this may be a little bit dated but it illustrates what you guys are trying to say a little better. Those of you that know me know my disdain for the NY Times, but I thought this was pretty good. The "Median party" line in the screen cap below is that of the politics of Europe.
Full article is here https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...far-right.html
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That's calling it black and white, when politics have a huge spectrum.
Sounds more grammatically you are comparing liberal and conservative. After all, extreme-gauche is a term for socialist. Radical right can mean anything from the 50's "responsible right", or it could be racists/nativism, up to conspiracism, or a mixture of any of it.
roguetoaster said it well. They are just labels the current elites are using to divide us peasants. I bet most people are near the middle with a little swaying right/left based on personal beliefs/morals. Most of us don't like to see poverty/death/destruction towards fellow man, but you will have those extremes on both sides of the coin.Leave a comment:
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We can also blame consumers to a degree since we are supposed to restrain spending when we feel some type of crunch or we feel pricing becomes unfavorable. While we can't make large changes on a dime, such as replacing an inefficient vehicle with a FE one, we can switch our buying habits to secondary product lines or simply do without convenience items, but we have had a very hard time with that historically.
OTOH, vendors are supposed to lower prices when buying decreases, and since buying does not decrease as it should, or does so only slightly, they probably feel like they can or must maximize profit by raising prices to compensate for slightly lower total sales volume for whatever reason they pulled out of a hat today without being called out on it.
We'll probably also look back at interest rates being too low for too long as a major culprit, but I also hope we don't look back and see the large rate changes this year as damaging in the back half of 2022 or beyond.Leave a comment:
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Seriously. Who are you to tell me to gtfo of an internet forum? I never mentioned that idiot's name. Everything is so expensive now because it is manipulated that way.
Fed massive QE + unchecked PPP 'loans' + fraud + wall street and large market movers and companies taking advantage of the situation and the oil market and then, now, the war in Ukraine has made inflation what it is.Leave a comment:
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Right and left are just stupid labels we use to conveniently put others in a box labeled either friend or enemy. They mean nothing, and everyone is all over the map on policy.
The main change went from the political thought of, hey I disagree but maybe we can compromise to, hey you are the spawn of satan and you must die because you disagree with my opinion. This seems to have become fully entrenched in the early 1990s. Now we have added the facts don't matter mentality to that since the mid 2000s and we find ourselves completely unable to work together based on a label.
How do we fix that? IDK, probably start a global war or something.Leave a comment:
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Almost like we are living somewhere between Orwell 1984 the Calhoun's Experiment.
Worst part is, history repeats itself, and everyone is too busy to watch the patterns. The economy is very much 1984-ish. Most of the genpop can't see past the previous/past 2yr, nevermind watching generational cycles.
Either way, we have politicians that have been in office for 30-40-50 years. There's no one to blame? No one set of policies? Just look at who controlled the government over the past 70yrs. It's in plain sight, factual statistics that are at anyone's phone.
Reagan always a liberal, see why he switched parties. When the left moves too far left,the centers become right.
Just like this "pandemic". I'm not saying it didn't hurt and/or kill people, but anytime I hear about comparisons to 1918, I just remember that the population in the US actually DROPPED in 1918-1921, while 100yrs later the population growth has not changed in the last several years.
Personally, I feel I have always been very central. Now, many people call me extreme right? It's crazy times.
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^
Well, those board members are important, and the end user has no other choice than to buy our product, so, yeah, eat it consumers.
OTOH, the consumers are really dumb, won't make changes rapidly, and can't generally figure how they fit in, so I guess they're just asking to be boned.
It's basically a perfect self predating system with consumers fighting themselves for products, and too lazy to research other than familiar products. But one day the base of the pyramid will get too weak to support the bulk above, then, boom, dystopian corporate sci-fi future.
On a brighter note we'll get to actively destroy corps, but only at the behest of our chosen, somehow better, corp.Leave a comment:
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lmao
Still gotta blame Trump for something right? lmao
...the response to the pandemic in 2019... get the fuck out of here, man.
Everyone is getting priced gouged.. the housing marked is fucked because of Wall street and oil companies are fucking us at the pump and bringing in 300% profits this year? They've profited like 35 billion dollars in their first quarter in 2022...
Everything is so much more expensive now, but it's not because of inflation.Leave a comment:
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Certainly +1.
So many things leading up to the inflation & the markets we see now-- the recent ones are most especially the Fed, that out of control money printing machine, the response at the onset of the pandemic -- which was December 2019. War in Ukraine exacerbates it a bit. Mr. Sleeve this is just a continuation.
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Funny thing is the USD has actually strengthened vs other currencies recently. And it's painted as either a good/bad thing depending on which outlet reports on it - it's either bad, because exports do better with a weaker dollar, or good, because it gives us a better deal on imports. I swear all financial reporting is schizophrenic. For example: video card prices are too high! I can't wait for them to drop - damn the miners! Oh, prices are dropping? the end is nigh! bitcoin is dead! they're all going to go bankrupt!
It's absolutely ridiculous. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.
Sorry to hear mrsleeve if you're not doing as great financially - with the way oil prices are, I'd think you'd be doing OK. we've been super busy here. I'm only awake right now because I'm working and I needed a break while the computer ran something for me. We even got some mid-stream work starting up and that was dead all through the Trump admin (ironically). Oil prices are always a double edged sword to me - when the price temporarily went negative during the start of Covid, I was pretty sure I'd be homeless, but it didn't end up working out that way. Oh, and adjusted for inflation (hah!), gas prices are still lower than they were in 2008.
I don't really panic about the markets either, I learned I'm really bad at timing the highs, but it's easy to see when everyone is freaking out and to buy when things are low. I doubled my rate of savings and it timed nicely with the downturn. But it did make me a little more aware that when I get older and closer to wanting to retire, I'm going to want to reduce that risk. I can afford the huge down swing in the markets now because I don't need that money for another 10 years at least.
Also I wish Elon Musk would shut his freaking mouth and just run his companies. But I digress..Leave a comment:
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To say this inflation has been building up isn't entirely true. From 2020-2022 the US "printed" 28% more money (10% just in 2020 alone $44.9t to $50.3t). What did everyone think was going to happen?
Common sense says that money is worth 70% of what it was two years ago, we are lucky to see 8.x% and 10.x% on the indexes. That's a whole 'nother story, anyways. Public inflation rates has had the formula updated 3x since Carter - each time making appear less than it is. If you use 1980's formulas we are about 16%. In the 80's the index was calc'd by purchases a specific set of commodities, services, energy use and the like. Then, they started allowing "substitutions", you know, like hamburger meat is as good as filet since they are both beef. All you have to do is look at your receipts/debit transactions from <2020 and compare.
8% inflation? Then why did my power bill increase 20% in Jan and will again in October. My vehicles take 2x as much to fill, our grocery budget hasn't changed, but now we are substituting and going without (still have three teens at home). Dog food has doubled (when we can find it), chicken has almost tripled, beef doubled, the list goes on. Sure the wife got a 6% merit raise, and I bumped shop prices a bit, but the bottom line it's not enough.
As soon as the gov't announced they were handing out checks, I KNEW the dollar was going to tank. Most of the public didn't "need" that money, many businesses that are owned by friends were fully functional during the closures, they all got checks, wife and I worked the entire time, we got checks. Then those that didn't need the money started blowing it on stocks/crypto, home renovations and the like (lumber shortage/price spike), updating their cars (price spike), upgrading homes (price spike).
I think it's a bipartisan issue, we all want term limits, and we all know who makes the policies, and we all know who has had the real control. Let's get all the career fart dusting q-tips out.
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