So, how many are getting paycuts this year? Things aren't/haven't ever been suited for me to be a job hopper, and as always that seems to be the only way to have your salary meaningfully keep up with inflation.
Awful news for everybody, particularly those in speculative tech jobs.
We may well look back at the attack on Iran as the American tipping point that caused the same kind of financial stagnation as Brexit caused for the UK.
CPI tracks retail costs and the cost of living, whereas PPI tracks wholesale costs. As such, PPI acts as an early indicator of future consumer inflation.
though I am seeing ( work with distributors ) a lot less reluctance to raise prices or adjust. It took a while but many of my customers can now more easily reprice their catalog and customers getting used to it, so maybe its less of a lag as before
Possible the everything bubble propping up unprofitable tech buying up resources across the supply chain to build infrastructure + tariff inflation + war of choice energy inflation + massive federal spending + unwillingness to hike rates to cool things off ?
Good chance we run the COVID inflation all over again
What makes this appalling is that the current situation is entirely the result of deliberate choice by the president.
I know there will be a lot of commenters rushing in to breathlessly claim 'Inflation was worse under Biden!'. However, there is a difference between inflation being the result of a literal 'once a 100 year' global pandemic and Trump deciding to attack Iran because he needed to remove attention from his involvement in the Epstein files.
As a summary
* Jan 2025 - Inflation when Trump took office was 2.9%
* Jan 2026 - Inflation at 2.4%
* 30th Jan 2026 - DOJ releases the first major batch (3 million files) of Epstein files. Numerous mention of Donald Trump in the files are immediately highlighted. Trump rants and rails, calling it a 'witch hunt'
* Feb 2026 - New York times releases a bombshell report documenting that Trump appeared in the files 5300 times. [1]
* Mid Feb 2026 - Trump starts ratcheting up the rhetoric against Iran
* 28th Feb 2026 - US attacks Iran
* June 2026 - Avg gas prices over $4, US CPI at 4.2% and rising rapidly. The PPI numbers in the article referenced by OP show that this is only going to get worse.
You are leaving out there was a global epidemic happening at the time, it's easier to see the logic of a global crisis which shutdown the global economy creating inflationary pressure from both supply economics, and mitigations taken by governments to keep money circulating (as much as we can disagree if it was the correct measure, it's understandable).
What is understandable about the current causes of inflation?
If you look at recent data[1], this has only accelerated further. This was not attributable to one president. Attempting to point blame for complex economic systems to one person is so foolish I don't even know where to start picking it apart. Look at the actual legislation and actions by which this happens. This is done through tariff manipulation, regulatory capture, and insider trading which we literally have weekly evidence of.
> It's almost as if the choice between the two parties is no choice at all.
Hi, I live in Minneapolis/Saint Paul. You may have heard about what the Republicans in the federal government did here a couple of months ago! The only appropriate response to your sentiment would, rightly, get me banned from this website. Please think before you speak.
For those who just watch fox news we're up to an estimated 700 million dollars of damage, completely aside from the human suffering for no definable reasons. The murders and the justification for murders, the protecting of murderers, and the celebration of convicted murderers in the local MN GOP.
> Didn't we have even higher inflation under the last president
“The index for final demand goods moved up 2.8 percent in May, the largest increase since data were first calculated in December 2009.”
Granted, that’s a slice of an index. But it promotes a pattern: we’re heading into a place similar to 2022. Then, because of money printing (at the time blamed on supply-chain disruptions). This time, because of money printing amidst an engineered supply-chain disruption.
The takeaway is we’ve had a string of shit-for-brain Presidents since Obama.
He allowed allowed the destruction of Gaza to start, and did nothing to stop it even when it was clear what was happening and it was within his power to do so. Of course, Trump would have been no better on that front. But that brings us back to...
We are not at a point as a country to have a serious discussion about governance.
The administration in charge (as recently as yesterday) still blames Biden for issues happening on their watch, even though he hasn’t been in officer for 16 months now.
This is not an administration serious about governing, and until we have an administration serious about governing and taking responsibility for their actions, we will continue to have this situation where half the country blames the half not in power for decisions it is making.
Congress of course is somehow worse, as instead of treating the executive like a branch of government they are meant to have oversight of, they abdicate their oversight role and roll over to the wishes of the present administration.
The net effect is those of us that live paycheck to paycheck (which is 2/3rds of Americans) are caught in the middle of a situation that would be deemed fantastical and not realistic to write about if it was described in a dystopian novel.
The Iran war continues with no oversight from Congress, and no authorized war while we pay the price. Vote them all out.
The politics in this country have been intentionally broken going back to Clinton and Obama. It is impossible to make meaningful change anymore.
Add in the propaganda convincing 2/5th of the country to consistently vote against their own interests and fundamentally misunderstand core issues, and it is difficult to see what can be done in the next 10 years.
The USA has had a hostile takeover by oligarchs. We are a country who serves only corporations and those who own them. Regular people have been almost completely removed from the process
It's interesting how you elect to name two presidents in an era that were democrats while conveniently omitting the republican president in between. With all his baggages, I find this quite convenient.
It's an interesting point. With Clinton, l'affaire de bj was a willful attempt to take the president's private life public as a means of congressional focus. It should be noted that until then, this was effectively off limits. It was an open secret in DC that his predecessor, Bush the 1st, kept a mistress for years and that was never discussed publicly.
In the case of Obama, the GOP noted that their top priority was to make him a 1-term president and that meant attempted sabotage of any legislation that might make him look good.
Neither man were perfect presidents, but compared to the current regime it is night and day.
The Lewinsky Affair got traction because Clinton used his position of power (literally in the Oval Office) to take advantage of a young subordinate, in a time when ‘sexual harassment’ was becoming a hot topic. Then lying about the affair made it much worse (as cover-ups often do). It was definitely used against Clinton by his opponents, but the way he abused his position, then perjured himself was truly shameful.
> though the forever pursuit of more material wealth is exactly what brought the USA to this point
I disagree. It’s the corruption of democratic politics with money. And rage-based content providers (on cable TV and social media) who take any consumer/worker surplus and ram it into invented culture wars.
I think people have different connotations for the word wealth. For some that means people being able to afford housing, Healthcare, or taking a day off to spend with their children.
I think it is simply wrong on the facts that the national government has been primarily focused on raising national GDP and material well-being, or that it has done a good job.
The topic of growth is almost absent from campaign messaging, and investment in infrastructure for the future is a minuscule part of budgets.
If economic growth was the priority, we would see streamlined code and legislation throughout the country and focus on improving them. Politicians would be spending their time trying to figure out how to lower the costs of High-Speed Rail or Bridges or houses.
I mean, I also have times where I find myself blaming people for being so stupid.
That said, you have to realize that this has been a very intentional propaganda effort by the most powerful actors in society spanning decades. Disorganized masses are largely powerless against that sort of effort and the outcomes are predictable.
> this has been a very intentional propaganda effort by the most powerful actors in society spanning decades
There is no evidence it was highly coordinated and many reasons to believe it’s emergent. Cable TV and then social media created systems competing for attention. The content originators became increasingly decentralized, increasing both diversity and ruthlessness.
> Disorganized masses are largely powerless against that sort of effort
Historically untrue. Starving, uneducated masses are easy to repress. Distracted masses only so long as they look away. And I think we’re seeing signs the American voter isn’t looking away.
> The politics in this country have been intentionally broken going back to Clinton and Obama.
Ahh yes, the presidents from the other party, including the one currently in office, who runs arguably the most brazenly corrupt administrations in US history, having tripled his family's net worth in a single year is of course entirely blame free /s.
It works fine to accomplish what it is intended to do: Pick a worker to hire.
The problem is that many assume it ends there and the employee will magically go off and do great things. That is not how it works. If you've ever worked with employees before, you'll know full well that you have to regularly communicate with them to keep them on track. Even if the most stellar employee in the world trying to do everything right will never be a mind reader.
When was the last time you spoke to the person you hired for the job of representative? I expect for most reading this, the answer will be never. That is what doesn't work.
Their actions are recorded. You have full view if they are failing to do their job, and when they fail to do their job it is on you as their employer to bring the consequences. What did the people who hired John Fetterman do to stop his unacceptable behaviour? Nothing, right? That's the problem. Employees are not magical beings. They are simple, imperfect humans that need constant management. But there is this strange idea that voting is sufficient to act as the management layer. That is not how it works. Voting is only for selecting the employee you want to hire. You still have the be the employer after they are hired.
It is not fundamentally broken. The model proves to work perfectly fine in other contexts regularly. The trouble is that you, along with a lot of other people, are looking for magic so that you don't have to get your hands dirty. The harsh reality is that magic doesn't exist, I'm afraid.
The problem as I see it is more about a real habit of blaming the other side and keeping problems alive as wedge issues than actually solving anything. This was a problem before, and always has been to some extent, but seems to have gotten much worse since social media and twitter became ways for memes to spread virally. So much easier to get outraged about something the other guy is or is not doing, than to do the work to come up with any solutions. And the country is pretty evenly divided on which side they like, so we're just treading water in sewage mostly.
Exploiting wedge issues is how the game of politics is played, isn't it? This has been the playbook forever. Find (or create) an enemy (real or imaginary) and rally supporters against them and keep the wedges/enemies in place, so it can be exploited forever. This is true nearly in all democracies. It would be nice if it wasn't but somehow politics generally seems to attract/promote the worst people in society.
Agree. There's a direct line from Robert A Heinlein:
"When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you’re using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived."
to the anonymous scholar who first said, probably as a joke:
"If violence didn't work you didn't use enough".
Whatever you think of voting and democracy, the alternatives are far more unpleasant. Vote every time, without fail.
The ancient Athenians knew that elections favored the rich. That’s why they incorporated selection by lot into their system. Our modern understanding of democracy has fetishized elections to the point that some voters might see hundreds of them in a year, including for positions that shouldn’t ever be elected (e.g. judges), while still having little to no actual civic power.
> How will you get selection by lot into the current system without violence? Voting
Oh totally agree. But also civic involvement. The returns to even small amounts of civic engagement in America are so ridiculously high because most of the population doesn’t do it. If like 5% more of the electorate called their electeds at least twice a year, that would represent a 25% increase in civic engagement, enough to break constituencies.
I've thought a lot about this, because my state is heavily gerrymandered, and the legislature keeps voting to undermine several recently passed amendments (abortion rights, marijuana) to our state constitution. They also tried to change the threshold for passing a referendum from 50% + 1 vote to 60%, when it was clear that there was enough support to pass the abortion rights amendment.
You do it via constitutional amendment, which is a popular referendum.
Fuck what the professional politicians think of sortition; do an end run around them, because professional politicians are the problem.
Get this accomplished in enough states, and then you have a level chance of doing an amendment to the US Constitution.
> You do it via constitutional amendment, which is a popular referendum.
Aka...voting.
If you truly believe "voting doesn't work", as you first said (EDIT: that was someone else whose username starts with a "b" sorry), then this referendum won't go anywhere either.
But I would say that the voting that matters most is voting in primaries. Get rid of the ideologues and zealots on both sides; get some people who can think rather than just yell.
> There's a lot of thoughtful responses to your histrionics
Sorry, can you please point to one of these thoughtful responses? I've seen one idea suggested: "sortition". But no ideas for how to get it peacefully without voting it in. I engaged with all these comments and asked this question.
"Voting doesn't work" is a cynical, doomerist, thought terminating cliche. I prefer that this kind of mind virus doesn't propagate. You may call my comments "histrionics". But instead I suggest you take a breath and think about where calling voting and elections "useless" leads.
"Democracy" is a hugely wide category some variant of it is likely the preferred system of governance. Regardless, it's a weasel category. Many would argue that China is democratically reflecting the will of their people.
In fact, Von Mises famously argued in his seminal work Liberalism that all systems are democratic because they require the will of the people or are overthrown. A little silly of a reductio in my opinion, but it's emblematic.
Vote out the Republican fascists actually abdicating responsibility. Dems can't do anything when they don't control legislature. Don't end up bothsidesing the last sentene when the rest of your comment is about the iffectualness of Trump and Republicans
Until the press and the public do not examine the real long term strategies of the US establishment, this won't change.
All you hear is reporting about Trump's daily contradictory statements, "leaks" in Axios that peace in Iran is imminent, then 40 tomahawk missiles. Next are probably fake peace talks again.
Until the press grasps that the US establishment wants a protracted forever war that hurts the EU, Japan, and India, no change will occur. The US wants to force investment of these countries in building valuable industrial infrastructure in the US and shake them down with high US energy imports.
The US population is suffering collateral damage. The billionaires are willing to take that sacrifice.
> the US establishment wants a protracted forever war that hurts the EU, Japan, and India, no change will occur
This presumes way more competence at the top than we’ve got.
> US wants to force investment of these countries in building valuable industrial infrastructure in the US and shake them down with high US energy imports
Americans want lots of things. Current policy isn’t promoting those interests. Currently, the war in Iran is causing long-term demand destruction for the sort of energy products America exports among our allies.
> This presumes way more competence at the top than we’ve got.
That is the intended perception because the public figures are imbeciles. The people in the background are highly competent and controlling energy flows to US "allies" has been a priority issue since Reagan blew up a Soviet pipeline to Germany.
Or make the starting point the Suez Crisis when the US unseated Britain in the Middle East and took over.
> people in the background are highly competent and controlling energy flows to US "allies"
What’s your evidence? Because nothing done recently has supported American hegemony, even among our allies. Many of whom yes, are buying a bit more from us energywise, but a lot more from others all while accelerating decarbonisarion.
It’s always nice to think someone is in charge. The truth is modern societies are too complex to control in this cartoonish manner for any meaningful durations. People who convince themselves it is and wind up in power demonstrate the folly of that worldview repeatedly.
There are no long term strategies, neither the "establishment" nor the public (ie you) seem to grasp that simple fact.
Americans simply do not wish to engage with reality any more, and that's why they're perfectly happy to elect a TV personality for a president who filled his cabinet with TV personalities who can do nothing more than LARP as statesmen.
I think your comment is another instance of this LARP, where the public can't tell the difference between reality and TV.
- You couldn't buy continous glucose monitors, OTC hearing aids, home heart monitors using your cellphone or watch or countless medications that didn't exist in 2017 (eg. Journavx, the first non-opiod pain med, smart insulin pens, etc.).
- You couldn't buy noise-cancelling earbuds, generative AI, somewhat affordable electric vehicles, PT and medical advice from Youtube/AI, self driving vehicles, more reliable electricity from grid-scale store, Satellite rescue from your cellphone, etc.
The retort will be daily items are about 30% more expensive since Covid. This is the result of Federal and State policies that have little to do with the White House and everything to do with Congress and State Houses. As just one example... ask yourself why so much ag is grown in Western states with water shortages and so far from the rest of the country?
California has 4 seasons of growing weather, good soil, and conditions that help against rot. The lack of water is exactly why it's good for growing stuff, if you can get the water. Excess water ruins crops all the time.
This comment that seems determined to state its conclusion without providing any evidence other than “why is so much agriculture in parts of the country that are conducive to agriculture”.
This is what worries me about the AI productivity boom vs previous tech/industrial productivity booms..
We've already made most consumer goods cheap.
The goods/services that are more inflation tied - food, transport, medicine, housing, and education.. are those tethered tied to physical world where costs are driven by energy, regulatory issues, and skilled domestic labor.
So, how many are getting paycuts this year? Things aren't/haven't ever been suited for me to be a job hopper, and as always that seems to be the only way to have your salary meaningfully keep up with inflation.
We have voluntarily recreated the effects of the worst supply side disruption in modern history that happened after the pandemic.
Awful news for everybody, particularly those in speculative tech jobs.
We may well look back at the attack on Iran as the American tipping point that caused the same kind of financial stagnation as Brexit caused for the UK.
It's crazy that now the main goal of the war is to open a strait that was already open before the war.
CPI vs PPI, in case you’re curious like me …
CPI tracks retail costs and the cost of living, whereas PPI tracks wholesale costs. As such, PPI acts as an early indicator of future consumer inflation.
More precisely, CPI tracks what you buy. Even if it’s imported. PPI tracks what’s produced here, even if for export.
There is a fun Canadian paper on how they started intensely decoupling after 2001, alongside the rise of global multi-step supply chains [1].
[1] https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/261258/1/swp2022-05....
though I am seeing ( work with distributors ) a lot less reluctance to raise prices or adjust. It took a while but many of my customers can now more easily reprice their catalog and customers getting used to it, so maybe its less of a lag as before
Possible the everything bubble propping up unprofitable tech buying up resources across the supply chain to build infrastructure + tariff inflation + war of choice energy inflation + massive federal spending + unwillingness to hike rates to cool things off ?
Good chance we run the COVID inflation all over again
[dead]
What makes this appalling is that the current situation is entirely the result of deliberate choice by the president.
I know there will be a lot of commenters rushing in to breathlessly claim 'Inflation was worse under Biden!'. However, there is a difference between inflation being the result of a literal 'once a 100 year' global pandemic and Trump deciding to attack Iran because he needed to remove attention from his involvement in the Epstein files.
As a summary
* Jan 2025 - Inflation when Trump took office was 2.9%
* Jan 2026 - Inflation at 2.4%
* 30th Jan 2026 - DOJ releases the first major batch (3 million files) of Epstein files. Numerous mention of Donald Trump in the files are immediately highlighted. Trump rants and rails, calling it a 'witch hunt'
* Feb 2026 - New York times releases a bombshell report documenting that Trump appeared in the files 5300 times. [1]
* Mid Feb 2026 - Trump starts ratcheting up the rhetoric against Iran
* 28th Feb 2026 - US attacks Iran
* June 2026 - Avg gas prices over $4, US CPI at 4.2% and rising rapidly. The PPI numbers in the article referenced by OP show that this is only going to get worse.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/us/trump-epstein-files.ht...
And this doesn't even include tariffs...
This is what you get when you elect a mad king. "I love the inflation" - Donald Trump.
Didn't we have even higher inflation under the last president, who was apparently not a "mad king"?
It's almost as if the choice between the two parties is no choice at all.
You are leaving out there was a global epidemic happening at the time, it's easier to see the logic of a global crisis which shutdown the global economy creating inflationary pressure from both supply economics, and mitigations taken by governments to keep money circulating (as much as we can disagree if it was the correct measure, it's understandable).
What is understandable about the current causes of inflation?
Not to mention the “largest transfer of wealth” [1] to the ultra rich during covid times.
1: https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1746565358/d11org/oq...
If you look at recent data[1], this has only accelerated further. This was not attributable to one president. Attempting to point blame for complex economic systems to one person is so foolish I don't even know where to start picking it apart. Look at the actual legislation and actions by which this happens. This is done through tariff manipulation, regulatory capture, and insider trading which we literally have weekly evidence of.
[1] https://www.oxfam.org.uk/get-involved/campaign-with-oxfam/fi...
One president had inflation due to the prior administration building and M2 bomb and a foreign country causing an energy crisis.
The current president the one causing the energy crisis, building another M2 bomb, and raising prices for consumer goods via taxes.
> It's almost as if the choice between the two parties is no choice at all.
Hi, I live in Minneapolis/Saint Paul. You may have heard about what the Republicans in the federal government did here a couple of months ago! The only appropriate response to your sentiment would, rightly, get me banned from this website. Please think before you speak.
For those who just watch fox news we're up to an estimated 700 million dollars of damage, completely aside from the human suffering for no definable reasons. The murders and the justification for murders, the protecting of murderers, and the celebration of convicted murderers in the local MN GOP.
https://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/news/2026/06/11/minne... https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/06/02/floyd-family-attorn...
Minneapolis does seem to have a penchant for attracting property damage and economic fallout. Last time it was $500 million: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arson_damage_during_the_George...
After inflation maybe that one was more expensive!
> Didn't we have even higher inflation under the last president
“The index for final demand goods moved up 2.8 percent in May, the largest increase since data were first calculated in December 2009.”
Granted, that’s a slice of an index. But it promotes a pattern: we’re heading into a place similar to 2022. Then, because of money printing (at the time blamed on supply-chain disruptions). This time, because of money printing amidst an engineered supply-chain disruption.
The takeaway is we’ve had a string of shit-for-brain Presidents since Obama.
Hm, which wars did the last president start? How many war crimes did he happen to do? How many times was he mentioned in the Epstein files?
Yep, no difference detected here, unless you have eyes or a brain.
He allowed allowed the destruction of Gaza to start, and did nothing to stop it even when it was clear what was happening and it was within his power to do so. Of course, Trump would have been no better on that front. But that brings us back to...
The lesser of two evils is still evil
So "there's no difference" becomes "any evil is the same" - that's not how this works.
The lesser of two evils is still lesser.
I dont anyone who doesn’t know that the Biden inflation is a result from COVID money printing.
We are not at a point as a country to have a serious discussion about governance.
The administration in charge (as recently as yesterday) still blames Biden for issues happening on their watch, even though he hasn’t been in officer for 16 months now.
This is not an administration serious about governing, and until we have an administration serious about governing and taking responsibility for their actions, we will continue to have this situation where half the country blames the half not in power for decisions it is making.
Congress of course is somehow worse, as instead of treating the executive like a branch of government they are meant to have oversight of, they abdicate their oversight role and roll over to the wishes of the present administration.
The net effect is those of us that live paycheck to paycheck (which is 2/3rds of Americans) are caught in the middle of a situation that would be deemed fantastical and not realistic to write about if it was described in a dystopian novel.
The Iran war continues with no oversight from Congress, and no authorized war while we pay the price. Vote them all out.
The politics in this country have been intentionally broken going back to Clinton and Obama. It is impossible to make meaningful change anymore.
Add in the propaganda convincing 2/5th of the country to consistently vote against their own interests and fundamentally misunderstand core issues, and it is difficult to see what can be done in the next 10 years.
The USA has had a hostile takeover by oligarchs. We are a country who serves only corporations and those who own them. Regular people have been almost completely removed from the process
It's interesting how you elect to name two presidents in an era that were democrats while conveniently omitting the republican president in between. With all his baggages, I find this quite convenient.
It's an interesting point. With Clinton, l'affaire de bj was a willful attempt to take the president's private life public as a means of congressional focus. It should be noted that until then, this was effectively off limits. It was an open secret in DC that his predecessor, Bush the 1st, kept a mistress for years and that was never discussed publicly.
In the case of Obama, the GOP noted that their top priority was to make him a 1-term president and that meant attempted sabotage of any legislation that might make him look good.
Neither man were perfect presidents, but compared to the current regime it is night and day.
The Lewinsky Affair got traction because Clinton used his position of power (literally in the Oval Office) to take advantage of a young subordinate, in a time when ‘sexual harassment’ was becoming a hot topic. Then lying about the affair made it much worse (as cover-ups often do). It was definitely used against Clinton by his opponents, but the way he abused his position, then perjured himself was truly shameful.
> We are a country who serves only corporations and those who own them. Regular people have been almost completely removed from the process
Regular people removed themselves when we chose cultural flashpoints over material wealth.
Even though the forever pursuit of more material wealth is exactly what brought the USA to this point.
> though the forever pursuit of more material wealth is exactly what brought the USA to this point
I disagree. It’s the corruption of democratic politics with money. And rage-based content providers (on cable TV and social media) who take any consumer/worker surplus and ram it into invented culture wars.
I think people have different connotations for the word wealth. For some that means people being able to afford housing, Healthcare, or taking a day off to spend with their children.
I think it is simply wrong on the facts that the national government has been primarily focused on raising national GDP and material well-being, or that it has done a good job.
The topic of growth is almost absent from campaign messaging, and investment in infrastructure for the future is a minuscule part of budgets.
If economic growth was the priority, we would see streamlined code and legislation throughout the country and focus on improving them. Politicians would be spending their time trying to figure out how to lower the costs of High-Speed Rail or Bridges or houses.
I mean, I also have times where I find myself blaming people for being so stupid.
That said, you have to realize that this has been a very intentional propaganda effort by the most powerful actors in society spanning decades. Disorganized masses are largely powerless against that sort of effort and the outcomes are predictable.
> this has been a very intentional propaganda effort by the most powerful actors in society spanning decades
There is no evidence it was highly coordinated and many reasons to believe it’s emergent. Cable TV and then social media created systems competing for attention. The content originators became increasingly decentralized, increasing both diversity and ruthlessness.
> Disorganized masses are largely powerless against that sort of effort
Historically untrue. Starving, uneducated masses are easy to repress. Distracted masses only so long as they look away. And I think we’re seeing signs the American voter isn’t looking away.
> The politics in this country have been intentionally broken going back to Clinton and Obama.
Ahh yes, the presidents from the other party, including the one currently in office, who runs arguably the most brazenly corrupt administrations in US history, having tripled his family's net worth in a single year is of course entirely blame free /s.
The problem runs deeper than the current administration. Voting doesn't work.
The Biden administration isn't the antidote to our problems.
> Voting doesn't work.
It works fine to accomplish what it is intended to do: Pick a worker to hire.
The problem is that many assume it ends there and the employee will magically go off and do great things. That is not how it works. If you've ever worked with employees before, you'll know full well that you have to regularly communicate with them to keep them on track. Even if the most stellar employee in the world trying to do everything right will never be a mind reader.
When was the last time you spoke to the person you hired for the job of representative? I expect for most reading this, the answer will be never. That is what doesn't work.
Incorrect.
You can merely lie and spend money and get elected and then do the opposite. Rinse and repeat.
See: John Fetterman.
It doesn't work. It's fundamentally broken.
Their actions are recorded. You have full view if they are failing to do their job, and when they fail to do their job it is on you as their employer to bring the consequences. What did the people who hired John Fetterman do to stop his unacceptable behaviour? Nothing, right? That's the problem. Employees are not magical beings. They are simple, imperfect humans that need constant management. But there is this strange idea that voting is sufficient to act as the management layer. That is not how it works. Voting is only for selecting the employee you want to hire. You still have the be the employer after they are hired.
It is not fundamentally broken. The model proves to work perfectly fine in other contexts regularly. The trouble is that you, along with a lot of other people, are looking for magic so that you don't have to get your hands dirty. The harsh reality is that magic doesn't exist, I'm afraid.
The problem as I see it is more about a real habit of blaming the other side and keeping problems alive as wedge issues than actually solving anything. This was a problem before, and always has been to some extent, but seems to have gotten much worse since social media and twitter became ways for memes to spread virally. So much easier to get outraged about something the other guy is or is not doing, than to do the work to come up with any solutions. And the country is pretty evenly divided on which side they like, so we're just treading water in sewage mostly.
Exploiting wedge issues is how the game of politics is played, isn't it? This has been the playbook forever. Find (or create) an enemy (real or imaginary) and rally supporters against them and keep the wedges/enemies in place, so it can be exploited forever. This is true nearly in all democracies. It would be nice if it wasn't but somehow politics generally seems to attract/promote the worst people in society.
It is upto to the voters to see past this.
Voting works fine, people just don't do it very much.
People complain about their choices. Meanwhile, there's atrocious turnout in the primaries which determine those choices.
Agree. There's a direct line from Robert A Heinlein:
"When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you’re using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived."
to the anonymous scholar who first said, probably as a joke:
"If violence didn't work you didn't use enough".
Whatever you think of voting and democracy, the alternatives are far more unpleasant. Vote every time, without fail.
> Voting doesn't work
Disparaging democracy doesn't work. Saying shit like this is worse than not voting.
EDIT: Downvoted for defending democracy. I do love democracy :-D
> Disparaging democracy
The ancient Athenians knew that elections favored the rich. That’s why they incorporated selection by lot into their system. Our modern understanding of democracy has fetishized elections to the point that some voters might see hundreds of them in a year, including for positions that shouldn’t ever be elected (e.g. judges), while still having little to no actual civic power.
How will you get selection by lot into the current system without violence? Voting.
> How will you get selection by lot into the current system without violence? Voting
Oh totally agree. But also civic involvement. The returns to even small amounts of civic engagement in America are so ridiculously high because most of the population doesn’t do it. If like 5% more of the electorate called their electeds at least twice a year, that would represent a 25% increase in civic engagement, enough to break constituencies.
The "just vote" lot are the perfect pressure release valve for the failed system.
Out of control inflation? No healthcare? Endless war?
Just vote! You just have to vote for a democrat!
It's time to say no to these charlatans. If people lose hope in the system, that's when it can change.
> You just have to vote for a democrat!
Or a third party.
> If people lose hope in the system, that's when it can change
There's only 2 ways it can change: voting or violence. You're saying voting doesn't work. That means you're advocating violence.
Nah, voting doesn't work because to become a candidate necessarily requires backroom dealing at odds with the interests of common voters.
We need sortition.
How will you get sortition without voting for a pro-sortition candidate?
I've thought a lot about this, because my state is heavily gerrymandered, and the legislature keeps voting to undermine several recently passed amendments (abortion rights, marijuana) to our state constitution. They also tried to change the threshold for passing a referendum from 50% + 1 vote to 60%, when it was clear that there was enough support to pass the abortion rights amendment.
You do it via constitutional amendment, which is a popular referendum.
Fuck what the professional politicians think of sortition; do an end run around them, because professional politicians are the problem.
Get this accomplished in enough states, and then you have a level chance of doing an amendment to the US Constitution.
> You do it via constitutional amendment, which is a popular referendum.
Aka...voting.
If you truly believe "voting doesn't work", as you first said (EDIT: that was someone else whose username starts with a "b" sorry), then this referendum won't go anywhere either.
They didn’t say that! That was kitty Caligula.
Actually in this thread it was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48490568 but yeah the person I responded to isn't them either.
Kitty Caligula would have been a better name than DOGE.
Not doing anything is also not working. Denying it is worse than saying its broken. It's clear as day.
Key figures, wealth, etc. Shouldn't influence their power to this extend. The general public isn't silent, it's silenced.
Since many people reading this probably don't know: voting is not the only, or even the original form of democracy.
Representatives in ancient democracies were selected by sortition, which is based on statistics, not popularity or money.
The only way to peacefully change how representatives are selected is...voting.
Saying it seems to have become a taboo, probably because of the existential horror of it possibly being true.
Is there an alternative?
Say the truth; take the downvotes.
But I would say that the voting that matters most is voting in primaries. Get rid of the ideologues and zealots on both sides; get some people who can think rather than just yell.
Agree. Voting doesn't just mean voting in regular elections for legislators and executives. Vote in every election you are eligible for.
It's at best a weak check by the populace on two rival gangs of the ruling class. It's certainly not what its proponents claim it to be.
I see, you prefer your gangs unchecked?
I clearly did not say that, re-read and try again.
There's a lot of thoughtful responses to your histrionics, I suggest you take a breath and actually engage with the ideas contained within them.
> There's a lot of thoughtful responses to your histrionics
Sorry, can you please point to one of these thoughtful responses? I've seen one idea suggested: "sortition". But no ideas for how to get it peacefully without voting it in. I engaged with all these comments and asked this question.
"Voting doesn't work" is a cynical, doomerist, thought terminating cliche. I prefer that this kind of mind virus doesn't propagate. You may call my comments "histrionics". But instead I suggest you take a breath and think about where calling voting and elections "useless" leads.
[flagged]
> Being a toady for what isn't working makes you useful
It's great you aren't a "toady".
> this system is broken and needs to be disparaged
And then what?
You're either being paid to spread this doomslop or you're just a bored, contrarian cynic. I really really hope it's the second one.
What's your suggested alternative? Would you say that American democracy is broken or democracy in general?
"Democracy" is a hugely wide category some variant of it is likely the preferred system of governance. Regardless, it's a weasel category. Many would argue that China is democratically reflecting the will of their people.
In fact, Von Mises famously argued in his seminal work Liberalism that all systems are democratic because they require the will of the people or are overthrown. A little silly of a reductio in my opinion, but it's emblematic.
So, to repeat, what is your suggested alternative?
Vote out the Republican fascists actually abdicating responsibility. Dems can't do anything when they don't control legislature. Don't end up bothsidesing the last sentene when the rest of your comment is about the iffectualness of Trump and Republicans
Until the press and the public do not examine the real long term strategies of the US establishment, this won't change.
All you hear is reporting about Trump's daily contradictory statements, "leaks" in Axios that peace in Iran is imminent, then 40 tomahawk missiles. Next are probably fake peace talks again.
Until the press grasps that the US establishment wants a protracted forever war that hurts the EU, Japan, and India, no change will occur. The US wants to force investment of these countries in building valuable industrial infrastructure in the US and shake them down with high US energy imports.
The US population is suffering collateral damage. The billionaires are willing to take that sacrifice.
> the US establishment wants a protracted forever war that hurts the EU, Japan, and India, no change will occur
This presumes way more competence at the top than we’ve got.
> US wants to force investment of these countries in building valuable industrial infrastructure in the US and shake them down with high US energy imports
Americans want lots of things. Current policy isn’t promoting those interests. Currently, the war in Iran is causing long-term demand destruction for the sort of energy products America exports among our allies.
> This presumes way more competence at the top than we’ve got.
That is the intended perception because the public figures are imbeciles. The people in the background are highly competent and controlling energy flows to US "allies" has been a priority issue since Reagan blew up a Soviet pipeline to Germany.
Or make the starting point the Suez Crisis when the US unseated Britain in the Middle East and took over.
> people in the background are highly competent and controlling energy flows to US "allies"
What’s your evidence? Because nothing done recently has supported American hegemony, even among our allies. Many of whom yes, are buying a bit more from us energywise, but a lot more from others all while accelerating decarbonisarion.
It’s always nice to think someone is in charge. The truth is modern societies are too complex to control in this cartoonish manner for any meaningful durations. People who convince themselves it is and wind up in power demonstrate the folly of that worldview repeatedly.
Yet, growth mindset.
Not following.
There are no long term strategies, neither the "establishment" nor the public (ie you) seem to grasp that simple fact.
Americans simply do not wish to engage with reality any more, and that's why they're perfectly happy to elect a TV personality for a president who filled his cabinet with TV personalities who can do nothing more than LARP as statesmen.
I think your comment is another instance of this LARP, where the public can't tell the difference between reality and TV.
Yes, purchasing power of USD declines with inflation.
No, that doesn't mean over a long enough time horizon what most people think it means.
USD has declined significantly since 2017 (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SA0R), but what it buys has substantively changed.
- You couldn't buy continous glucose monitors, OTC hearing aids, home heart monitors using your cellphone or watch or countless medications that didn't exist in 2017 (eg. Journavx, the first non-opiod pain med, smart insulin pens, etc.).
- You couldn't buy noise-cancelling earbuds, generative AI, somewhat affordable electric vehicles, PT and medical advice from Youtube/AI, self driving vehicles, more reliable electricity from grid-scale store, Satellite rescue from your cellphone, etc.
The retort will be daily items are about 30% more expensive since Covid. This is the result of Federal and State policies that have little to do with the White House and everything to do with Congress and State Houses. As just one example... ask yourself why so much ag is grown in Western states with water shortages and so far from the rest of the country?
California has 4 seasons of growing weather, good soil, and conditions that help against rot. The lack of water is exactly why it's good for growing stuff, if you can get the water. Excess water ruins crops all the time.
This comment that seems determined to state its conclusion without providing any evidence other than “why is so much agriculture in parts of the country that are conducive to agriculture”.
> ask yourself why so much ag is grown in Western states with water shortages and so far from the rest of the country?
Because water is one of the cheapest inputs into agriculture. Growing almonds in California is a ~bad idea, but it's not a stupid idea.
It says exactly what it says, which is that energy prices are higher. You can read the report.
Can't wait for AI to bring the prices of all goods to near zero :)
This is what worries me about the AI productivity boom vs previous tech/industrial productivity booms..
We've already made most consumer goods cheap.
The goods/services that are more inflation tied - food, transport, medicine, housing, and education.. are those tethered tied to physical world where costs are driven by energy, regulatory issues, and skilled domestic labor.
Unless it brings the price of labour to near zero.