defeats the cheap EV angle
Edit: Something else with the Leaf is that apparently it has a funky charging adaptor? That’s something else that needs to be addressed: uniformity of charging adaptors/charging infrastructure.
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: It’s true! Joe Biden, cunningly manipulated by Bernie and AOC, wants to turn the country into a giant Gulag, like…Denmark! Or, or Finland! Oh, the humanity!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, that’s it. It sure does explain a lot. CRT was just this season’s Pizzagate.
Leto
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: @Jim, Foolish Literalist: MSNBC anchors from the 4-10pm slots have spoken about this for a few weeks now. Specifically how Rufo started this shit, and how it fits into the pre-existing rethuglican narrative.
Edit: also shows why eternal dunking on Douchehat is appropriate and warranted, every chance people get.
Matt McIrvin
@Leto: Right before Halloween there was a completely bogus terrorist threat against Northern Virginia shopping malls that caused a bunch of event cancellations and was widely blamed on Biden letting in Afghan refugees. It seems to have just been a fabricated email rumor.
WaterGirl
@Soprano2: The Obama bros have $$, why don’t they do that?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Leto: It what we were saying about over the Wingnut Event Horizon, them saying things outsiders don’t understand. I mean is it racism or pure paranoia? Does it really make a difference? Then Youngkin swans around occasionally uttering sympathetic noises so as not to offend the sane folks.
Leto
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: reading the article on WaPo about this:
Seriously, he can go fuck himself. Dead. GB is dead to me as long as he plays. JFC. Lies about it, apparently the NFL knew, his teammates knew… how to reveal yourself to be a gigantic piece of shit without actually saying you’re a gigantic piece of shit.
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
One of the smartest things Tesla did was to set up their network of charging stations to deal with the chicken and egg problem. It was a big up-front expense, but they never would have gotten where they are if they hadn’t been willing to eat expenses like that.
ETA: I think that kind of thing is where Elon Musk shows he’s actually smart. It doesn’t necessarily take a genius to recognize the problem, but it takes someone with confidence in the long-term success of his company to take on the solution he did. It’s easy to look at the stuff Tesla has done and say a lot of it is obvious, but until Musk came along nobody was willing to do it.
Kay
“Equity-inspired changes to K-12 education” = CRT
I’m collecting these. In 5 days we went from “CRT” to “not the textbook definition of CRT” to “CRT-Inspired” to “equity-inspired changes to K-12 education”
An “equity inspired change” to K-12 education could be everything from funding lower income districts at higher rates to free and reduced student lunches. This “woke” category expands by the hour. It now basically includes all K-12 federal civil rights laws. That’s all “wokeness”.
If “equity-inspired” is banned in US public schools there’s no point in having public schools. It’s the whole mission.
Baud
@Leto: I’m pretty sure he just said he’s a gigantic piece of shit.
Geminid
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Youngkin made CRT part of a larger issue of Government vs. Parental control of school children. And he sold his side effectively, both in advertising and retail politicking, not “swanning around.”
I said election night that I thought people were reading too much into a swing of 5 1/2 per cent of voters. I mean, people were talking about emigrating because of this! But it’s easy now for some to dismiss this as a simple story of the Con Man and the Rubes. That, I think, is reading too little into this election. Although it does make people feel good.
Kay
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
You have to keep up. They don’t oppose “CRT” per se. They oppose “equity-inspired changes to K-12 public schools”
If I were on a school board I’d quit right now. You could run afoul of the new regime handing out snacks. It’s a fucking deliberately seeded minefield. I’ve been reading it for months and I have no idea what’s allowed and what’s not allowed and I was on a public school council for 3 years! I’ve heard all these discussions before!
Burnspbesq
@taumaturgo:
Do you actually believe the bullshit you spout here?
Put another way, are you a troll or a lunatic?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Burnspbesq: it’s like a parody of a 20 YO leftist Norman Lear wrote for one of his early 70s sitcoms, isn’t it?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Leto: IIANM, Rogan and Rodgers also both said they got the monoclonal antibodies (did I spell that right?) that for some reason aren’t part of Dr Fauci’s Evil Leftist Pharma plot. Or something.
Kay
We stopped rigid “tracking” of middle school students in my rural Ohio (and conservative) public school in 1993.
So don’t let these sloppy and lazy “public intellectuals” fool you. The “tracking” question is not new. It’s not “woke”. It was pre-woke. Its been going on since the 1960s.
And in normal (not insanely wealthy) public school districts “gifted and talented” can include 25% of the students. It’s not that selective. Everyone knows it’s not that selective. It isn’t prestigious or prized. You get an email that your child is in the group and then there’s an annual meeting on whether they are being “challenged”. What it mostly means is they’ll take AP courses in high school, but it’s not required to take an AP course and lower income districts don’t have that many AP courses anyway.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Would Congresswoman Schultz have put this resolution on the floor without the aquiescence of Speaker Pelosi and caucus leadership? I don’t know, and I need to try and find out. But this may be more than Schultz working here.
Burnspbesq
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I’ll be in SoCal with my ID.4 in December? Wanna go for a tour of the dozens of chargers in your neck of the woods? So Cal has infrastructure that most parts of the country can only dream of for now.
Burnspbesq
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I have a nephew who was a hard-core Berniac in 2016, but this guy is so far beyond that you can’t even see it from there.
Peale
@Major Major Major Major: IDK. It Maxine Waters and Jerry Nadler were also “Nay” votes, and the latter is hardly a young, woke member of the squad. But it does seem rather stupid for the Dems to be seen to vote against supporting the right to protest against conditions in Cuba. Its not like its “If Cuba cracks down on those protesters, we give permission to Joe Biden to send in the Marines to restore order.”
Peale
@Kay: In New York City, they cancelled their “gifted and talented program” this year to replace it with something broader. Because I was a gifted and talented program kid in my Midwest school, I was initially taken aback. When the issue gets explained, I’m actually fine with the replacement idea. New York City’s GT program started way too early and was based on a test given to 4-5 year olds. And yeah, excluding kids from the program that young is a problem.
That said, what I’d like to see is more evidence that detracking improves outcomes. I know we don’t like test scores as measures, but they do measure something. I can see being concerned as a parent if your kid is pulled out of advanced math to address other concerns being a bit anxious that they weren’t being prepared for college.
Cameron
@Kay: Maybe these folks mean “equine-inspired changes,” since most of them sound like horses’ asses.
Cameron
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You mean they actually took something that works (albeit costing many$$)? No whiskey-and-baking-soda enemas? I’m so disappointed.
Eric K
@lowtechcyclist: more like 60 years, if we’re charitable to Ike, reality is the 50s would have been even better with a Dem in charge Ike just wasn’t as bad as most Republicans, so the truth is more like 110 years are so?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Burnspbesq: Sure we do have better charging infrastructure than many(probably most) places, but I don’t have a charging where I park, so I’d have to probably go to the mall and wait. When I’m out of town shooting, I can’t afford the downtime even if charging was available, I’m on a very tight schedule.
misterpuff
@Hoodie: I kinda agree with Hoodie. I got my first post-college job in 79 and basically even the high inflation of that time (14 – 20%/ year) was basically over. What killed wage growth was the death of unions and heavy manufacturing (and the growing service economy, much of which while white-collared was non-union). Union successes on pay and benefits developed the middle class and paced wage growth for the whole economy. When there power and influence ebbed, they stopped being the yardstick and wage growth started to stagnate. Wage growth (adjusted for inflation) flatlined during the 80s,90s and 00s. Thanks Productivity (not)
Still it was a different world back then, credit didn’t flow like water, the economy was still taking up the boomers into the work force (which probably depressed wage growth, cars were still gas guzzlers, hell just prior to my joining the workforce, you could still write off credit card interest. The only thing the same from then is the interest rate on credit cards.
J R in WV
@Soprano2:
A few years after I saw $0.19/gal fuel prices while on a driving vacation with the family (probably in the early ’60s?) I was able to make $0.80/hr in a summer job working for the family business.
Point here is that if gas was $0.20 entry level jobs probably weren’t paying $1.20.hr…
A very long time since gas was $0.20.gal — also, cars were getting less than 15 mpg back then… as opposed to way more than that today. Last time I rented a RAM 1500 PU truck with a V8 hemi, not expecting good fuel mileage, we got mid 20s mpg, was shocking, 2 or 3 years ago…
J R in WV
@Leto:
I’ve been a Green Bay fan as long as I’ve been a football fan. No more as long a Rodgers plays there. I have never rooted for injuries, but now I won’t be sad if Rodgers takes a hit while throwing an interception. What a cheap, lying, piece of shit!! I don’t care why he did what he did, I care about the fact that he did it! The reasons why don’t matter at all.
In my whole life I have owned one single piece of NFL stuff, a green Tee with Green Bay on it. Because I needed another Tee shirt and it was the only sturdy tee in the Walmart. The three cents the NFL made off that shirt (if that) is all the money the NFL has made or will make from me. And Fuck Rodgers!!