Political Roundtable Part XXX

[Zonkerbl]

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Wait, that's a lie and an insult. Why didn't any Dems demand that be stricken from the record?

[Pointgod]

I don't think elected Republican officials are stupid, they just believe their voters will believe whatever they tell them. This is who they've chosen to represent them; this is the behavior they demand.

Dems made a strategic decision to eject non college educated white people from their party and the GOP gleefully absorbed them. Now they're the ones stuck with their hands in the honey jar

Dems didn’t so much as eject white working class voters, as they strategically decided to not be racist asshats which led to them losing white working class voters and now they’re also losing non college educated voters of all races despite being the only party that’s proposing policies to benefit these voters.

Republicans are shameless and peddle only grievance, divisive politics. the problem is that the majority of American voters are pretty apathetic and either don’t vote thinking both parties are the same or are easily swayed by the politics of fear.

[Benjammin]

This thread I'm sure will be a very happy place to be on November 9th, which happens to be my birthday. I do agree that the Republican party has no reason to exist other than to own the libs, which is pretty pathetic.

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[Ruzious]

When they've got Beavis and Butthead level people like Gaetz, Bobert, Greene, and Cawthorn as their young leaders... the future is... I mean, how do we have a chance of surviving - much less co-existing - when clear morons (to be kind) like that get elected? Gaetz wants to talk about being embarrassed with our Secretary of Defense... I'm embarrassed that excrement like Gaetz even exists in my country at any level. Unfortunately, we can't just ignore them and pretend they don't exist.

[Zonkerbl]

I don't think elected Republican officials are stupid, they just believe their voters will believe whatever they tell them. This is who they've chosen to represent them; this is the behavior they demand.

Dems made a strategic decision to eject non college educated white people from their party and the GOP gleefully absorbed them. Now they're the ones stuck with their hands in the honey jar

Dems didn’t so much as eject white working class voters, as they strategically decided to not be racist asshats which led to them losing white working class voters and now they’re also losing non college educated voters of all races despite being the only party that’s proposing policies to benefit these voters.

Republicans are shameless and peddle only grievance, divisive politics. the problem is that the majority of American voters are pretty apathetic and either don’t vote thinking both parties are the same or are easily swayed by the politics of fear.

Well, I distinctly remember my parents complaining about racism and xenophobia of union members way back in the eighties. Let me put it this way - as long as unions were still politically powerful, the Dems didn't push back on the unions' racism and anti-immigrant xenophobia. As the unions lost power the Dem party started to be more forcefully anti-racist, which "pushed" the former union members into Trump's arms. And if you look carefully at Dem actions and not their words, the Dems are just as anti-immigrant as the Republicans, they just don't say it out loud. Obama's immigration policy, as carried out by ICE during his presidency, was pretty horrific. And Biden's no better.

Not that I'm one to talk - I think we should make it as difficult as possible for immigrants to get residency status. I suppose I should clarify that I don't think torture should be involved or other human rights abuses.

[Zonkerbl]

This thread I'm sure will be a very happy place to be on November 9th, which happens to be my birthday. I do agree that the Republican party has no reason to exist other than to own the libs, which is pretty pathetic.

Sent from my motorola edge plus using RealGM mobile app

I worked for the W administration in the aughts, for USDA and DOC. There were some genuinely good people there, trying to help small businesses and help US exporters compete in a fair market. What's happening to the Republican party now is horrifying. I think the only thing that will convince them they're going down the wrong path is to lose some elections they were expecting to win, which unfortunately doesn't seem likely.

[dckingsfan]

So if you see something like this in your twitter timeline:

Read on Twitter

Just know that a lot of low wage service jobs are coming back as we recover from covid, dragging the avg wage down. If you look at the data you can see what happened - the only jobs eligible for remote work are high paying ones, all the service jobs where you have to show up in person are relatively lower wage and were decimated.

However, if you look carefully you'll see that, even though real wages have been declining for seven months (as, what, 4 million jobs were added) it's still higher than what it was before COVID.

This is actually pretty interesting. Especially if you look at the EU where they are also seeing high inflation due to the supply chain disruptions. The fed seems set to raise rates - that will impact hiring but I am not sure it will do anything meaningful to inflation until the supply chain issues are addressed. Thoughts?

BTW, I think that the EU is going to have a bit more headwind with respect to inflation than here in the coming months as their producer prices this relative to consumer prices are greater. Either the producers get hit with reduced profits or pass it to the consumers.

[Zonkerbl]

I think the inflation we're experiencing now has nothing to do with monetary or fiscal policy, it's simply that the just-in-time inventory system can't handle adjustments as big as the one's we're experiencing right now. As I believe I have said before, COVID is like a hurricane, after natural disasters the economy pops back to the path dictated by its stock and flow of investment capital (both physical capital and human capital). COVID didn't impact the world economy's ability to invest in capital permanently, so it's not surprising to see the economy recover quickly.

Since the supply related inflation we're seeing is clearly a temporary, once in a century phenomenon, there's no reason to make long term investments in solving the supply chain problems. So we're going to be stuck with supply side inflation until the problem solves itself, and no marginal tinkering with fed interest rates is going to have a detectable effect.

We haven't had anything remotely resembling inflation over the past ten years so I have no idea where the price increases are going to shake out among producers vs. consumers. One theory is we've had rampant inflation since the housing crisis but it has all taken place in the stock market, meaning we're in for a doozy of a correction once that bubble bursts. We'll see I guess.

[dckingsfan]

I think the inflation we're experiencing now has nothing to do with monetary or fiscal policy, it's simply that the just-in-time inventory system can't handle adjustments as big as the one's we're experiencing right now. As I believe I have said before, COVID is like a hurricane, after natural disasters the economy pops back to the path dictated by its stock and flow of investment capital (both physical capital and human capital). COVID didn't impact the world economy's ability to invest in capital permanently, so it's not surprising to see the economy recover quickly.

Since the supply related inflation we're seeing is clearly a temporary, once in a century phenomenon, there's no reason to make long term investments in solving the supply chain problems. So we're going to be stuck with supply side inflation until the problem solves itself, and no marginal tinkering with fed interest rates is going to have a detectable effect.

We haven't had anything remotely resembling inflation over the past ten years so I have no idea where the price increases are going to shake out among producers vs. consumers. One theory is we've had rampant inflation since the housing crisis but it has all taken place in the stock market, meaning we're in for a doozy of a correction once that bubble bursts. We'll see I guess.

Thanks - that makes sense. I guess this is bad news for Biden because there is no "quick fix" and the best remedy is to let this play out.

I assume that the general voter won't understand this and that puts him at a severe disadvantage.

I also assume that the Fed is going to want to "fix this" even if they can't. Actually, at this point I think they can only make things worse by trying to "fix it".

[Zonkerbl]

My hope is that the Fed quietly understands this and will make very very small interest rate policy changes to "appear" to be doing something while minimizing the damage they would do by actually doing something.

Even though the inflation is a result of Biden successfully beating back COVID to allow the economy to recover, he gets blamed for the resulting inflation even as jobs come storming back at never-seen-before rates. Voters are dumb and easily manipulated. All I can do is be a voice crying in the wilderness.

[Zonkerbl]

I still can't believe Trump internalized the finding "good economy is good for the incumbent prez" and came to the conclusion that his best strategy for COVID would be to try pretend it doesn't exist rather than fighting against it tooth and nail to get the enormous economic recovery to happen on his watch. It was doable - had he done it he'd still be President now and rightly so. Normally I push back on people who say that Trump is stupid but in this case it's kind of unavoidable.

[dckingsfan]

My hope is that the Fed quietly understands this and will make very very small interest rate policy changes to "appear" to be doing something while minimizing the damage they would do by actually doing something.

Even though the inflation is a result of Biden successfully beating back COVID to allow the economy to recover, he gets blamed for the resulting inflation even as jobs come storming back at never-seen-before rates. Voters are dumb and easily manipulated. All I can do is be a voice crying in the wilderness.

My take for what it is worth is that this current inflation has been caused much more by the supply chain disruptions, the fed not letting off the gas early enough much more than the economic recovery.

He should be blamed for the economic recovery. He shouldn't be blamed for the Fed policies. He shouldn't be blamed for the supply chain disruptions.

But alas, that won't be the case.

[Zonkerbl]

He should be blamed for the economic recovery. He shouldn't be blamed for the Fed policies. He shouldn't be blamed for the supply chain disruptions.

Well, there wouldn't be any supply chain disruptions without faster than expected economic recovery. But yeah.

[dckingsfan]

He should be blamed for the economic recovery. He shouldn't be blamed for the Fed policies. He shouldn't be blamed for the supply chain disruptions.

Well, there wouldn't be any supply chain disruptions without faster than expected economic recovery. But yeah.

Might slightly disagree with you there. Even during Covid we were seeing supply chain disruptions as the economy shifted and certain parts of the economy were slowed by Covid.

Take paper as an example, the paper shortage can be traced back to the pandemic around staffing, shipping, and the demand for source paper materials - that supply chain disruption has rippled down to the cost of everything that is shipped in packaging (for example).

And a shift to purchasing home goods also led to a different type of supply chain overload if you will. Silly but, there was a seed shortage as everyone started purchasing seeds for their garden.

I guess fossil fuels and the war as well is supply chain disruption.

Back to your larger and more salient point on the Fed, keeping my fingers and toes crossed that they don't overreact.

[Zonkerbl]

Fair enough, some supply chain problems resulted from increased remote work and unexpected demand for associated complementary inputs/goods. I'd say the original ps5 shortage was definitely remote work related (although they also had a manufacturing snafu that didn't help), and the continuing shortage is unexpected economic growth related. Duly noted. But the supply chain shortages that are leading to inflation, I would argue, are mostly related to the latter.

[pancakes3]

There's a whole bunch of reasons why we have supply chain issues. Supply-side problems in Asian countries entering lock down. Port problems in that American ports were already operating at max capacity, so when the Asian backlog started arriving again, we can only take the "normal" max amount and the backlog will never be fixed unless redirected to other ports (Baltimore, Charleston, Seattle) which are not ramped up to take in that sort of volume, trucking shortages at all 3 phases (port to warehouse, cross-country warehouse to warehouse, last mile deliveries), raw material shortages (silicon for computer chips specifically), and many more that I'm not aware of I'm sure.

But yeah, from what you would gather from Fox news is that the entire world just decided to stop working because Biden became president. because socialism or whatever.

[Zonkerbl]

Lots of anxiety in my twitter timeline about right wingers saying "ok groomer" to everybody.

I think it's just dumb and unconvincing because it's so obviously over the top and unpersuasive. "Ok boomer" accuses you of saying certain things a certain way because of who you obviously are, "ok groomer" accuses you of saying things for being something you obviously aren't. So if that's all the qanon people have, well... good luck with that.

But here's an interesting take that basically picks up the conversation we were having about a Trump personality cult inevitably cannibalizing the most loyal of the right wing. This guy notes that 1) everyone who does not support Trump is a pedophile 2) pedophiles are people everybody agrees should be shot

Read on Twitter

[dckingsfan]

There's a whole bunch of reasons why we have supply chain issues...

I think the retrospective analysis on the supply chain issues are going to be fascinating.

[Benjammin]

This thread I'm sure will be a very happy place to be on November 9th, which happens to be my birthday. I do agree that the Republican party has no reason to exist other than to own the libs, which is pretty pathetic.

Sent from my motorola edge plus using RealGM mobile app

I worked for the W administration in the aughts, for USDA and DOC. There were some genuinely good people there, trying to help small businesses and help US exporters compete in a fair market. What's happening to the Republican party now is horrifying. I think the only thing that will convince them they're going down the wrong path is to lose some elections they were expecting to win, which unfortunately doesn't seem likely.

I was being sarcastic about this thread being a happy place on November 9th. The Republicans will likely make large gains in several areas. The issues of crime, CRT, and trans rights will be effective wedge issues. I think the Democrats have boxed themselves in and will pay the price for that.

[Zonkerbl]

Well, none of that actually matters, what's important is that the Republicans have a money-making propaganda machine and rock solid message discipline, while the Dems have "maybe if we keep being nice they'll learn to like us" band nerd energy