Are people already regretting their choice?

[Shadowy Man]

Our split system is also why we got both candidates here to speak during the last election. No way they stop in my state to campaign otherwise.

but then they don’t stop in other places.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

My conclusions may be wrong but the problems are not. These problems are known not by watching Fox news but by real life experience.

I know from first hand experience you could buy a coke for a dime and gas for 35 cents a gallon. I've done this. I know from first hand experience a middle class tax payer could simply use the IRS table that goes to $100k without any difficulty. Now the government pretends anyone making over 100k is extremely wealthy. I know from first hand experience all the manufacturing plants I have seen shut down. And all the once prosperous workers no longer employed.

Don't look at it in dollars. Look at it in hours of labor. Most things are cheaper now than then.

Gasoline Prices Adjusted for Inflation | US Inflation Calculator

Gasoline prices are often very volatile with sharp swings in what American pay at the pump. The average price of gasoline dropped nearly 17% in 2020.

www.usinflationcalculator.com

And you're utterly not getting it about the tax tables. In the old days you looked up your tax in the tax table because not everyone had calculators--they tried to keep everything on the tax return limited to addition and subtraction. You couldn't do the actual tax calculation without using some multi-digit multiplication, thus they provided a table. Now that's irrelevant, the tax forms have plenty of multiplication because everyone will have a calculator to do it with. The IRS expects everyone earning over $100k to have a calculator--that's not "extremely wealthy".

The Democrats may choose to ignore these problems and lose more elections. But I believe the winning strategy for them is to acknowledge these issues and provide their own superior solutions

How are they supposed to find superior answers to the bogeyman? And remember that the Republicans didn't want there to be any solutions.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yes, prices have risen since then. Of course, incomes have, on average, risen more. Would you prefer to have lower prices and substantially lower incomes?

​

Due to union busting efforts middle class incomes have NOT risen more than prices. Furthermore, incomes are always always lagging compared to price increases. Inflation helps the already wealthy by seriously increasing asset prices while reducing the middle class to poverty buying power.

Inflation is not the friend of the middle class

We've been over this before. In most categories wages have outpaced prices. The exceptions being rent and healthcare. And note that you get an awful lot more healthcare now than you did then. There were an awful lot of things that now you can live with, back then you simply died.

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[crazyfingers]

View attachment 50478

This is suspisous. She could only vote if she's a US citizen. If she's a US citizen then she's Mexican American, not a Mexican living in the US. Who writes this stuff?

 

[Shadowy Man]

View attachment 50477

To be fair, how could she have possibly known this would be the outcome?

 

[blastula]

View attachment 50478

This is suspisous. She could only vote if she's a USl citizen. If she's a US citizen then she's Mexican American, not a Mexican living in the US. Who writes this stuff?

It's a real woman who says she did vote for Trump. She got deservedly slammed in the comments, and she has since apologized a few times over it.

It's from January though.

 

[KCFlyer]

Don't look at it in dollars. Look at it in hours of labor. Most things are cheaper now than then.

Yep...I got my first car in 1975, right about the time the price of gas tripled to 75 cents per gallon. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $4.56 today. but I just filled up for $2.89 per gallon.

 

[TomC]

Don't look at it in dollars. Look at it in hours of labor. Most things are cheaper now than then.

Yep...I got my first car in 1975, right about the time the price of gas tripled to 75 cents per gallon. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $4.56 today. but I just filled up for $2.89 per gallon.

Back in the 70s, I worked at my mom's store. We had a regular customer, Don. His gun stores were making a lot of money and he liked showing it off. One of his indulgences was a stretched Lincoln Continental sedan. I remember him bitching about how unfair it was that now that he could afford to buy a car like that the price of gas was skyrocketing.
Poor thing.
Tom

ETA ~Hey @Toni, remember Don's Guns? His "I don't want to make money folks, I just love to sell guns." TV commercials? ~

 

[Bronzeage]

My eighth grade science teacher explained the difference between hypothesis and theory is hypotheses explains the present and theory predicts the future.

There are many hypotheses which explain why people vote for Trump and most ascribe it to a lack of reasoning ability, lack of environmental awareness, and very poor memory. The problem with transforming this hypotheses into a theory is the prediction thing. A Trump voter can objectively judged to be stupid and it is very difficult to predict the actions of a stupid person. Smart people are constrained to relatively few good options in any situation, but a stupid person has a universe of bad choices.

So the original question of "Do people regret their decision?" assumes these people are capable of understanding the consequence of their vote. There is little evidence to support this.

There has been a constant parade of short video clips of Trump voters who are surprised to discover a Trump policy has caused them financial harm, but this only reinforces the stupidity judgment, in the "What did you think was going to happen" subclade. It's common knowledge the purpose of a tariff is to force an increase in price by reducing supply. Yet, the Trump voter is shocked to discover higher prices and shortages. These are the same people who have no problem spending money at a grocery store that never purchased anything from them, but agree when Trump says buying more from China than they buy from us is some kind of theft. These are the same people who chant "Drill baby drill"* without pausing to see oil prices are low and ask, why would an oil company that is making record prices want to increase the supply of oil and drive prices lower.

*A play on the phrase "Burn baby burn", which was coined by black people in Watts, CA in 1965, when reaction to police brutality and rampant discrimination erupted in destructive riots. I'm sure neither Trump nor his followers understand this.

 

[Politesse]

My eighth grade science teacher explained the difference between hypothesis and theory is hypotheses explains the present and theory predicts the future.

He or she was incorrect. What they were describing with that distinction is the difference between descriptive and predictive analysis.

 

[crazyfingers]

My eighth grade science teacher explained the difference between hypothesis and theory is hypotheses explains the present and theory predicts the future.

He or she was incorrect. What they were describing with that distinction is the difference between descriptive and predictive analysis.

A hypothesis is a suggested method for how something works. It lacks evidence. When a hypothesis is supported by sufficient evidence it becomes a theory. A theory is a hypothesis that has substantial evidence to support it.

 

[Politesse]

A hypothesis is a suggested method for how something works. It lacks evidence. When a hypothesis is supported by sufficient evidence it becomes a theory. A theory is a hypothesis that has substantial evidence to support it.

This is much closer to accurate. Hypotheses are rational explanations for phenomena, that are empirically testable and thus suitable as a key component of research design. Hypotheses that have been subject to repeated testing and have not been refuted are commonly referred to as theories. That said, "hypothesis" has a very distinct meaning within a scientific methodology. "Theory", less so, and it is a term used very inconsistently in the real world. Theories are often the basis for new hypotheses; regardless of how entrenched a theory may be in culture, it is up to any given scientist to apply those theories to the concrete, real work of research in a particular context.

 

[Bronzeage]

My eighth grade science teacher explained the difference between hypothesis and theory is hypotheses explains the present and theory predicts the future.

He or she was incorrect. What they were describing with that distinction is the difference between descriptive and predictive analysis.

A hypothesis is a suggested method for how something works. It lacks evidence. When a hypothesis is supported by sufficient evidence it becomes a theory. A theory is a hypothesis that has substantial evidence to support it.

Maybe it was my rhetoric teacher who said that, but if that's the only part of the post with which you have a quibble, I think it's sound enough.

 

[unapologetic]

To be fair, how could she have possibly known this would be the outcome?

Maybe not that specific outcome, but even I could tell Rump never told the truth, and was only looking out for his own self interest. I have no sympathy for sheeple who wear blinders.

 

[ZiprHead]

My eighth grade science teacher explained the difference between hypothesis and theory is hypotheses explains the present and theory predicts the future.

Drives me crazy when people use the word theory incorrectly.

 

[crazyfingers]

My eighth grade science teacher explained the difference between hypothesis and theory is hypotheses explains the present and theory predicts the future.

Drives me crazy when people use the word theory incorrectly.

Me too. More often than not, the correct word would be hypothesis. Television is the worst for wrongly using the word.

 

[Shadowy Man]

My eighth grade science teacher explained the difference between hypothesis and theory is hypotheses explains the present and theory predicts the future.

Drives me crazy when people use the word theory incorrectly.

And a “hypothesis” doesn’t explain anything. So both words were used incorrectly, with theory actually being closer to correct.