Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 454: King Nothing

(+) Yeah! (+)

UltimaterializerX posted...

I still dont get the point when Stanford proved WFH is more productive and makes for happier employees.

This administration doesn't want happy employees.

They want people to quit.

HeroicCrono posted...

They want people to quit.

They probably wouldn't care if some just dropped dead too.

https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1895694102034874736?s=46&t=v9nzYLLBIiNYrqldFs9NWQ

Tweet unrelated, just extremely frustrating to watch.

6 months ago I had my first ever youve been moved to the next stage on a USAJobs app Id ever had (the listing was eventually canceled lol), but its funny to think how if Id have gone through all the trouble to get that job and onboard Id probably be unemployed from it already.

They can't have all the office space real estate becoming superfluous at the same time. You know that's going to cost some wealthy people a lot of money.

https://therecord.media/hegseth-orders-cyber-command-stand-down-russia-planning

...Why? I mean I know the reason, but like what's the justification in MAGA World going to be?

Forceful_Dragon posted...

Annnnd here comes "What did you do last week? Part II"

So almost the exact same as last week, except with the caveat that it should be completed every week moving forward.

How does that function as a "proof of life"? It's just busywork that is going to result in the government paying for hundreds of thousands of extra man hours each week that has nothing to do with our tasks.

My agency still is refusing to answer so

What I got from Zelenskys visit was Trumps typical gunboat diplomacy and Gish Galloping. Hes right that he holds the cards but its disrespectful for him to not even consider what Zelensky is saying since hes giving full context (presumably Trump thinks its unnecessary despite being very pertinent, because hes a typical American who only cares what happens elsewhere if it directly threatens national security). At this point just business as usual though.

That being said, it is astounding how much of a doormat Trump is for all his bluster. I dont like how many young men look up to this guy at all, but I cant say I dont get it.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/28/trump-russia-hacking-cyber-security

The US is no longer characterising Russia as a cybersecurity threat. Again, somehow things have been even worse than expected.

Economy was humming along under the previous administration, and people didn't want that I guess.

I'm actually impressed with the speedrunning effort of tanking a country's reputation, economy, and security. Bravo.

A market crash is imminent at this current rate.

UltimaterializerX posted...

Its the private sector, too. We already showed we work better at home, so just let us? Its common sense?

The old people in charge don't believe that.

They are convinced that WFH means everyone will slack off and not work. Or secretly work multiple jobs.

LightningStrikes posted...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/28/trump-russia-hacking-cyber-security

The US is no longer characterising Russia as a cybersecurity threat. Again, somehow things have been even worse than expected.

Nobody knows more about cybersecurity than Donnie Dumbass!

DoctorPiranha3 posted...

A market crash is imminent at this current rate.

DOOOOOOOOOOOM

You're so funny, haha!

What?

You must not know me. People in this topic will vouch-- I'm being totally serious in that post.

Lopen's previous 7 market crash predictions failed but this one will be true (not even joking - it will be bad)

Lopen is waiting for the lizard people to come enslave us all. Pay him no mind.

Yeah, we'll crash this time but it definitely feels like it was sorta avoidable. Like Biden mostly managed as smooth a landing as we could coming off of the aftershocks of COVID but now Trump's shit is 200% guaranteed to cause a bad recession.

guffguy89 posted...

Forgive me though, when after three years, and likely many more to go, for thinking of alternatives to bring peace to that region.

There's literally no way to do that, since we're not the aggressor. Russia is. Only Russia can end the war. Period.

This is the fallacy of US world police foreign policy that got us so intertwined into the middle east and south america and such. We really believed we could end 1000 years of war halfway around the world if we just dropped enough bombs. It didn't work with Vietnam and it didn't work with Afghanistan, Iran, etc. It's not our war to end.

What did work with Vietnam is... trade. Employ their cheap labor. Let the immigrants open a bunch of pho restaurants. Now it's one of our strongest allies and the region is incredibly stable, despite neighboring communist tensions.

We can do that with the middle east and Gaza and honestly with Russia too.

foolm0r0n posted...

What did work with Vietnam is... trade. Employ their cheap labor. Let the immigrants open a bunch of pho restaurants. Now it's one of our strongest allies and the region is incredibly stable, despite neighboring communist tensions.

We can do that with the middle east and Gaza and honestly with Russia too.

Didn't we already try doing that with Russia back in the 90's? It ended up with their economy getting wrecked and their government being taken over by corrupt oligarchs, leading to basically all the problems with Russia today.

It worked great for a while, especially the space collaboration. When the world started sanctioning them heavily (which is an act of war) it boosted their isolationism and nationalism.

500k Russians have died in the war. That doesn't happen just because of poor economy and oligarchy. It has to be escalated to that point.

I would blame Europe for the sanctions more than the US. And that's also a huge reason why making Europe take the majority responsibility for Ukraine makes sense, since it is an issue of regional economics. It can be solved with a treaty re-establishing the trade channels.

Who could have possibly foreseen

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/28/politics/us-intel-russia-china-attempt-recruit-disgruntled-federal-employees/index.html

DoctorPiranha3 posted...

Economy was humming along under the previous administration, and people didn't want that I guess.

Ehh... let's not get too revisionist just yet. The #1 issue for voters in 2024 was the economy. If the economy was "humming," it wouldn't have been the single most important issue that drove voters one way or the other.

The economy was, in fact, humming. The US weathered the global recession better than almost the rest of the entire world.

Just because voters don't understand that and got conned by grifters doesn't mean that it wasn't true

Our economy has been fucked since Covid basically. People like to say Biden fixed it but he took a half measure with rates and artificially propped it up with rampant government spending.

Trump will crash it harder than Harris would have but I feel this was inevitable either way. You can only mask the damage covid did with government spending so long.

FFDragon posted...

The economy was, in fact, humming. The US weathered the global recession better than almost the rest of the entire world.

Just because voters don't understand that and got conned by grifters doesn't mean that it wasn't true

Yeah by any reasonable measure the economy was basically back to where it was right before Covid. People just blamed Democrats for high inflation just like incumbents all around the world. Im sure Democrats winning three of the previous four elections (as well as the popular vote four times in a row) had NOTHING to do with that.

Keep in mind that the youngest voters in the previous election would have known a Republican in office for most of their lives. By contrast, the youngest voters in the last election would have known Biden occupying one of the two highest offices for two-thirds of their lives. There was basically nothing in the Democratic Party platform for them, and everything I have read suggests that the Dems leftward shift was indeed what alienated voters last year, though that doesnt mean that sticking to the center wouldve helped considering Hillary Clinton.

In the last election Democrats went down a whopping 25 percentage points with voters under 25 and 29 percentage points with men under 30. Stuff like going down 13 percentage points with voters aged 25-29, 15 percentage points with women under 30, and 19 percentage points with Latinas can at least be chalked up to generational turnover, but the earlier stuff not so much. I do think whoever Democrats send in 2028 will be elected President, but they shouldnt take the youth vote for granted ever again.

Also from what Ive read Democrats actually stayed where they were with white men, implying Bidens white working-class coalition stayed. Democrats sure abandoned the working class!

Cupcake2006 posted...

Ehh... let's not get too revisionist just yet. The #1 issue for voters in 2024 was the economy. If the economy was "humming," it wouldn't have been the single most important issue that drove voters one way or the other.

No one is revising anything. Voters being fucking morons has no impact on the real state of things.

At least they werent only morons in the States tbf.

LinkMarioSamus posted...

Yeah by any reasonable measure the economy was basically back to where it was right before Covid

It was attificially propped up to give the illusion it was yes.

What does that even mean

It means government ramped up spending to give the impression that the economy was doing well. It was basically a stimulus without actually calling it one.

That's why our debt ramped way the hell up. In 2022 and 2023 and basically put us back exactly where we were after the disastrous reaction to covid in terms of debt numbers

I also feel the unemployment numbers were fiddled with repeatedly cause we never got a reliable number on the first report and it was nearly always revised up

Basically the goverment has been conceal symptoms of a covid caused recession for years

To me that mostly just seems like the benefits of moderate social democratic policies. Which we are now seeing get removed and the impacts of.

Anyway speaking of moderate social democrats, here is something actually heartwarming for once, the way the UK PM met Zelenskyy after the White House fiasco:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/0/09a6a4ad.jpg

Which is all for the big security summit happening right now in London with European leaders and Canada. It will both be easy but western security is going to have to manage without the US.

LightningStrikes posted...

To me that mostly just seems like the benefits of moderate social democratic policies. Which we are now seeing get removed and the impacts of.

I mean

Unless you mean we didn't have those benefits in 2014 then no that's not really it

Like they're going on a witch hunt to down the spending to dumb lows but they were also at unprecedented highs. Keep in mind this is also in much less obvious ways like contracting-- not just a govenrment workforce.

So the Biden administration intervened to save the economy. How much different is that really compared to FDR?

I'll admit though that it was a Reddit post which said that the inflation rate by 2024 was basically back to where it was in 2019. So I'm not terribly knowledgeable about this myself. However, the reason there was a perception that the economy was poor is because people complained about not being able to afford stuff even as economic experts were touting unemployment reaching record lows and massive job growth. Not to mention the main reasons for high inflation were mass reopening of jobs following the pandemic and an increase in gas prices following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, both of which were completely out of the administration's hands. And for my part, I'm used to the economy being considered bad if unemployment is high, and as I mentioned that was very much NOT the case following the pandemic.

Yes lets not forget that the US taxes and spends significantly less relative to GDP than nearly every other advanced economy. Yes it was record spending, but the moves Biden made were not particularly unusual for an advanced economy at all.

Lopen posted...

Our economy has been fucked since Covid basically. People like to say Biden fixed it but he took a half measure with rates and artificially propped it up with rampant government spending.

Trump will crash it harder than Harris would have but I feel this was inevitable either way. You can only mask the damage covid did with government spending so long.

if ur gonna go that route its been fucked since 2007

Metal_DK posted...

if ur gonna go that route its been fucked since 2007

I mean kinda. I don't think we ever really fixed the fallout of the 08 financial crisis, just kinda kept sweeping it under the rug and covid kinda made it hit a critical mass that Biden didn't fix. Not Biden's fault, just not something to praise him for either.

He gets praise for basic competence!

Social media addiction ruined the economy even more than the housing collapse of 08

Living in the US the economy seems fucked. High wages but ridiculously high cost of living too that seems to be spiraling more and more out of control.

If you go to any other country on a US wage though, the difference is huge and it feels like despite it being fucked in the US, they must have handled it better than other countries. If you had a US wage and lived in basically any other country, you'd be incredibly well set.

Whenever I go abroad, it feels like I can spray money around like a strip club because of how absurdly cheap everything is elsewhere due to their wages being miles behind US wages. I've been to Japan 3 times in the last 15 months and it would literally be cheaper for me to live out of a hotel for a month and eat out every single meal than my mortgage and expenses in the US. And my mortgage isn't bad since I got it in 2019 before the boom and have a 3% interest rate.

It's the same when I go back to the UK to see family. I always comment how cheap everything is and they are always like 'What? That's crazy, it's stupid expensive'.

Then if you go to a lesser off country like Colombia, you may as well be a king. Was absurd how far US money went there when I went for a wedding in Cartagena in November.

Biden reduced money supply and raised rates above 3% for the first time since like Clinton, and it worked. Of course keynesianism still existed and short term debt rose since he took half measures to do the "soft landing", but it incontrovertibly proves that we can actually use some deflationary techniques without crashing everything.

Also, economics is relative, and it's really hard to say your economy is bad when it's relatively better than 99% of the world's economies. I would love if we were actually anti-keynesian but I certainly wouldn't complain if we just maintained being the keynesian economy in the world.

Every now and then the right people show up and the topic becomes completely displaced from reality. Hopefully a new topic will kill this.

The economy was good, but inflation (businesses seizing the opportunity and raising prices) absolutely decimated the feeling of a good economy.

I'm currently getting paid US money (well above federal minimum wage, but nothing huge, something like $40k if I were fulltime) while living in the UK, and I'm having to work about 2/3 the hours of what I would in a UK job. Dollars go a long way.

Sheep007 posted...

I'm currently getting paid US money (well above federal minimum wage, but nothing huge, something like $40k if I were fulltime) while living in the UK, and I'm having to work about 2/3 the hours of what I would in a UK job. Dollars go a long way.

If I could keep my US wage and move back to the UK, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

When I transferred within the same company from the UK to the US in 2012, my wage as a design engineer in England was ~60% of what the US paid entry level customer support positions with no prior skills or experience.

Checking google it looks like the wage discrepancy is still about the same. UK office gets ~60% of what the US wages are at like for like positions. That's not factoring in tax brackets. I know from experience the UK gets taxed way heavier than the US but US obviously has medical insurance/bills to counteract.

I have a buddy working a six figure remote US job and living in Japan, and he lives like an actual King.

IIRC, Japan keeps their currency weak on purpose

Biden put a bandaid on the economy, and it did pretty well. But people didn't like there being a bandaid, so they removed it and now there's just a gashing wound. The bandaid might not have fixed everything, but it certainly didn't make things worse.

This is the age of spite politics. Only the Dems aren't playing that game. But the Republicans are, and they're winning decisively.