Inflation Sits at 8.2% as Core Prices Hit Four-Decade High (wsj.com) 273
U.S. consumer inflation excluding energy and food accelerated to a new four-decade high in September as prices continued to surge, a sign that persistent cost increases are becoming entrenched in the economy. From a report: The Labor Department on Thursday said that the so-called core measure of the consumer price index -- which excludes volatile energy and food prices -- gained 6.6% in September from a year earlier [PDF], up from 6.3% in August. That marked the biggest increase since August 1982. On a monthly basis, the core CPI rose 0.6% in September, the same as in August, and up from 0.3% in July. Investors and policy makers follow core inflation closely as a reflection of broad, underlying inflation and as a predictor of future inflation.
The overall CPI increased 8.2% in September from the same month a year ago, down from 8.3% in August. That was also lower than annual increases of 8.5% in July and 9.1% in June, which was the highest inflation rate in four decades. The CPI measures what consumers pay for goods and services. The retreat of overall inflation from the June high came as gasoline prices cooled. But prices for housing, medical care, food and other items have continued to increase, threatening to keep inflation higher for longer. Housing costs rose by the most since the early 1980s, as a strong labor market continues to push up rental rates. Housing makes up the largest share of the overall and core indexes. Prices for used cars and apparel cooled in September, offering limited relief to consumers from high inflation.
The overall CPI increased 8.2% in September from the same month a year ago, down from 8.3% in August. That was also lower than annual increases of 8.5% in July and 9.1% in June, which was the highest inflation rate in four decades. The CPI measures what consumers pay for goods and services. The retreat of overall inflation from the June high came as gasoline prices cooled. But prices for housing, medical care, food and other items have continued to increase, threatening to keep inflation higher for longer. Housing costs rose by the most since the early 1980s, as a strong labor market continues to push up rental rates. Housing makes up the largest share of the overall and core indexes. Prices for used cars and apparel cooled in September, offering limited relief to consumers from high inflation.
Well yes (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Well yes (Score:4, Insightful)
When the President decides to add 11% to the money supply, it's pretty much given that we're going to net AT LEAST 11% inflation.
And most of the things they do to "stop inflation" either makes it worse or does nothing at all.
Myself, I'm expecting about 25% - 45% inflation of the dollar by the time it settles down again.
Note that "it settles down" does NOT mean "no inflation" - it just means "not much inflation (say, 2% per year or less).
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Yeah... and CEO bonuses, salaries, and corporate profits are massively up, and that's not anything a President has any control over.
Now, if Congress were to pass windfall profits taxes, and price controls, then you can open your mouth. Till then, shove it.
Re:Well yes (Score:5, Insightful)
> When the President decides to add 11% to the money supply, it's pretty much given that we're going to net AT LEAST 11% inflation.
No, it isn't. At any given point an economy produces $x in value in the form of goods and services. The money supply, therefore, needs to be ~$x or else you will have inflation or deflation. Both are bad, for different people and for different reasons. It is not "pretty much given" that any inflation would occur at all.
Also, the President has literally nothing to do with it. They may try to put pressure on the Federal Reserve to do something, but ultimately the White House has no authority to dictate monetary policy. None.
=Smidge=
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Government deficits financed by printed money ARE money creation and, indeed, inflationary.
Re:Well yes (Score:5, Informative)
Good thing, then, that the US doesn't actually do that. Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is openly hostile to the idea of simply printing money to finance debts. Instead the US rolls over the debt into new bonds as the old bonds come due. While arguably unwise, there is no inflationary pressure from that practice.
Maybe we could pay some of that debt by taxing people and corporations instead?
=Smidge=
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Yeah that's why the Fed has 8 trillion on their balance sheet, because they haven't been printing money. Oh wait.
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We also now have the data that shows that the change in the money supply didn't cause demand-side inflation: consumer spending is back on trend after the temporary shock, and the specific areas that have inflated the most have obvious supply constraints.
A lot of the recession fetishists are playing games by conflating annualized inflation and year-over-year inflation. The areas that inflated sharply did so many months ago and have already softened. But they want more rate hikes now despite that fact that if
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You're confusing fiscal policy - taxing and spending - with monetary policy - the actual management of the nation's currency and money supply.
Stimulus checks are a fiscal policy. Printing money is monetary policy. The President has some control over the former, but not the latter.
=Smidge=
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People scream about the value of an independant Federal Reserve, but that's usuay right after they've appointed a head to a 10 year position, but just lost the presidency.
Re:Well yes (Score:4, Insightful)
starts a number of trade wars,
enacts a bunch of tariffs,
negotiates a 2 year deal in 2022 with Saudi Arabia to cut back production on oil,
has a huge unfunded tax cut,
mishandles pandemic prevention and response,
backs out of nuclear agreement with Iran thereby blocking their oil from being sold on the open market,
signs bills for a ton of corporate welfare spending,
increases the federal deficit more than any other president in modern history,
blocks migrant workers from picking crops
politicizes the fed and demands near zero prime lending rates in a hot economy
be prepared for inflation that will take time to kick in and years to get under control.
Don't get me wrong, I don't favor either party, but we need to be honest about our problems if they are to be solved.
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Re:But what about everything we got in return! (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like a bunch of strawmen arguments to me. No one would argue those things are ok because of the reasons you give.
I heard a lot of arguments from the right in the past:
"Who cares if climate change is destroying the world and an extra oil pipeline will continue that without helping our energy situation much. It'll create a couple hundred jobs and help oil companies profit"
"Who cares that black people are being murdered by the police on a regular basis. There's some property damage done by riots after the protests"
"Who cares if millions of people die from the pandemic. We need to increase shareholder value"
"Who cares if millions are struggling to eat and avoid homelessness. We can only afford handouts to businesses, not individuals"
"Who cares a generation is unable to progress in society because they're crippled by debt. Some people might have already paid their debt and it's not like they're bankers"
And now a quote:
"Why is everything suddenly so expensive? Sure we've voted against everything the administration has tried to do to prevent it, but how come he hasn't helped?"
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Re:Well yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Much as I hate Trump (Score:4, Insightful)
If the majority of it goes to everyday working Americans they spend it, create a bunch of economic activity and therefore more new businesses, goods and services which keeps inflation low.
But that's not what we did. We gave nearly all of it to the top
And the worst thing is we didn't just let them do it, we helped them do it.
Re:Well yes (Score:5, Insightful)
When the President decides to add 11% to the money supply, it's pretty much given that we're going to net AT LEAST 11% inflation.
So adding trillions to the money supply via tax cuts is totes different? F**k that man. You're repeating stupidity. Inflation happens when we start reorienting economy. It can be widespread or isolated. Usually it's a mix.
And most of the things they do to "stop inflation" either makes it worse or does nothing at all.
Depends on your point of view. The Fed's favorite thing is putting people on unemployment.
Myself, I'm expecting about 25% - 45% inflation of the dollar by the time it settles down again.
Note that "it settles down" does NOT mean "no inflation" - it just means "not much inflation (say, 2% per year or less).
Oh wait you're serious let me laugh even harder.
For nearly 50 years we've had artificially enforced wage stagnation for most of America "keeping prices low" but creating a growing problem. When you decouple wages from productivity for that long, it's going to create one f**k of a mess unwinding it all.
In the early 1970's a regular 'ol TV reporter in LA could be married to a stay-at-home wife and the have a couple kids. Oh and he could afford to buy a new Bonanza airplane. Fast forward 50 years and that TV reporter would have to be a multi-millionaire to do the same thing. Why? Stagnant real wages creating an ever shrinking market. Not just for planes, but look at larger (non-commercial) fishing or sail boats. I've got friends who wouldn't own a big boat today, except they bought one in the late 1970's before prices went haywire.
Now the pandemic did something funny, it f**ked with the system a bit. Them durty peons got a bit of power. They got wage increases because companies were desperate for workers. Even today many companies have trouble finding enough employees... and that's after the Fed has been raising interest rates to try and cause a spike in unemployment. Companies obviously have a lot of excess money if rate increases aren't affecting them that much yet. They might be making targeted cuts that get headlines, but like many of my clients one set of people being let go is at the same time more people in a different area are being hired.
On top of that, it started shifting money around in a different pattern. People weren't going on cruises or international trips, they were buying / updating housing. They were buying cars / trucks / RV's. TONS of money suddenly shifted direction. When you do that, you get a shiatload of inflation. More if you get companies like JBS (to name but one) who openly spike prices to raise profits. Not like they care about the paltry fine, cost of doing business. Not that it helped the ranchers... that "inflation" went straight to JBS bottom line while ranchers went out of business.
So keep drinking the kool-aid man, but this is all laughable. Talk to me after we cut CEO pay back down and make up for 50 years of not increasing pay with productivity.
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Why would the fed want more people on unemployment?
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Milton Friedman had it right in the 70's.
Only the government creates inflation by mass spending, only the government can stop it by not spending.
He couldn't get the US Government to listen then and now they conveniently forgot he existed.
Funny enough the Germans listened and got it right in the 60's.
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Amtrak?
Has be the biggest waste of public money in all of history. Massive drain public funds so a few professional class east coasters who can better afford subsidized transportation than 90% of the rest of population can commute more.
Honestly FUCK Amtrak, FUCK anyone who works for Amtrak and FUCK anyone who rides it. Drains on society ALL OF YOU!
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I know you're going to get downvoted, by people who buy in hook line and sinker "MASS TRANSIT IS THE SOLUTION!"
Yes, Mass transit is a solution, in countries where it is introduced without porkbarrelling. Where stealing from the government is not only seen as dishonorable (like in Japan) but can also end up getting you executed (like in China) Or even in places like France where the population would just empty out into the streets protesting and demanding justice.
We've sort of choked ourselves with political
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It's now politically incorrect to even question or protest the government.
Lol, do you even pay attention to what you write?
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Agreed. We should EXPAND Amtrak (Trains! Lovely trains!) and electrify rail (for both passengers and freight) nationally at public expense. The rest of the country should have the same access to trains as we do on the East Coast.
Ah well, if the wishes of jealous whiners like yourself come true, at least I can leave this stinking excuse for a country, and move somewhere in Europe that will still have passenger trains to ride. (China probably won't give me residency, but the EU will due to dual citizenshi
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Many normal people are having their savings wrecked.
I thought you hated people being serfs of the rich? Why are you promoting the purely government-dependent retirement-with-no-savings?
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Re: Well yes (Score:2)
Oh fuck that.
Let the people who use those services pay for them and leave the rest of us alone.
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Re: Well yes (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Well yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Austerity is what sane people call "living within your means".
That's the "country as a household". The problem here is that a country is not a household and thinking of the budget of the two things as the same leads to really stupid decisions. For example, the amount you spend as a household reduces the amount you have left. Sometimes, with a country, the country's means depends on the your spending. If you cut spending you also reduce your means.
The effect of more money can be varied. If you give the more money to really rich people who then decide to save it by investing in assets like existing rental homes then that causes inflation* since house prices go higher. If you give the money to the same rich people but persuade them to set up building companies and build new houses which they sell then you are quite likely to reduce inflation. This is because there's more valuable things for people to spend money on so less per thing.
The main trick is that if you give the money directly to poor working people, or proper, non corrupt, capital investment (for example building wind farms) then you tend to have a huge increase in economic activity. This is as much as ten times the size of the government spending according to recent measures. Given a tax rate of 15% on that activity that would mean that the more the government spends the more money it has because the tax return is bigger than the spending.
So, no, as the UK shows recently. Austerity is not living within your means, it can be extremely expensive.
* depending on how fucked up your government is this may or may not be reflected in your published inflation numbers. Still, it takes away money f
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They are the same. There are lots of cases for a household to take on debt that will actually make it more solvent. There is also debt that can be thrown away on a depreciating asset. The government does lots of the latter.
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A good chunk of US dept is held by the treasury. If you loan money to yourself are you further in debt?
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Inflation is bad because we gave $50 trillion dollars to the
Giving money to working Americans doesn't drive inflation because the extra economic activity grows the economy organically (instead of just pumping stock prices) resulting in more goods and services being produced.
Inflation is what happens when prices increase because there isn't enough c
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Don't come into this discussion with your socialist commie ideas. Pure capitalism baby!
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All politics, no actual analysis (Score:2, Insightful)
When companies are deliberately raising their prices to have record profits [npr.org], hoping the real inflation will cover up their increases [businessinsider.com], this should be expected.
NPR is merely interviewing someone from a left wing activist group. She's cherry picking one example and trying to falsely extrapolate that on a large scale. She's literally just echoing the White House talking points, she virtually admits this with her reference to the President's comments.
All politics, no actual analysis.
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Bullshit. This says that you haven't even looked at the business section of google news. There's no cherry picking needed.
Or did you miss where the Saudi oil company recorded a 90% INCREASE IN PROFITS?
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Or did you miss where the Saudi oil company recorded a 90% INCREASE IN PROFITS?
Are you claiming that there haven't been any changes in the global energy markets to cause that increase? I vaguely recall something about a war, and some sanctions...
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Yeah I used to believe in the idea of a global market too. This thing kind of shows what a sham the global markets really are. Why should Putin's war have any effect on Saudi Arabia's production or their buyers who are not under sanction and not affected by the conflict? Similarly, why does the war drive up domestic prices for oil and gas largely produced domestically?
It's profiteering. That's what's driving inflation right now, not demand outstripping supply capabilities. Companies have taken advantage
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This says that you haven't even looked at the business section of google news.
I looked at and commented on the NPR article. All politics, no actual analysis.
Or did you miss where the Saudi oil company recorded a 90% INCREASE IN PROFITS?
Thanks, now we have two cherry picked examples. Well, almost. As a Saudi company they are not US, hence their exposure to US inflation is limited.
Don't forget the mega mergers (Score:2)
Biden finally changed back to the old rules that consider market share and actual effects on competition but without anti-trust enforcement to break up modern day "bells" that's just closing the barn door after the horses ran off.
And Biden does not think he has the political capital to go trust busting. He's probably right too.
But hey, let's just keep
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This is CYA to a monstrous mistake. They have to keep pounding this to save from disaster at the elections.
It's like a bank truck crashing, and people runn around grabbing dollars, then complaining about it.
Production will produce more...eventually, as greed makes them seek more sales, not just costlier ones.
But everyone saw this coming. We are people of science. When the additional $6 trillion was coming, everyone predicted it would cause inflation, except those who wanted to spend.
Right on schedule, as
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The answer is ground penetrating sonar, ground penetrating radar. They already know where the oil is. These sites have been studied already and found that there is a low probability that they can extract enough oil to be profitable. Exploratory wells are only drilled after there is a confirmation a decent p
Exclude energy and food? (Score:2)
Sure, their 'volatile',
but how can you really exclude those?
Our 3 largest increases in our household.
Food - up at least 25%
Electricity up at least 20%
Gas - Up 100% since Biden entered office.
I guess everything else is up 6.6%, but the three above account for the vast majority of our monthly expenses. It would probably make Our inflation easily over 20%
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What about MY volatile, that's what I want to know.
Note that the word you were looking for and failed to find is "they're", not "there" or "their"...
Real world prices (Score:2)
Let's talk instead about the things that everybody uses, that the poor cannot do without buying. Yes, I think it's obscene that a Jeep SUV MSRP is now in the 90 kilodollar ballpark, but people can buy used cars when new are too expensive. Here are some real world price differences from the previous and current administration:
And these are just the products for which I've been paying attention.
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It's a world-wide problem; supply chains span the world and one hiccup in one country can bottleneck the entire chain. For example, China's zero-covid-tolerance is still randomly shutting factories and ports down. And products and services previously supplied by Russia and Ukraine have been in short supply because of the war.
Climate problems are also contributing. For example, in the US the West is in a severe drought and the East has had flooding. This bleeps with farm products and hydroelectric power. Wh
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Sure, their 'volatile', but how can you really exclude those? Our 3 largest increases in our household.
Food - up at least 25%
Electricity up at least 20%
Gas - Up 100% since Biden entered office.
I guess everything else is up 6.6%, but the three above account for the vast majority of our monthly expenses. It would probably make Our inflation easily over 20%
Interesting that everything looks like year over year except your gas prices.
I'm in Utah which has higher inflation than the national average.
Food: up 30%
Eating out: up 40%
Electricity: up 15%
Gasoline: up 15%
In May. 2020, gasoline in Utah averaged $1.98 / gallon (as low as $1.47 in Salt Lake County). Today gasoline averages $4.19 statewide ($4.26 in Salt Lake County). That's 112% inflation in 29 months statewide (185% inflation in Salt Lake County). This is down from a record high of $5.26 back in July.
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May 2020 is a fucking stupid time to compare the present to, since fewer people were driving due to COVID. Gas prices are also highly seasonal. What you want is pre-COVID data from the same month to compare to.
http://www.utahgasprices.com/R... [utahgasprices.com]
Looks like Oct 2019 was about $2.80. So this is a 50% rise, which isn't great, but it's also not over 100%. Then again, fuel SHOULD be more expensive. Every family doesn't need a stinkbarge SUV that does 15-20 mpg ... even without electric cars, the technology for
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Because they want to look at the effects of the money supply, not the effects of other thing that affect the energy and food prices. It isn't about how the average person suffers, it's about how much they need to adjust the money supply.
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Sure, their 'volatile', but how can you really exclude those? Our 3 largest increases in our household.
Food - up at least 25%
Electricity up at least 20%
Gas - Up 100% since Biden entered office.
I guess everything else is up 6.6%, but the three above account for the vast majority of our monthly expenses. It would probably make Our inflation easily over 20%
Let me try again with more relevant numbers.
Biden took office in Jan 2021. The closest gas price I can find is for Feb 2021. National average gas price was $2.50. Current national average is $3.84. That's 54% inflation since Biden took office - nowhere near the 100% you mention. A better comparison would be year-to-year. Oct 2021 saw national average of $3.25; that gives 18% inflation.
Uh no (Score:4, Funny)
The rental rates are being pushed up more by a reduction in demand than an increase in supply. The rise in investment properties and airbnb (and similar services) coupled with rising permit fees making it difficult to cost effectively build homes has sharply decreased the available housing. The labor market is already contracting in response to the fed's rate increase, and it wasn't nearly as healthy as described previously in any case — jobs that don't pay a living wage only delay homelessness, they don't prevent it.
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Bullshit. Rental prices are going up massively because the biggest owner of rental property are hedge funds.
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You seem to have the law of supply and demand bass ackwards!
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I managed to get what I wrote backwards, anyway. Pretty impressive, or something.
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The rental rates are being pushed up more by a reduction in demand than an increase in supply.
Rental prices get pushed up due to an increase in demand and/or a decrease in supply. The demand for housing has increased while the supply is being restricted. The problem will get worse since everyone is looking for someone to blame even when they themselves are the problem.
Damn plebes (Score:2)
You have too much money! If you can afford to not beg for a job in our wage slave factory, we have to make sure your money ain't worth shit so you come to papa.
Who'da Thunk? (Score:3)
Gee, the Fed is increasing interest rates to tame inflation, which increases mortgage costs by a factor of 10-15%, and we find that inflation is up!
Oh, and Congress also passes a huge stimulus plan to pump money into the economy, and that somehow helps maintain strong consumer spending and employment?!!
When will the clown show end? 6 years is far too long.
Instant Fix, just add water to the brain! (Score:4, Insightful)
> and Congress also passes a huge stimulus plan to pump money into the economy,
Do you mean the infrastructure bills? Most projects haven't started yet. It takes a while to draw up and vet plans. But they are necessary as to fix rickety pipes and bridges that have been neglected for too long, and get us less dependent on oil and the dictators who control most of it.
Pipes don't care about the economy when they prepare to snap.
If you have an easy fix without notable side-effects, let's hear it! Spew forth your grand wisdom so humanity can be improved. I'm all ears...
Double whammy? (Score:3)
It seems like the over-the-top QE during the pandemic blew quite a bubble, but it also seems like the Russo-Ukraine war is keeping oil prices high.
I was expecting all that QE to drive inflation eventually, but maybe not this much. Now the Fed is using monetary policy to quell inflation that has a mixture of monetary and supply related causes, along with many other Covid related distortions such as the unusual demand for lumber that was driven by home improvement projects.
So much "what goes up must come down", but more than one ball in the air.
Wimps! (Score:2)
Computers don't build homes and infrastructure. (Score:2)
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CPI numbers artificially lowered (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if you believe the CPI numbers are not manipulated (which they are [shadowstats.com]), there is a clear factor which lowered the CPI over the last few months...
A key factor in the CPI is energy cost, but over the last several months the U.S. has been dumping the strategic oil reserve around 1 million barrels a day.
So that means energy costs have been lower over the last few months (as we can all see with gas prices) but they are due to stop dumping the oil reserves shortly after the midterms.
So over the next several months oil prices will continue to ramp up and up, greatly affecting CPI going forward for a while as well. Over 8% is the new normal and it will probably crest 9% again before too long.
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All this thread and others like it does is show.. (Score:3)
All this thread -- and others like it -- do is show how utterly brainwashed, indoctrinated, deluded and intolerant so many Americans, Britons and Europeans have become.
Convinced of the correctness of their "thinking" (indoctrination, really), a lot of people are are inching the Western world closer to ruin than ever before. All because people are not thinking, they're merely parroting what they hear and read every day.
I'm done. I'll do my speaking in the ballot box, for what little that's worth. If you lot want to push the world into a Communist / Marxist future where everyone's equally miserable, that's on you. Some tried to warn you, but you won't listen, you won't think.
Think. I mean really think, critically. Stop voting with your feelings. Do it critically, coldly, clinically. Be more Spock than Kirk. Stop blindly believing every word out of the internet, the TV and the pulpit and think about the long-term consequences of your political alignments and actions.
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Oh boy. And the one you apparently like would've been much better for the economy, I'm sure.
Re: No mean twitter tweets tho (Score:2)
lol he *was* its historical data at this point. Look at the market during his years, now look at it.
68K bitcoin sitting below 19k.
8% inflation
S&P500 down a shitton.
Re: No mean twitter tweets tho (Score:5, Insightful)
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How about [washingtonexaminer.com]
But I guess the budget deficit and job creation are only relevant metrics when they're going the wrong way.
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So that means Trump would have done better than Biden in completely different circumstances? "lol" indeed.
But hey, maybe you have a point. What should Biden be doing that Trump would be doing in his place? I assume you would know given what you're saying here
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Presidents get way too much credit/blame for the economy, when they actually don't have a lot of control, at least in normal situations.
Trump inherited a booming economy from Obama, and although he tried to screw it up with his tariff war, those effects would probably only have recently been felt, because stuff like that takes a long time. So Trump's economy was pretty much a straight line progression from Obama's economy... until COVID came along and tanked it.
Trump (with the full support of both parti
Re:No mean twitter tweets tho (Score:5, Insightful)
M2 ballooned under Trump - literally the biggest increase in the graph at https://longtermtrends.net/m2-... [longtermtrends.net] that goes back to 1868. It's dropped drastically under Biden. Now inflation is spiking due to that huge spike. The drop in M2 will drop inflation in a few months but it will take time to unwind. Blame Covid-19.
Most of us would rather have a stable president than an unstable president. And most of us would rather have the higher inflation following the huge M2 spike, and the drop in the markets that was due for a correction anyway than a 1930's depression. The drop in the markets will be a buying opportunity.
Re:No mean twitter tweets tho (Score:5, Insightful)
To unroll your claim a little.
Biden stood up to Putin. This increases risk of war and increased inflation.
Trump would have bent his knee to Putin and allowed him to take it.
Peace in our time.
That would have been a better outcome? Where would Putin have stopped? He would continue.
China would have likely moved on Taiwan seeing the above. Trump would have accepted it.
I prefer Biden's handling of the Ukraine invasion. You give in to a monster who has nuclear weapons, he will continue to take until stopped.
Stable (Score:5, Funny)
“Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart —you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you’re a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”
Part of a campaign speech given by Donald Trump in July 2015
Re:No mean twitter tweets tho (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah the 'we can have it all' fantasy (Score:2, Interesting)
No - ladies and gentlemen - given that the long term demands for public spending from rising numbers of pensioners, health care costs etc, the reality is that the economy is going to have to do VERY well to pay for all your toys and the ones the wrinklies will demand. So no - you can't have it all...
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To a billionaire enough is never enough. If it was it would have stopped around 100 million dollars because that's more money than anyone can ever spend
Re:No mean twitter tweets tho (Score:5, Insightful)
Conversely, the economy tanked under the con artist and the national debt soared.
That is what you meant, right?
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Frankly, during the most normal of times, it's usually hard to draw a causative link between *any* financial indicator and a particular presidential administration, though we love to pretend endlessly.
Looking at such indicators from the onset of the pandemic to today is even more decoupled from the actions of any administration. A whole lot more bigger things happened than the happenstance of the president.
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We had a polite president & record stock marke (Score:5, Insightful)
And now it falls on Biden to fix the mess Trump caused. As for being polite, I think we're past that [duckduckgo.com]. Way, way past that. [youtube.com]
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That wasn't the trouble (Score:2)
The trouble with Trump was he and his party weren't regulating Wall Street. The dirty secret is they were doing 2008 style loans, but giving them to businesses instead of consumers. This created a bubble economy that was able to ride on the strong work Obama did as a base.
The whole thing
Re:No mean twitter tweets tho (Score:5, Informative)
How dumb do you have to be to think there's a correlation between the president and how the economy is doing? There's ample evidence that presidents play a very small role, if any.
There's nothing mysterious about what's going on. There was already a trend where China's productivity increases were slowing down, and it was entirely demographic in nature. That, in turn, caused global business to start losing interest in China as a growth market, and started pushing a relatively mild on-shoring trend where manufacturing started trickling back to North America. At the same time, you have a worldwide phenomenon where the largest generation ever (the boomers) are hitting peak retirement age, and the generation graduating high school right now is much, much smaller, so you have a steady shrinking of the labour pool. From a worldwide perspective the US doesn't even have it nearly as bad as other developed nations in this regard, but it's not immune to the global effects. Then you throw COVID into the mix and it drops productivity levels around the world for a few months, and hits China even harder because Xi doesn't want to use MRNA vaccines, so they're still working through shutdowns. The pandemic spooked the rest of global businesses who all realized this on-shoring thing was a good idea, and caused a race back to manufacture in North America. All that by itself was driving a ton of inflation because total global production was and is still way down, and yet consumer demand was still high, and there's also industrial demand to build out more production in North America. Then Russia goes and invades Ukraine, which had a huge number of knock-on effects related to inflation: the sanctions took a whole bunch of Russian energy off the market, spiking energy prices, Ukraine's wheat can't really make it to world markets, spiking food prices, and a every western nation just realized they'd better up their defense spending because Russia's being a bear in a china shop. So the world's short on energy, short on food, short on workers, and is trying to build out defense forces and industrial infrastructure all at the same time that China's manufacturing output is stalled by continuing lockdowns.
Geez, I wonder why things are more expensive... must be whoever the president is right now.
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The unemployment rate was 6.3% when delusional don was booted out of the White House. It's 3.5% now. You're right; the president does have an affect on the economy!
You're an idiot.... The unemployment rate going down DOES NOT MEAN those people got jobs. It CAN mean that. It's also equally likely they dropped off the unemployment rolls when benefits ran out.
You'd have to match it up with the employment rate and see where the jobs went.
You do understand that the "unemployment rate" is the percentage of people drawing UI benefits and NOT the amount of people with no jobs, right? Right?
True unemployment, among adults, in this country is a lot closer to 25% because
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Why would you include people that aren't looking for a job in the unemployment rate?
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That's the worst way to measure inflation.
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It's been captured by echo chamber overlords, both official organizations, and unofficial echo chamber meme victims, self-appointed to action, which is the point of memes and echo chambers.
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No longer is this shit limited to Sunday talk shows, and now news channel evening opinion shows.
No. Thanks to the Internet, the politically motivated can insinuate themselves everywhere.
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