Interesting. Turns out any of us can be anarchists I guess.

When you guys rioting and looting next?

It's funny after a semi-bloodless coup to be on the side of history who was conservative before I experienced this existential threat to democracy and recognized it.

I'm disappointed in all of us.

Something happend over the last 24 hours?

what u going to do Derrick? or I guess what DID you do Derrick?

Lol, guess the haters are too busy rioting and looting to trash talk today.

After a tape was released showing Trump engaging in a conspiracy to commit election fraud with Georgia officials, the president of the united states staged a coup against his own country yesterday. Guiliani called for trial by combat, Don jr called for them to "Take it back," and Trump said he would march with them on the capitol (which he did not). His people stormed the Capitol building and we had our first attempted overthrow of the capitol since the war of 1812. Trump is well liked in these parts so I just wanted some reactions to it as discussions of evoking the 25th amendment and sending his ass to jail for treason are going on.

At least he finally agreed to a peaceful transition today finally after inciting a riot and getting banned from all social media for encouraging violence. Kinda wondering if that's the last we will hear from him really. He embarrassed us on the world stage for the last time and tried to thwart so fragile a democracy by staging a siege at the Capitol. It's soooooo embarrassing to be american now more than ever. Pray for the families of the 4 lives lost yesterday, and the future of our democracy.

Those who didn't see this comming are either lying or laughably stupid. The dumb dumber kind. I mean the disregard for the democratic process outlined in the constitution was signalled over and over since at the very least early 2016. If you didn't see that you are too stupid to vote.

I already know what you are doing.
Ceiling llamas ALWAYS KNOW

Ceiling Llama 2024!

Just call it a protest.

A "mostly peaceful" protest.

And to quote the idiot Chris Cuomo "no where in the 1st amendment does it say that a protest has to be peaceful. Be careful what you wish for. The right is better trained.

Yeahhh I dont think anyone was wishing for that. No one even wanted a KMart robbed as I remember. That was me, I said that.

Dont flip the script and start supporting insurrection after calling me names for associating with people who got new sneakers. If you go supporting this, while maintaining calling me a rioter and such, I think it's quite clear you're a fringe terrorist lol. Or at least a sympathizer of such behavior. Lord.

I always knew it'd come to be a double edge sword, but to gerdlers point, I actually didnt see it panning out as an actual attack on democracy. Solid. At least we can all realize I was never really a rioter, you were never really a terrorist, and we were both just regular ass dudes tryna american dream that would never participate in such nonsense.

American died with this stolen election. I knew it had to happen eventually, but never thought that i would see it in my lifetime.

It is a shame.

And riots i do not support. Insurrections i do. To loosely quote Jefferson "sometimes the tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants". Sadly we have reached that point. The great experiment is over.

Ok America, pack it up. Smegma has spoken.

Yeah, it was a good run I guess. :P

Was it tho? Lol

Nafta is gone, that's a big win in my book, I didn't agree with many things he did and said, but you cannot ignore the good he did, manufacturing has come back to life in this country, I'm in transportation and got to see the difference first hand, Democrats talked a lot of talk during this campaign, let's see if they actually do anything they said they would do, they have the house, senate, and presidency, no excuses to not come through.

The trade deficit grew under Trump despite all the posturing.
The budget deficit per year is the worst of any administration since WW2 at least as measured by either in absolute numbers(even if inflation adjusted) or as a percentage of GDP. This is the main reason the economy did well, because he was unsustainably fueling it by excessive lending. This lending is also why despite trade wars and tariffs the trade deficit grew.

What Trump has done is work to increase polarisation, as a strategy.
What he also did is back the USA away from multilateral international organisations that rule trade, health work, diplomacy etc. Those organisations still exist and still do work, without the USA. Do you know which actor has taken the bigger role? SCHYNEA! Meaning China has weilded more influence internationally because of Trumps strategy of withdrawal from multilateralism. China first!
Trump also alienated the majority of US allies.
Trump says 'America first' but acts 'Russia first' quite often, even ignoring blunt attacks on american lives(Afghanistan), democracy(2016 election meddling) and livelyhoods(the 2020 cyberattacks on vaccine makers, govt and thousands of US companies).

But most of all Trump has lied and made a mockery of truth itself, as a strategy, as a way of life, at the expense of longterm trust in the institution, to an extent such that each year of Trump lies outnumber all the lies of all presidents before him, combined.

History will not be kind to Trump nor the people who backed him.

Yet more people voted for Trump, in person, then any other president in history including biden.

You don't care about budget or trade deficits when you are making minimum wage or live below the poverty line.

Do you think having a larger trade or budget deficit is going to stop a fleet of 5sq mile in size, American made aircraft carriers from showing up on china's doorstep? It would be over before Winnie the pooh could ask for more honey.

First off, China takes Taiwan in almost all scenarios that the Pentagon explores as plausible in an invasion scenario. One or two carrier groups can't stop the invasion and then they face Iwo Jima v2.0.
It's not worthwhile for China and thats why it doesn't happen, but that is always true til it isn't - that was probably true for Crimea up til it wasn't. And it was true for Hong Kong til it wasn't (even tho that was less dramatic than invasion). Military might alone will not stop invasion of Taiwan tho. Masturbating to CSGs is every mans right, but you might wanna keep it in private.

And you are saying then that it's good to break the finances of the country in the long term for a few years of joy... you took economy classes in 00s Greece?
Yes, populists can have popular policies. But being popular doesn't make them feasible.

Yeahhhh. Theres a couple things I have individual feels about. Agriculture really suffered under trump. Manufacturing jobs were up tho. Idk. 6 in one hand and a half dozen in the other.

Re: NAFTA. I was never a fan of it and you've heard me say before I think it was the first straw on the camels back that became the 2009 financial crisis and subsequently my reason for leaving an awful economy in my home state.

That said, I wont take the repeal of NAFTA without a conversation about the USMCA replacement which I should add is largely the same agreement. The things that make us more competitive manufacturing wise are borderline embarrassing imo.

Auto industry manufacturing jobs were raised to a minimum wage of 16/hr USD. Why you ask? Because people were leaving the USA to get better paying jobs (yes they paid better) in Mexico. That may be the only instance of American workers leaving the US for better jobs in Mexico, but the truth is, that's just very indicative of our embarrassingly low minimum wage against inflation on the world stage. The raise from 62% to 75% of parts that must be made in the three countries is just a strengthened NAFTA rule.

Aside from that, labor laws were strengthened to make all markets competitive, dairy farmers were allowed more market access, about $600m in environmental protections were added and a lot of technology stuff was added essentially updating NAFTA to the digital age.

To me, its unfortunate that manufacturing has perked up simply because we agreed to finally pay our people a living wage for manufacturing like they do in Mexico. That should be embarrassing and we could have just kept NAFTA and raised our minimum wage for a similar result.

Wait, what? Farmers suffered??? Where did you get this? I'm with farmers every week when I go to California, if anything these past couple years farmers benefited, I even have friends up here in Oregon that are potato and onion farmers and they have nothing negative to say about the Trump polices, some don't like him personally but they did benefit from his policies, where did you get that information that AG suffered? Are you talking about BIG AG as in their corporate wing? Cuz those guys are like the McDonald's of the food industry, they don't give a fluff about the farmers, BIG AG has been fluffing over the farmers for decades using their political influence to push around the real farmers and making them pay what they want for commodities...I don't think you know what the farmers are up against..

You know, I really don't understand you guys on the left anymore, you say you support the little guy yet your policies reflect that the real winner is corporate America, if you believe raising the minimum wage hurts corporations you're dead wrong, they're equipped to handle it, they'll raise the price of their goods and services creating a chain reaction, I don't know why you pro minimum wage increase people don't see this, it is in plain sight, in early 90s the minimum wage in California was 4.25, gas under $1, I can buy a snicker bar for .35¢, minimum wage goes up, couple days later gas is $1.50, snicker bar .50¢ and my wage only went up by .25¢ and all of a sudden the "extra" money I make from my minimum wage going up gets me less than before....you can check and compare the cost of living before and after every minimum wage movement, wether you want to acknowledge it is up to you, corporations never lose, the cost of doing business is always passed on to the consumer, real loser is you, me, and small businesses.

The trade war with china caused a profoundly negative effect on what was then the biggest importer of American agriculture.

One the trade war began, exports dropped off the table, and we quite literally did a $28b bailout similar to the bank bailout under obama because the industry was failing in 2019. A second bailout of $19b was part of the cares act, and a third bailout around $13b was announced just before the election.

Essentially farmers caught up in a dumb trade war have been relying on direct payments in the form of bailouts to survive. Trump said “I sometimes see where these horrible dishonest reporters will say that ‘oh jeez, the farmers are upset.’ Well, they can’t be too upset, because I gave them $12 billion and I gave them $16 billion this year,” said Trump, who then added, “I hope you like me even better than you did in ’16.”

Maybe I dont see an industry that has only survived the last 2 years of trade wars with continuous bailouts as thriving, but perhaps that's just me.

Our farmers don't rely on exports, I don't know why you emphasize that, we need our food here, every year the pool of farmers is shrinking, California at a faster pace than the rest of the country, Big AG was forcing farmers to offer their bushels at unsustainable prices, when a farmer can't even break even in a year's worth of farming and has to go out of pocket in order to get next season going, over time they will go broke, Big AG doesn't care about farmers, they only want to appease their higher ups, they get paid no matter what. Yes there's a problem here, big one, cuz we all need to eat.

Inflation and minimum wage aren't as tied as you think they are. Inflation is a product of a bunch of fluff including interest rates and mortgage markets, GDP, stock values, liquid assets and cash on hand. Minimum wage is merely a factor in it. And the fact is, inflation is still occurring. You could lower the minimum wage to $2 an hour right now, and houses wouldnt get cheaper, gas wouldnt get cheaper and a snickers bar wouldnt get cheaper. Ideally you have a growing GDP in a growing economy driving inflation, not worker wages.

If everyone makes a living wage relative to what a living wage actually is as a minimum, inflation would continue rising at 1% as it is. It's a balance you have to take into acct for sure. When min wage was set to 7.25 in 2009, in the ten years since inflation has gone up 17%. As in minimum wage then was worth $8.40 now. As an adjusted dollar factor, it's less than a third of the buying power value than it had in 1968 when the previous change was made. If min wage people physically have less buying power than ever, how is it that inflation is still occurring? By your logic, people having less buying power than ever, and physically being able to purchase less goods than ever, should have driven prices down, correct? That's not so. Clearly. Things actually just get around 2% more expensive every year of economic growth, regardless of what our minimum wage is.

The minimum wage has actually been going up slower than inflation for nearly 80 years, and yet inflation persists... It's amazing, when we made our first minimum wage increase in nearly 40 years, inflation had been happening those entire 40 years individually. Quite literally never had a negative year. A good economy tends to have a good rate of inflation. If you raise the minimum to be stable with a certain dollar amount of buying power, it shouldn't have any affect on a stable inflation rate, it just raises income equality within a continuously expanding economy that contains twice the people it did when I was a child. More people = growth = more demand = inflation. In fact, it might just make inflation more stable to have a consistent minimum relative to economic growth i.e. a living wage.

Even in the wreck that was 2020, we saw record unemployment, a GDP shrinking to 2/3s of the size it was, no raising of the minimum wage, and yet we still had a positive rate of inflation. Snickers bars did not get any cheaper. In fact they're about 1% more expensive than they were last year anyways. Big daddy inflation is here to stay. Our paying people enough to survive it is, however, optional.

Are you telling me corporations won't raise prices of goods and services adding to inflation when they are faced with higher wage costs? Come on man (Biden voice) just look at the difference between higher/lower minimum wage areas comparing mcdonald's menu items (for example) the higher the minimum wage in that area the more the item will cost you, my point is that if you raise minimum wage corporations will raise prices of goods and services disproportionately, this is where we are today, I don't disagree there are tons of other factors because there are.

Yeah that's probably true. Corporations would exploit the workers to get even richer, but it's not because they have to raise prices you know.

Raising a minimum wage does contribute to inflation, but in our best years inflation goes up around 5% and in our worst years its slighter under 1%. If you doubled the minimum wage, the price of goods would probably go up but they wouldnt also double because only the very bottom class is getting paid more. So the idea should be to keep the very bottom with an amount of money that sustains them and no more. But you do actually have to keep raising it if you want to sustain its value.

If you have a minimum amount of money you think a person needs to survive, that amount goes up a percent or two every year.

I think keeping minimums even with the bottom of what we view for a standard of living, but then actually keeping those people with the same buying power as inflation occurs is a good thing. Will it speed up inflation? Yes. But you could then raise interest rates and inflation will level, something we could use with our 0% ass right now. Raising interest rates a sum amount to balance a doubled minimum wage could even see a stagnant inflation market if offset correctly. Some combination of interest rate and minimum wage changes could hit your target 1 or 2% inflation rate or whatever.

But yeah. Corporate greed would probably be the biggest problem with this otherwise pragmatic solution to income inequality.

It's not a probably, they will unless big brother steps in and passes legislation to stop them from doing so and A) I don't think that's legal, B) They won't dare bite the hand that feeds them.

So yes, they WILL raise prices of goods and services as they did repeatedly during the last wage changes.

barfnado

Out of curiosity, are you referring specifically to CA? Because our last federal wage changes were 1968 and 2009. It goes without saying that years we adjusted interest rates (i.e. 2011 at 3.6% inflation) vs raising the minimum wage (1.6% in 2009). 2018 even had a higher rate of inflation than did 2009. I think you are mistaken thinking the 2009 federal min wage change was as impactful on inflation as about a dozen things that occurred since. And even the 40 year period in the middle included years of great inflation without even subtle wage changes.

Again, I think you're putting way to much emphasis on the minimum wage as it pertains to inflation, so maybe I should rephrase.

80.4 million americans are paid by the hour. Only 542k are paid minimum wage. So when we talk about the economic impacts being large on raising about 1/2 of one percent of the country's wages. It's almost indescribably low impact compared to other aspects of the economy on inflation lol. Both 1968 and 2009 had lower rates of inflation than 2018. You'd think if inflation bothers you at all, youd be more focused on 2018 than 2009, because something with a 3% impact should be traumatic to someone who suffered through the 1% impact of the 2009 increase.

The interest rate drops in combo with the trump tax plan sent inflation to its highest point in decades in 2018. Seems like that would bother you if a 1% increase was so noticeable. 3% is like 3x as noticeable as 1% lol.

I guess we just like our inflation to be the product of tax cuts for corporations and the middle class rather than a wage increase for those who actually need it. Hard to fight logic I can not even begin to understand.

How you could be for something like corporate tax cuts that cause inflation to boom and be against something like wages raising because it causes significantly less inflation seems bizarre to me. But then again, I would be extremely aggressive with this economy. So maybe it's a me thing. But I am convinced you could double minimum wage and still have less of an economic impact on inflation than the tax cuts did in 2018. I believe that in my heart of hearts but I would never KNOW it until it happened haha

I wish I could be bothered arguing with both of you anymore..