US Economy is in a Recession (npr.org) 266
It may seem obvious, with double-digit unemployment and plunging economic output. But if there was any remaining doubt that the U.S. is in a recession, it's now been removed by the official scorekeepers at the National Bureau of Economic Research. From a report: The NBER's Business Cycle Dating Committee -- the fat lady of economic opera -- says the expansion peaked in February after a record 128 months, and we've been sliding into a pandemic-driven recession ever since. In making the announcement, the committee pointed to the "unprecedented magnitude of the decline in employment and production, and its broad reach across the entire economy." At the same time, the committee noted the recession could be short-lived. The U.S. added 2.5 million jobs last month, after losing more than 22 million in March and April. Many forecasters expect economic output to begin growing again in the third quarter.
Expect to hear people touting record GDP growth (Score:2, Interesting)
Those May unemployment stats were kind of dodgy too. They left out the under-employed, which was something like 5 million furloughed workers.
It sucks, because you can't solve a problem that you won't admit exists...
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Economy and Trade is a complex topics.
With many company Execs buying back stocks into their companies Stock prices have recovered well.
Being the rest of the world is in recession too, often numbers based on percentages are often off kilter too.
A strong economy is how much money people are spending on a wider diversity of products and services.
GDP and Stocks Prices are more of an indicator on the economy, but not really the truth behind it.
GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government investment
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Interestingly enough, the US recession started in February, LONG before the US President was acknowledging the pandemic, much less the stay at home orders started in any states.
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... Those May unemployment stats were kind of dodgy too. They left out the under-employed, which was something like 5 million furloughed workers...
Sorry, but under-employed people are not unemployed, so should not be included in the unemployed roster. Yea, it sucks they lost their job and now have to make do on less than half their previous salary, but they do have a job. If they didn't have it, someone else would so the unemployment numbers would balance out.
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Re:Expect to hear people touting record GDP growth (Score:5, Informative)
Stats for March, April and May were all wrong because of a "misclassification" error which BLS knew about for those three months and chose not to do anything about it. The head of BLS even stated they would not go back and correct the numbers they put out last Friday (the 5th) even though they knew of the error when they issued their report.
So yeah, fake numbers. Known fake numbers, and everyone is happy. After all, when the central planning committee, er, Federal Reserve, is pumping $7 trillion of money pulled from thin air into the works and giving it to companies who then lay off thousands of employees [nytimes.com] while giving CEOs millions of dollars, who cares?
Re:Expect to hear people touting record GDP growth (Score:5, Informative)
Unemployment stats aren't really "dodgy" per-se. It is true that the one number, unemployment, is not the whole story, and it is also true that many/most people don't really understand what the number means. BUT, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has been doing things the same way for a long time and if they change it now that will, in some sense, invalidate their data record. Or, I mean, it will make it hard to show trends over a long period if there is a point where they changed their process. The good thing about the unemployment stats is that they are a long-running consistent data set.
Also, for those who are interested, there is a LOT more data available from BLS besides just the headline unemployment rate. They have total jobs, size of workforce, workforce participation rate, etc, etc. I definitely recommend spending some time at the BLS website to dig through the data. Here is one page which may be interesting:
https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit... [bls.gov]
Many of the data series are also available from St Louis FED, and you can make graphs using the data at their website. For example, here is a graph showing total number of employed persons (not adjusted for populations size).
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/gr... [stlouisfed.org]
Re:Expect to hear people touting record GDP growth (Score:5, Informative)
This is absolutely contradicted by economic records from the 1918-1920 Spanish Flu. Areas that responded to the pandemic more aggressively recovered quicker economically. Areas that opened back up too early got hit with a second wave, which depressed consumer confidence and kept people out of work for longer.
http://news.mit.edu/2020/pande... [mit.edu]
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The 1918 flu was deadliest for younger people of working age. Covid-19 is deadliest for people of retirement age. It is not necessarily the case that the economic impact of the former will be analogous to that of the latter, or that society's response should be the same.
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"Not necessarily the same" is a weak argument. Note that the 1918 pandemic is not unusual in regards to the speed of recovery. In most pandemics, strong early response, and sustained response lead to an earlier economic recovery. People need to feel confident returning to their normal lives before they will start spending money at pre-pandemic levels.
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And the old people have a good portion of the wealth in the U.S. They will be spending some on medical help but they will also be hitting the government harder. MAGA.
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None of this matters anymore anyway. We have worldwide protests with tens of thousands of participants crammed into as little space as possible. What's done is done.
Social distancing and the lockdown are dead. Might as well get on with our lives.
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Re:Expect to hear people touting record GDP growth (Score:4)
If it was valuable it would have been enforced. Nobody cared.
Politicians who fined people for going to the barber or for a walk in the countryside are now perfectly fine with massive gatherings. People who called others covidiots are now busy meeting ten thousand others in the streets. All the official restrictions gone in a couple of days. Goes to show how valuable even its proponents and architects thought it was.
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None of this matters anymore anyway. We have worldwide protests with tens of thousands of participants crammed into as little space as possible. What's done is done.
No we don't. In fact much of the world wide protests have maintained social distancing. Nearly all those in Europe have done so in a protected fashion wearing masks, gloves, and staying as far apart as possible. There are some amazing pieces of footage showing the protests marching almost military style in a 1.5m apart grid formation. And our local protest which did get too big to maintain social distancing was broken up peacefully by police who requested that half the protestors pick another spot to protes
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A few photos from around Europe:
Berlin:
https://www.neues-deutschland.... [neues-deutschland.de]
https://www.rnd.de/resizer/RQN... [www.rnd.de]
https://www.rbb24.de/content/d... [rbb24.de]
Frankfurt:
https://www.fr.de/bilder/2020/... [www.fr.de]
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EZ... [twimg.com]
London:
https://api.time.com/wp-conten... [time.com]
https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/... [newsshopper.co.uk]
Just enter "black lives matter" + a major European city into Google's image search. Some of these make me wonder if you can derive a function of mask-density vs. distance-to-cameras.
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Thr problem is that it won't be work as normal. That would only happen if we had 90% of the people believing it was all a hoax and then they proceed doing exactly what they were doing in February. Except that most people realize it was a real thing, they won't be heading back to restaurants in the same numbers that they used to, they won't be going back to cinemas or theaters in the same numbers, they're not going to pack the bleachers at the ballpark, many people will still continue to work from home, an
No recession if recovery is this month (Score:3)
The most common specific definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of downward GDP.
As the summary mentioned, the high was in February.
If June closes out higher than April, which it almost surely will, that was a couple bad months, not a recession.
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I think you missed a part. From the person you are replying to...
Speaking of that, try calling your local governor's mansion and setting up a tour right now. They'll tell you "no, what are you crazy? we're in a pandemic!"
Which can confirm, Tennessee is in pretty much the same holding pattern. Called last week to get into the governor's office for a routine thing was told in essence, "You can't schedule that right now. There's a pandemic." Same applies to the department whom I called earlier to schedule and was basically told "pandemic, ask the comptroller's office at the governor's office if you really need that."
So perhaps you can take your sage words her
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So your life is in agony, doubt and fear because you cannot tour the Governor's mansion?
No, it's because I cannot meet for a routine discussion on matters and the matters apparently cannot be discussed via teleconference... Did you not read my comment?
Do you still have the ability to contact your Government officials?
Point person on switches? Yes. Those with certain meeting obligations with the Governor, no. But that's kinda missing the point here. The Governor is clearly indicating to the public "there's nothing to worry about" but then not letting anyone who he has to have meetings regularly with, go into the office and only allowing clerks and assista
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How narcissistic are you? Do people really believe you can just request a random meeting with a Governor on "routine discussions".
Following me much? Did you give up on the NDA thing finally?
Well I wouldn't expect me doing my day-to-day job to be called narcissistic, but interesting take none-the-less.
THAT governor just issued new guidance for reopening
Yes, pressers totally show what's actually going on. Also note, that if you actually read the things you just posted, none of that indicates any difference in the current stance he has for the day-to-day at the office. But thanks for adding absolutely nothing.
Re:As someone who reads CDC releases (Score:5, Insightful)
And even more people forget the wisdom of Voltaire:
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If you miss restaurants, why don't you go to one? They are open in every state. There might be some current restrictions on seating, so call ahead first.
"But I survived the last 20 years of every single day getting just a little crappier"
What a miserable person you are. I keep telling you that you would be much happier moving from the US, but you never listen.
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I am going to restaurants regularly and am surviving fine. As we are forced to go back to work you will discover life goes on.
"My grandfather smoked every day until he died at 95 therefore smoking is safe!"
Sweden is doing just fine and I refuse to live in fear
Fine in the sense of massively higher deaths per capita than Norway and Finland.
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Re: Expect to hear people touting record GDP growt (Score:3)
Bug report for 'Earth', playing USA (Score:4, Funny)
So - I'm playing this 'Earth' game, and I'm playing the USA.
On my turn, I keep picking 'conservative' - and it says it'll boost my economy by 5% each turn, but it keeps reducing my economy by 5% instead. Was there a reverse in the sign in the code or something?
Last time I complained, I was told that I had a bunch of social and infrastructure issues dragging down my economy score, and that I'd need 4 turns of 'liberal' to invest and fix that - but I did 2 turns of that, and it didn't seem feel right, so I stopped it. Could that be the issue?
No - no, I'm going to insist that this is a bug. Conservatism isn't working how the tooltip said, so I'm calling that wrong, not my lack of understanding or strategy in this game.
Re: Bug report for 'Earth', playing USA (Score:2, Insightful)
Just because you forgot doesn't mean everyone else did.
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I had one client that had to move to a new building because their existing office building was in the path of a shovel ready project.
They literally had to clear out and move into new office space in like 3 months, it was pretty aggressive as office moves go.
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But in all cases the taxpayers money evaporates.
Just my 2 cents
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The tooltip also said you have a choice whether you want your economy one way or another, it's not like that tooltip was the only bogus one.
Re:Bug report for 'Earth', playing USA (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's a resource leak. Doesn't matter what choices you make, I see that every cycle I'm burning something like 25% more resources than I have - which is ridiculous, I'm also playing the USA and we have the like more wealth and resources than any other country ever in the history of the game.
I mean, my score is way the hell up around 26000 but it doesn't seem to be benefiting my position.
I thought the whole resource leak was better back around turns 1992-2000 but turns out that not only was that based on a UI reporting bug, but ultimately the cascading issues from that bug really fucked me around turn 2007.
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Strangely enough I just checked and for all the hate it gets, Chicago isn't even in the top 10 US cities for violent crime.
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On my turn, I keep picking 'conservative' - and it says it'll boost my economy by 5% each turn,
Which it just did, with a pretty large increase in percentage employed.
Also compare states like Texas to California, Illinois, or NYC...
As a side benefit, if you pick "conservative" you get vastly fewer cases of the worst kinds of police brutality, as you would find in Chicago, NYC, California, etc.
If you want a growing economy - vote conservative. If you want to reduce police violence and weaken police unions - vote conservative. That's just plain facts that you can get from observation across the entire United States.
Seems like you need to understand what is happening before you start filing bug reports with root causes.
Unfortunately, in 2016 and 2020 there was no conservative on the ballot, at least for president. And the anti-conservative populist that got elected drove most of the conservatives in the rest of the government into hiding as well.
Recession? Or depression? (Score:2)
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Recession is when a lot of people you know lose their jobs and can't find new ones. Depression is when you lose your job and can't find a new one.
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For now, recession.
The usual criteria are either (a) a recession that lasts three years (some say two) or (b) a reduction in GDP of at least 10%.
Q1 (Jan-Mar) US GDP contracted 4.8% (preliminary estimate). Assuming the final figures for Q2 are at least similar, we'll be right on the cusp of a depression unless growth resumes in Q3 and 4.
Depends on the definition... (Score:2)
Don't be surprised when you see a conflicting article in about three months.
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The end of June is the end of the second quarter. So three weeks to turn it around?
By some measures it already has turned around. [forbes.com]
Re: Depends on the definition... (Score:2)
A bit silly (Score:2)
It's a bit silly to call a known temporary condition caused as an emergency reaction to an external factor a recession.
That's why when doctors sedate someone, they don't report "The patient lost consciousness", they report "The patient was sedated".
When things return to sorta normal, it will be meaningful to look at the state of affairs, not while the economy is mostly in a medically induced coma.
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That's on the politicians that half-assed the economic pause. But we don't know how many of those cases will be and we won't until we return to "normal". I did indicate that once that happens, it will make sense to look at the situation.
Re:A bit silly (Score:5, Insightful)
I will try to say this respectfully. You have NO IDEA how hard-hit the economy has been as a result of this. You are in the earliest stages of realization. Others who have a better view than you do understand that we are not going "back to normal" in a few weeks, few months, or few years. Demand for many things has now been near permanently reduced or extinguished.
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How hard the economy has or has not been hit is irrelevant to my point. We will know that when the restrictions can be lifted and some time passes to see what does or does not recover.
For now, the patient was in a drug induced coma and the IV drip has just been stopped. It's a little early to begin assessing cognitive deficits.
Something for you to chew on, reduced demand for a scarce resource means less scarcity, If you see that as a universally bad thing, you long ago gave up on the idea of an economy exis
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Hmm. Well, if the economy has negative growth, that is a recession. So if the economy has been hit hard and shrinks, that is by definition a recession. So it does not seem irrelevant to me that the economy has shrunk and will likely continue to shrink. I will grant you the point that the future is not written yet, so it is, technically, premature. But this is not my first rodeo. The global economy is really, really fucked right now, and there are a lot of businesses that are going to struggle for some time
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Who are these magical people who have a "better view"?
People who operate businesses.
As a side note, the stock market is not the economy, my mother died long ago and I don't need to shut the fuck up any more than you do.
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Well, what *would* you call a two quarter contraction in the GDP, if not a recession?
It's a description of fact, not assignment of moral responsibility.
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The best description would be a medically induced coma.
The drop in GDP was not induced by chaotic economic forces. We know exactly the cause and we know that cause will be removed.
Is it time to liquidate the stock porfolio? (Score:4, Insightful)
For being a recession, the stock market is back to where it was prior to COVID.
Is it time to sell everything off and wait for the crash or is the market rolling again?
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The gov't has been bailing out the stock market for past decade via Quantitative Easing and other techniques. Whether direct benefits to stockholders was politically intentional or not is subject to debate, but either way it seems they've gotten used to being bailed out and still expect it based on stock prices.
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Trump does love his precious stock market, so I guess we can expect bailouts until November. :)
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If T loses the election, I do expect a stock drop. Some may use that as political evidence he boosts economies, others that he's been kissing up to Wallstreet. But the stock market and the economy are not necessarily in sync.
(He did slightly boost GDP before covid, but at the expense of debt.)
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If T loses the election, I do expect a stock drop.
That's interesting, Biden is very business-friendly.
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For being a recession, the stock market is back to where it was prior to COVID.
You know the stock market is a leading indicator based on intent right? As in Tesla stock isn't as high as it is because they are making more profit than GM. The stock market going up is based on the idea that sometime *later this year* our economy is going to recover. The idea that we've hit rock bottom.
You know a recession is a lagging indicator right? As in it doesn't car what is happening today, it only cares about what happened *last month*.
Incidentally the stock market looked pretty damn grim last mon
"US Economy is in a Recession" (Score:5, Funny)
At least Captain Obvious still has a job.
It's not just COVID (Score:3)
During the year prior to the pandemic, I met with my financial advisor a couple of times to talk about whether we should make changes for the future. (Advice: check with your bank/ccu to see if they offer free financial planning - it can be an eye-opener) His response was an emphatic yes. According to him (grain of salt...), he and many other advisors were certain that 2020 would see us dip into recession (maybe a small one - who knew?)
We did a general shift away from so much stock exposure and into more bonds. (and some other stuff) I know my investments never went down nearly as much as the stock market as a whole. And they have regained all lost value.
My point being that, though COVID is right up there as a reason for a lot of our difficulties (economically), the economy had had a looooong expansion and nothing lasts forever. There was some pre-existing weakness in the economy that needed to self-correct. Voila! Correction granted.
Just sayin'
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One of the reasons for the 'safe' stance is that retirement is not too far away (for me) and the closer it comes, the more risk-averse I become. ;)
But I see your point and agree - the market corrected (...is correcting...) and there is/was some value lost, but that's a great time to grab some stock that you hope is undervalued.
Definitely trying to maintain the long view....
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So have most stocks... but with stocks there is a lot more upside potential going forward.
So...while in a global pandemic, stocks have not only recovered fully when we're only part-way through the actual pandemic but also have greater upside than prior to the pandemic (where we were previously at record highs), all with record government spending and the service economy crippled to a shadow of itself? That's incredible. Perhaps we should simulate pandemics and shut down parts of our economy for all these juicy economic gains. Let's try manufacturing next and see the benefits roll in.
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Well, it's timing, isn't it? The time to sit safely in bonds is *before* stocks drop. If you think stocks are going to go down more, then you stay put; if you think they're going to go back up, you move back into them.
Dollar-cost-averaging and regularly rebalancing your portfolio between classes of assets is a way of taking prognostication out of the picture. You won't make as much money as you would if you consistently forecast (guessed) correctly, but you will tend to buy low and sell high without havi
Thank god for Covid (Score:2)
Without we'd have to find another scapegoat so we don't have to admit that the system's cracking.
Close but not quite (Score:5, Informative)
>"and we've been sliding into a pandemic-driven recession ever since."
No. We have been sliding into a pandemic-RESPONSE-driven recession ever since. There is a big difference. The pandemic did not cause businesses to close, huge masses of people to not work or lose their jobs, stock markets to sink, and countless trillions of dollars of more debt. That was the result of the chosen responses. You can argue if you think the responses were appropriate or not, or how other responses would be better, but to say the pandemic did it is not at all accurate.
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Somebody is getting fired today, just wait.
Does anybody have a list of the messengers?
These sorts of messengers can't be touched (Score:2)
You can lie to your wife, you can lie to your priest, hell, you can even lie to yourself but brother, you do not lie to the motherfuckin' SEC.
Re:On the bright side (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who wants to hammer Trump should steer clear of the economy because it's the one thing he has going for him right now. Much better to just keep the focus on poor pandemic response where's he actually weak. It's hard to say what the longterm effects of the riots will be and how they will affect economic recovery, but it's probably limited to a few neighborhoods in a few cities unless anything really crazy happens.
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Yes, well he and Congress (before the pandemic) dumping $1 Trillion a year in deficit spending into the economy will tend to lift it a bit....until we got the pandemic. Now that they've pissed all over their seed corn, we'll be running gonzo whopper deficits as far as the eye can see. When the debt balloon falls back to earth, and it will, watch out. Then the Complainer-in-Chief will find some convenient scapegoat. In the words of Luna Lovegood, look at that blibbering humdinger in the window!!
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Open border policies...errr...you mean international travel? Them policies? I guess I forgot the airlines were run by the left wingers...those naughty left wingers knew there was a pandemic out there waiting to happen if they could just control the airlines and allow all that international travel...sneaky devils...imagine them wanting to kill off their own grandmas and grandpas. Is there nothing they won't stoop too?
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Shutting down all travel and putting all people returing to the USA into quarantine, or at the very least everybody returning from China would be the correct response. Banning just the Chinese citizens was racist indeed.
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Re: On the bright side (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: On the bright side (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't deserve a bad economy. [...] I am not guilty for the actions of others.
Someone with a long history of bigotry and bankruptcies was elected to lead the executive branch. Someone who has juiced the economy in the good times, cutting taxes and cutting funding to safety nets while stoking racial tensions. One of those safety nets was to prevent a pandemic from flooding into the US.
If you want to disclaim that you had anything to do with that then that's fine. However, if you did vote for the person that made this mess possible in the first place then you definitely bear responsibility and are absolutely deserving of the consequences of your own actions.
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I don't think it is true that voting for a candidate makes one responsible for everything that candidate does after taking office. There is no way to see the future and the candidate retains his/her free will after being elected.
Furthermore, the options that one has available are whittled down to the point that all of them are terrible, leaving everyone perpetually choosing between the lesser of evils. Being forced to choose the lesser evil does NOT make one responsible for the evil that candidate then pe
Re: On the bright side (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it is true that voting for a candidate makes one responsible for everything that candidate does after taking office.
When everyone tells you that he's a conman and you refuse to listen or research and it turns out you got conned, yeah, it's your fault.
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The whole country has had decades to fix these issues. There is a lot of collective responsibility.
In Britain too, I'm not singling out the US.
Re: On the bright side (Score:5, Insightful)
It's neat the way you took what the poster said and then changed it to something completely different, and acted like they are the same thing.
Re: On the bright side (Score:5, Informative)
The historic goals of the Democrat party are certainly noble, but they implemented policies and passed legislation that turned out not to have the desired effects or actually made things worse. It seems like the city council in Minneapolis had decided to defund/dismantle the police department. Sure they want a lot of desirable outcomes, but I strongly doubt that they'll be able to achieve any of them and will just bring more harm on their community. But if that's what they want to vote for, who am I to tell them they can't do it?
The GOP's been in charge of the State Legislature (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking of Nixon he started the drug war, and there's 10 million who can't vote because of minor drug crimes. That's not an accident.
You can get a Democratic Governor all you want (Gerrymandering has it's limits, though Stacy Abrams might disagree) doesn't matter if the State Legislature is all in.
Re: The GOP's been in charge of the State Legislat (Score:2)
Police are a city level function; are you claiming a Republic state level legislature has forced the local PD and Mayor to run the city poorly? Exactly what policies or laws were passed that forced the D controlled city to suck so much? Did that happen in every poorly run D controlled plantation?
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As long as there's a single Republican, they're to blame for everything, and even when there isn't one, we can blame one from a half-century ago. Heck, Minneapolis doesn't even have its own government, and even if it did, it wouldn't control the police department. /s
The GOP owns the polls ... that said Hillary would win?
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I disagree (Score:2, Insightful)
Given that I wouldn't say we deserved this. Rather our "Winner Take All, First Past the Post" system was designed for these sorts of outcomes...
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Only 19% of Americans wanted Trump to be president. The rest either couldn't vote, didn't want either candidate enough to vote or couldn't decide which would do the least damage and decided to let somebody else pick (e.g. paralyzed by choice).
I would like to offer the opinion that if you can (are allowed and are able to) vote and choose not to, you don't get to complain about the results. Rights come with responsibilities. Perhaps everyone should be required to vote.
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I would like to offer the opinion that if you can (are allowed and are able to) vote and choose not to, you don't get to complain about the results.
You can have a brick to the head or a bat to the throat. If you don't choose one, one will be chosen at random, and you're not allowed to complain about it.
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I would like to offer the opinion that if you can (are allowed and are able to) vote and choose not to, you don't get to complain about the results.
You can have a brick to the head or a bat to the throat. If you don't choose one, one will be chosen at random, and you're not allowed to complain about it.
Which one of those is Trump? :-)
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"I would like to offer the opinion that if you can (are allowed and are able to) vote and choose not to, you don't get to complain about the results."
Considering how the electoral college disenfranchises the majority of voters, I'd say yours is a bad opinion. Voting for most people is a meaningless gesture. You need to pick your fights, and for people not in swing states complaining is potentially more effective than voting.
So... because it may not count, you shouldn't try? What about those cases where it would matter? Unless you know in advance, not trying is an automatic failure. Voting is a process and participating matters and also sends a message. Not sure why one can't vote *and* complain. I do, however, agree with your comments about the Electoral College, but that doesn't mean voting doesn't matter. Related to this is that voting for federal offices usually coincides with voting for state and local offices. If you d
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Nobody is qualified to be President. We should leave the position open until someone comes along who is both capable but doesn't want the job. We'll call a time-out with our adversaries, they'll have to wait until we can get our shit together before resuming trying to take over their particular wedge of the Earth.
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Actually, it's pure speculation that the opinions of the whole country are accurately reflected by the opinions of those who bothered to vote.
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And the economy will likely rebound, as there is a lot of potential for reclaiming of lost growth once lockdown is lifted. International trade is going to be a mess for a while though, no matter when we decide to lift our lockdown domestically.
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From the Friday jobs report: 2.5M jobs added in May(they expected 7m loss).
Assuming those 2.5M were folks who lost their jobs in April - that still leaves 18 million recently unemployed.
Those people are still hurting; don't pretend they don't exist. Let's hope they also get their jobs back soon.
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Single biggest monthly increase in jobs since 1938 and all you got is, "Meh".
That's not moving the goal posts, that's moving the fucking stadium and changing sports
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... following the biggest loss in jobs since 1938? No, we're not impressed.
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Think of it a bit like breathing. You can have a lot of oxygen starved cells that will ultimately end up
Re: (Score:2)
Well, yes. I don't blame Trump for the depth of job losses in Q1, nor do I credit him for the rebound when closed jobs are re-opened. We did what we had to, then we un-did it.
I think Trump handled COVID-19 badly, but it's not as simple as assuming a better, or even perfect job would have prevented any job losses. I think the impact will take months to play out, and probably even longer to characterize accurately.
Re: (Score:2)
So, you really think that after govt. mandated shut down of almost everything....that it will automagically fire up in one month and everyone that was employed will be employed again??
I mean, hell....the various state and local government are STILL keeping many parts of the US shut down, so no...not everyone will go back to work all at once, it will take time.
That's the price of the govt mandate
Re:No... its not a recession (Score:4, Insightful)