American Politics 4.0 - Orangeyou Glad He’s Back?

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

https://www.americanimmigrationcounc...ss-deportation

Nice source bubble boy.

We saw large scale deportations during the Obama administration. And ecomomic analysis given in what is probably a VERY biased publication did not playout that way for Obama. Yes Obama had the 2008 financial crisis, so nowhere to go but up right? Trump still has the lingering effects of the Covid lockdowns and inflatio..i mean bideneconomics

Yet here we are!

A good sign that maybe you should take things with a grain of salt is when economists try and predict the future on something that is very complex but manage to come up with definite numbers and do not pay homage to history.

Living rent free in your head LMFAO

ad hominim attacks are below my paygrade champ. and you cited Vox has a source in a previous post, that is when you know not to take someone seriously...

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

We are both right though. Yes prices are going up at a much slower rate than before for sure over the long term, thats monetary inflation working and that's been happening for decades. but they fluctuate in the short term.

Having said all that, there ain't anything Trump is going to do about prices, unless his policies lower energy costs.

My original point is that the whole Tariff boogie man thing is over blown and hard to quantify.

But you literally said that food prices would be going down, and then later stated that they are already going down due to inflation. If that’s no longer your position because you can’t find any data that supports it then that’s fine but just say that or clarify that you meant to say that lower fuel costs should help keep inflation from spiking higher than necessary in the future.

I mean if you voted Liberal in Canada.. you shouldn't care because there is nothing worse for prices across the board than a carbon tax.

Well I didn’t vote liberal so I’m not sure what this has to do with anything. Oddly enough though coming out of the pandemic inflation in Canada with a carbon tax was lower than it was in the US(and a lot of other countries) without a carbon tax. Given our exchanges here you’ll have to forgive me for not being in a position to give you the benefit of doubt that you’ve actually got proof that there is as you claim “nothin worse”.

Was this just your way of passive aggressively asking me to stop asking you to back up the things that you say?

If you don’t want to have a reasonable discussion that’s fine, there’s no need for you to bring yourself down to that level. You can just let me know if you change your mind.

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

But you literally said that food prices would be going down, and then later stated that they are already going down due to inflation. If that’s no longer your position because you can’t find any data that supports it then that’s fine but just say that or clarify that you meant to say that lower fuel costs should help keep inflation from spiking higher than necessary in the future.

Food prices
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/15/busin...ril/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/12/busin...ing/index.html
Google it for ya

Think we need to distiguish between inflation + higher prices and higher prices because of increased business expenses. They aren't the same thing. A Carbon tax does make everything more expensive. but it has nothing to do with the inlation rate or very little < 0.1%

[DownInFlames]

Tariffs aren't necessarily a bad thing but why did Trump have to constantly lie about them and say China would pay them? Either he was too dumb to know the truth or he knew that people wouldn't be happy if they knew the truth. Either way it's just another reason it's baffling that so many people support him.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

Nice source bubble boy.

Obviously didn't read the report. The report is fully cited and most of the information comes from the United States government offices responsible for collection and dissemination of the data. It's like you go out of your way to be stupid.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

Food prices
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/15/busin...ril/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/12/busin...ing/index.html
Google it for ya

Think we need to distiguish between inflation + higher prices and higher prices because of increased business expenses. They aren't the same thing. A Carbon tax does make everything more expensive. but it has nothing to do with the inlation rate or very little < 0.1%

I don’t know how you can say in the same breath that there’s nothing worse than a carbon tax for food prices(inflation) and a carbon tax has nothing to do with inflation. But that’s a whole other can of worms.

Again, you made the statement that prices will be/are lower.

So either say that’s no longer your position or that you don’t have any evidence to support your claim. Either is better than trying to move the goalposts like this.

Hypothetical examples for evidence of this would be the average price of grocery product x was $1 and now it is $0.90.

Saying the price of grocery product x will rise at a slower rate doesn’t support the claim that the price of that product is going down or went down.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by 2Stonedbirds

With wages? Sure.

Good luck with that; you're falling into the same trap that Democrats did by thinking that if wage growth surpassed price growth that people wouldn't care about the latter, but that's not the case. Real wages (i.e. inflation-adjusted) have been rising in the US (and in Canada too) throughout the elevated inflation period of the last 2 years, and look how popular it made incumbent governments.

People complain about gas prices all the time. Does the fact that inflation-adjusted gas prices are lower than they were 20 years ago change that? No, people just don't like seeing raw prices go up quickly.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

Think we need to distiguish between inflation + higher prices and higher prices because of increased business expenses. They aren't the same thing. A Carbon tax does make everything more expensive. but it has nothing to do with the inlation rate or very little < 0.1%

That's very true. You would expect tariffs to introduce a more or less one-time price shock, but not necessarily contribute to ongoing inflation over time. Prices would go higher, and then probably grow normally after that.

The problem with that in terms of politics and governance is that people have clearly demonstrated that they don't like higher prices, even if inflation returns to normal relatively quickly. 2% inflation is of little comfort for people who are angry about things costing 25% more than they did 3 years ago

[Snuffleupagus]

Maybe Washington, Oregon and California should separate and join Canada, hell lets take Hawaii as well.

[direwolf]

Originally Posted by Snuffleupagus

Maybe Washington, Oregon and California should separate and join Canada, hell lets take Hawaii as well.

Can we throw Colorado in there too? I love that state, and politically it’s as blue as they come.

[Aarongavey]

As someone whose parents were family friends with Mel Bridgman, I am happy this Mel Bridgeman misspelt his name.

[BigThief]

California should just become their own thing. Ditto Texas.

[BigThief]

Originally Posted by 2Stonedbirds

With wages? Sure.

Remember when Alberta increased the minimum wage ten years ago and the cost of living skyrocketed and we never recovered.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

My original point is that the whole Tariff boogie man thing is over blown and hard to quantify.

I mean if you voted Liberal in Canada.. you shouldn't care because there is nothing worse for prices across the board than a carbon tax.

Okay, so there's this concept in economics of specialization. It's a very good thing. Instead of having every person grow their own food, build their own house, solve their own health problems, someone becomes a doctor and looks after multiple patients, including, perhaps the builder and farmer. The builder builds homes of the doctor and the farmer. The farmer feeds them. Etc. This arrangement allows the individuals to excel at their specialization and their collective output grows.

Countries benefit from specialization too, and that's the point of free trade. Tariffs are a barrier to free trade and thus will be a barrier to specialization. It's not just inflation that's the problem, they are going to cause a real GDP drop. Especially in highly specialized countries that sell to America, but even in America, though it has a large and varied economy, will suffer.

There are still things America cannot or won't want to do. Does a country with 4.1% unemployment really want to make its own t-shirts? Its own toasters? Grow its own bananas? Or should it buy its bananas, toasters and t-shirts and focus its resources on tech, finance, entertainment, research, and the construction and services that can only be delivered with local labour?

Unlike economic specialization, pollution is a bad thing. The carbon tax is a pollution tax that gets rebated! Both raise prices, yes, but one is bad economic policy that causes a net loss and the other, done well, actually improves things for society by making companies pay for the environmental damage they do (thus pushing the free market to make better choices). That's why I could support a carbon tax (which, again, comes with a rebate) but not tariffs.

[afc wimbledon]

The problem with tariffs are that they usually end up creating a tariff war, the US puts tariffs on everyone, everyone then puts tariffs on the US, US voters get angry at the fact they are thrown out of work because in a heavily tariffed world cheaper Chinese products actually become more attractive so the voters demand more tariffs, things spiral out of control eventually you get the Grapes of Wrath and Germany invading Poland, I mean Hoover's tariffs were what throw the world into the Great Depression and Trump's plans are a carbon copy except substitute Bitcoin for the Gold Standard

Right wingers like this simplistic neo liberal crap but we have been down this path before and it ddn't end well

[activeStick]

The below leaking out doesn't bode well when Trump takes the chair in January. Especially with his history with the alphabet organizations during his first term.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/08/polit...ump/index.html

https://twitter.com/user/status/1854982978994139389

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by activeStick

The below leaking out doesn't bode well when Trump takes the chair in January. Especially with his history with the alphabet organizations during his first term.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/08/polit...ump/index.html

https://twitter.com/user/status/1854982978994139389

The irony is political stability is the US's major asset, Trump is about to make the US as about as attractive as Brazil for investment, of course Canada could do quite well as an escape route for the money no one will put in the US, if Musk is in charge we should definitely look to suck up tech companies that don't want to operate in an economy run by their competitor

[2Stonedbirds]

Originally Posted by BigThief

Remember when Alberta increased the minimum wage ten years ago and the cost of living skyrocketed and we never recovered.

Some states included increasing minimum wage on the ticket, including red states such as Missouri.

But we're not talking about increasing minimum wage. Just that you'll have to pay legal residents what they are legally entitled to.

Also, it would seem most every media and economic outlet besides The Fraser Institute would disagree with your sentiment regarding min wage and cost of living "skyrocketing" in Alberta.

https://albertaworker.ca/politics/ra...ase-inflation/

[SebC]

Originally Posted by GullFoss

https://twitter.com/user/status/1855616267777888487

This guy gets it. The democrats failed not because its messaging was poor or because some voters are racist or misogynist or because Kamala was a historically unpopular politician. All of those things are true to some extent, but none of those problems were insurmountable.

The democrat party failed because it doesn't offer real solutions to the genuine problems faced by large coalitions of disenfranchised citizens. Instead, the democrats do what's best for the elite that fund them. And then the democrat machinery gaslights and talks downs to those citizens calling them racist, deplorables, uneducated, stupid, homophobic, white trash, rightwing extremists, religious cultists, etc.

And the democrats do that because their party is beholden to the elites who profit off the global order that has devastated larges swaths of the country's identity, dignity and economic well-being. So the democrats are happy to attack republicans for their proposed solutions to these very real problems, but can't offer any solutions of their own.

Its not just Trump. Republicans won up and down the ticket for good reason.

Trump is literally going to cut taxes for billionaires and have the richest man in the world in charge of cutting services to fund it.

So tell me please what the "good reason" for Republicans winning is. Surely it's not just "Democrats bad" and there's an actual comparison involved in which the Republicans come out ahead.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by BigThief

Remember when Alberta increased the minimum wage ten years ago and the cost of living skyrocketed and we never recovered.

No.

But I can remember about 3 years after it was increased the cost of living skyrocketed and has continued to skyrocket for another 3 years and counting since despite the fact that the minimum wage you’re claiming was the root cause for all of this inflation hasn’t changed.