Bitch about Biden thread

[ZiprHead]

President Biden warns of 'oligarchy' as he bids farewell to five decades in politics

Joe Biden, who will be replaced by Donald Trump in five days, defended his legacy and the importance of American democracy in an Oval Office address

www.usatoday.com

Now that he's leaving office he can talk about what's actually happening. Lmao this country is a joke.

Brandon is a hoot. He was all in on "big tech when it came to suppressing free speech and spreading misinformation about covid measures and Russia hoaxes etc.

Obama said the same thing about the oligarchy and Citizen United but Biden must not have been paying attention since many of those particular billionaires were on the Democrat side at that time.

Really? Name them.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Because of Trump leading the MAGA movement:

1) The silent middle class is beginning to be heard by the Elites
2) Tariffs on bad trading partners like China are now put in play
3) It is now acceptable to call the mainstream media what it really is (fake news)
4) It is now acceptable to discuss controlling our border
5) You can see the difference even by looking at billionaires like Bezos and Zuckerburg, how their attitudes are evolving

Like I said sweeping reforms..but there is still a lot of work going forward.

The oligarchs wanted to own the government more totally and now, because trumpers are so easy to lie to, they're succeeding.

We, the working class, had a chance of being heard about how much we dislike the billionaires taking so much from us, but that chance died when trump-voters voted for a full take-over of oligarchy in America on Nov 5. Now the billionaires will take the rest.

Trump is aligned with "the elites", not with the middle class. He does not give a shit about you, he just wanted your vote.

There's a childlike naivety among Trump supporters. It's rather sad.

 

[RVonse]

President Biden warns of 'oligarchy' as he bids farewell to five decades in politics

Joe Biden, who will be replaced by Donald Trump in five days, defended his legacy and the importance of American democracy in an Oval Office address

www.usatoday.com

Now that he's leaving office he can talk about what's actually happening. Lmao this country is a joke.

Brandon is a hoot. He was all in on "big tech when it came to suppressing free speech and spreading misinformation about covid measures and Russia hoaxes etc.

Obama said the same thing about the oligarchy and Citizen United but Biden must not have been paying attention since many of those particular billionaires were on the Democrat side at that time.

Really? Name them.

Zuckerburg, Bezos, and yes Musk voted for Hillary as well.

 

[TSwizzle]

The oligarchs wanted to own the government more totally and now, because trumpers are so easy to lie to, they're succeeding.

Not everyone that voted for Trump is a “trumper”. And I am not sure what a “trumper” is. Many people like myself voted for Trump for other reasons.

We, the working class, had a chance of being heard about how much we dislike the billionaires taking so much from us, but that chance died when trump-voters voted for a full take-over of oligarchy in America on Nov 5. Now the billionaires will take the rest.

Rather them for now than another four years of the Brandon regime.

Trump is aligned with "the elites", not with the middle class. He does not give a shit about you, he just wanted your vote

And he got it

 

[Elixir]

Not everyone that voted for Trump is a “trumper”.

That’s why I call them trumpsuckers.

 

[bilby]

Trump is aligned with "the elites", not with the middle class. He does not give a shit about you, he just wanted your vote.

And he figured out how easy it was to con the uneducated into voting against their own interests. Just tell them that he is going to defend them against those of different colors and enthnicities, while picking their pockets. Classic con artist/mark interaction. LBJ predicted this very thing decades ago.

LBJ was hardly the first.

"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." - Hermann Goering, 1946.

 

[Emily Lake]

Except that's not what happened. Wages went up 5% more than costs. Not merely 5%.

From when to when?

Real Median Household Income decreased 1% from 2019 ($81,210) to 2023 ($80,610). It's increased since 2020, sure... but there was a pretty steep drop that it's only now recovering from.

I'm having a surprisingly hard time finding Mean Household Income. Median can be a misleading measure, since it's the mid-point. The bottom of the distribution is essentially fixed at $0, but the top end is hypothetically unlimited. Basically, if 90% of US household income stays flat, but the billionaires get far more billionairy, the median will increase. That doesn't mean that actual average people have seen their incomes keep pace with the cost of utilities or goods.

 

[Emily Lake]

1) What is the average age that young adults can marry?
2) How easily is it for young couples to buy a home and start a family?
3) What is the average number of children born to young families think they can support?
4) How many single men living in their parents basements?
5) Is the current political regime well liked?

If you answer the aforementioned questions honestly, you will easily know that the Biden presidency was dismal at best. He was brought into a shit show to begin with and did nothing to improve any ones actual lives. That's not to say anyone else would have done better but to think the economy was great under Biden is laughable.

Items 1 through 4 predate Biden, and Trump 1, and Obama. Those have been slipping for decades.

 

[Emily Lake]

In countersigning the genocide of the Palestinian people, he joined in the very worst of American presidential traditions, that which has tarnished the reputation and effectiveness of the office since the hour of its formation.

I genuinely don't get how someone who seems so intelligent can so completely swallow this "palestinian genocide" propaganda.

 

[pood]

In countersigning the genocide of the Palestinian people, he joined in the very worst of American presidential traditions, that which has tarnished the reputation and effectiveness of the office since the hour of its formation.

I genuinely don't get how someone who seems so intelligent can so completely swallow this "palestinian genocide" propaganda.

Strictly, propaganda is a neutral term, deriving from “propagate,” as in “propagate information.”

Probably the propagated information is being “swallowed” because it happens to be true.

 

[Swammerdami]

Real Median Household Income decreased 1% from 2019 ($81,210) to 2023 ($80,610). It's increased since 2020, sure... but there was a pretty steep drop that it's only now recovering from.

I'm having a surprisingly hard time finding Mean Household Income. Median can be a misleading measure, since it's the mid-point. The bottom of the distribution is essentially fixed at $0, but the top end is hypothetically unlimited. Basically, if 90% of US household income stays flat, but the billionaires get far more billionairy, the median will increase. That doesn't mean that actual average people have seen their incomes keep pace with the cost of utilities or goods.

The reddened sentence seems wrong to me. Are you sure you're not interchanging the meanings of Mean and Median?

I've linked to a FRED graph showing three REAL income measures AND "Personal income per capita", which I assume is the same as "Mean Personal Income", though neither "Household" nor "Real" (inflation adjusted. You can adjust that final series using CPI and household size. Two of the REAL series in that graph are 2023 dollars; the third is 2017 ("chained") dollars.

But at lest FRED tells us whether its dollars are "Real" (inflation-adjusted) or not. Some webpages ignore such details!

But I am NOT sure you want Mean Household Income. It will be even more misleading than the Median: Billionaires' income affects the Mean but not the Median.

 

[jonatha]

Are you sure you're not interchanging the meanings of Mean and Median?

No, she's not sure...

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Except that's not what happened. Wages went up 5% more than costs. Not merely 5%.

From when to when?

Since the pandemic. It was a major cause of the broad inflation! Where I work, we got two raises in one year. The Fed kept rates up a bit to get unemployment to go up a bit because it was too low and giving workers too much leverage, which was driving wages higher causing inflation to hang around.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Notably absent from your comparison is anything about what wages did.

If A's percentage share of the pie INCREASED, then not-A's share DECREASED. I didn't know this was difficult math!

But !A contains a lot more than just workers. And we perfectly well know the size of the pie changes over time.

Corporate profits AFTER tax were $3.4 Trillion in 2024; and about $21 Billion in 1953. Yes, that's Trillion with a T. 11.8 is the multiplier to turn 1953 dollars into 2024 dollars, so call it $248 Trillion. Corporate profits have gotten a 1270% raise. GDP went from $390 Billion to $29.4 Trillion.

Foot, meet bullet.

Corporate profits are up 1,270%. But by your own numbers GDP went up 7,538%. In other words, corporate profits are now 1/6 of the share of the pie they used to be.

$7.50 (in 2024 dollars or about 30¢ in then-nominal money) was a typical wage for unskilled labor in 1940, but let's be generous and double it for today! $15 per hour is a 100% pay hike!
Yes, corporate profits have gotten a 1500+% pay boost over the same period, but SO WHAT? Wages have increased; that's the important thing. To complain that the Super-rich did much MUCH better is just envy. They create jobs, brought us technical masterpieces like MS Windows, and so on.

Is that about right? Among other things you ignore that the cost of living is higher today INDEPENDENT of inflation: Cars and smart-phones are almost necessities today. And Americans expect some access to medical innovations.

In other words, people are better off--undreamt-of luxuries are now necessities.

There has been a post elsewhere that showed that over Biden's term workers gained a net of 5%.

Wow! Talk about useless ill-defined statistics!

I guessed your number was inflation-adjusted, but why not spend a word or two so I needn't have to guess?

It's not my fault if you ignore data that doesn't agree with you. I forget who posted it but there was a graph showing 20% of inflation during Biden's term--but that worker income went up 25% in that same period.

And where did you get this number anyway? "Average household income" is a common proxy for wages, but that includes dividends, etc.
And even a better statistic for "wages" will usually include CEO salaries and the like.

Do you now understand why "Share of the Pie" is an informative stat?

Perhaps it would be better for you to comment on the following graph, rather than presenting confused and unexplained numbers and pointing out the "pie has increased."
And again note that "Wages" are, as usual, defined to include CEO salaries, etc. The decline in pie-share for unskilled labor is much worse than the graph suggests.

Beware of how deceptive that graph is, note the different scales.

I do agree unskilled labor has fared badly. There simply isn't a lot of demand for it in our high tech society, you need to make something of yourself.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I'd say the other issue is Cuba. America has a terribly sore rear over Cuba and what was lost in the revolution. But Jebus, China is one of our largest trading partners and they've done some pretty shady stuff too, but just didn't steal money on property from Americans. It is time to get over Cuba.

Cuba doesn't want to be gotten over. We are their Eastasia.

 

[laughing dog]

Notably absent from your comparison is anything about what wages did.

If A's percentage share of the pie INCREASED, then not-A's share DECREASED. I didn't know this was difficult math!

But !A contains a lot more than just workers. And we perfectly well know the size of the pie changes over time.

Corporate profits AFTER tax were $3.4 Trillion in 2024; and about $21 Billion in 1953. Yes, that's Trillion with a T. 11.8 is the multiplier to turn 1953 dollars into 2024 dollars, so call it $248 Trillion. Corporate profits have gotten a 1270% raise. GDP went from $390 Billion to $29.4 Trillion.

Foot, meet bullet.

Corporate profits are up 1,270%. But by your own numbers GDP went up 7,538%. In other words, corporate profits are now 1/6 of the share of the pie they used to be.

$7.50 (in 2024 dollars or about 30¢ in then-nominal money) was a typical wage for unskilled labor in 1940, but let's be generous and double it for today! $15 per hour is a 100% pay hike!
Yes, corporate profits have gotten a 1500+% pay boost over the same period, but SO WHAT? Wages have increased; that's the important thing. To complain that the Super-rich did much MUCH better is just envy. They create jobs, brought us technical masterpieces like MS Windows, and so on.

Is that about right? Among other things you ignore that the cost of living is higher today INDEPENDENT of inflation: Cars and smart-phones are almost necessities today. And Americans expect some access to medical innovations.

In other words, people are better off--undreamt-of luxuries are now necessities.

There has been a post elsewhere that showed that over Biden's term workers gained a net of 5%.

Wow! Talk about useless ill-defined statistics!

I guessed your number was inflation-adjusted, but why not spend a word or two so I needn't have to guess?

It's not my fault if you ignore data that doesn't agree with you. I forget who posted it but there was a graph showing 20% of inflation during Biden's term--but that worker income went up 25% in that same period.

And where did you get this number anyway? "Average household income" is a common proxy for wages, but that includes dividends, etc.
And even a better statistic for "wages" will usually include CEO salaries and the like.

Do you now understand why "Share of the Pie" is an informative stat?

Perhaps it would be better for you to comment on the following graph, rather than presenting confused and unexplained numbers and pointing out the "pie has increased."
And again note that "Wages" are, as usual, defined to include CEO salaries, etc. The decline in pie-share for unskilled labor is much worse than the graph suggests.

Beware of how deceptive that graph is, note the different scales.

The different scales are there because the shares are of vastly different magnitudes. The point of the graph is the different trend. Corporate profits as a share of GDP rose by about 6 percentage points while labor's share of GDP feel about 8 percentage points. Nothing deceptive about that at all.

I do agree unskilled labor has fared badly. There simply isn't a lot of demand for it in our high tech society, you need to make something of yourself.

Unless you can show the cause of decline of labor's share is due to unskilled labor's plight, your response is irrelevant.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

On the subject of US inflation compared to other countries. Much of the inflation of other countries is actually a result of the worlds reserve currency (US dollar) inflating or not. That is because all of the central banks in the world make sure of that either directly or indirectly. They have to. This results in the US actually able to export inflation to the rest of the world so that inflation in the US is less than it would be otherwise. It is one of the many advantages of holding the worlds reserve currency while it lasts. I mention this not because I blame Biden for US inflation but that world inflation is the direct result of too much reserve currency printing. The fed is forced by factors including the US no longer producing as much as it consumes. Anyway, a comparison of US inflation to other countries is completely meaningless on the subject of inflation brought on by reserve currency printing..which is exactly where we find ourselves today.

Anything to blame America. What's the reason they would do this?? Countries don't like their currency to decline, rarely do they care about it getting stronger.

And note that we do produce, it's just a substantial portion of our stuff is digital and doesn't show up on the balance sheet as exports. An American company selling a software license bought from a US website in US$ doesn't look like an export--but if the customer isn't in the US it actually is.

Furthermore is meaningless to compare inflation within the US itself since the stats that the government uses are politically manipulated.

Anything to deny the reality.

When it comes to how well people think they are really doing economically there are better ways more accurate than looking at government posted stats and useless math:

1) What is the average age that young adults can marry?

What's that got to do with it? Marriage is getting later--because marriage is no longer the gateway to sex and because marriage before you finish your education is considerably more likely to fail.

2) How easily is it for young couples to buy a home and start a family?

Housing is out of alignment with costs in general.

3) What is the average number of children born to young families think they can support?

Again, you're mixing up can and want. Two major factors here:
1) In an environment where kids are economically useful (say, on the farm) the economic balance is very different than where they aren't (in the cities.)
2) Birth control. Far fewer unintended babies. Just because the families were larger doesn't mean that's what people actually wanted.

4) How many single men living in their parents basements?

This isn't economic. The internet has done some bad things to the reality of dating. There are so many more possibilities that an awful lot of people keep hoping to find better rather than accept what they can get. And the market is so cluttered with the flawed ones that even the people who don't have unreasonable expectations have a hard time finding someone. (Yes, this is very much like the incel position--they're looking at actual issues but going very wrong in placing blame for those issues.) There is also the issue that the path of the woman choosing nobody is viable--nobody's forced to choose the trash anymore.

5) Is the current political regime well liked?

If you answer the aforementioned questions honestly, you will easily know that the Biden presidency was dismal at best. He was brought into a shit show to begin with and did nothing to improve any ones actual lives. That's not to say anyone else would have done better but to think the economy was great under Biden is laughable.

Just because the MAGA cult leaders tell you the economy is terrible doesn't make it so.

And do you think The Felon is going to do anything about the actual malfeasance hurting people?? No way--they've already killed the price-fixing charges and they're trying to gut basically all protections for the little guy. He's already admitted he can't fix the price of groceries.

 

[Elixir]

nobody's forced to choose the trash anymore.

… or even root through it, apparently.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

3) What is the average number of children born to young families think they can support?

4) How many single men living in their parents basements?

Odd how this is also about job availability. You blaming Biden for the jobs not coming back?

No. Biden could have done worse. At least he left in place most of Trumps tariffs and I credit him for that. Biden also attempted chip making back in the US. You would know that since you live in Ohio.

But compared to the sweeping reforms of Trump, Biden did too little for making America great again. Or so that is what the voting public thought during the last election.

What did The Felon do to make America great? Because I see nothing.

Of the various changes he made there is exactly one that was of any value to me: the change to a larger standard deduction. And that wasn't done to help the people, it was done to screw the Democrats. And it wasn't really of any net benefit to me because his screwing with the ACA was approximately a wash with the lower taxes.

The Felon? He wants to gut the ACA (big problem for me) and he wants to appoint someone to HHS that wants to kill me.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

President Biden warns of 'oligarchy' as he bids farewell to five decades in politics

Joe Biden, who will be replaced by Donald Trump in five days, defended his legacy and the importance of American democracy in an Oval Office address

www.usatoday.com

Now that he's leaving office he can talk about what's actually happening. Lmao this country is a joke.

Brandon is a hoot. He was all in on "big tech when it came to suppressing free speech and spreading misinformation about covid measures and Russia hoaxes etc.

Spreading misinformation? More like combating misinformation. Just look at the reality: Pre-vaccine Covid death rates were about the same between Republicans and Democrats. Now it's twice as likely to kill Republicans. In my book "information" that gets you killed is misinformation.

The efforts to combat misinformation have been highly skewed towards suppressing the left, not the right. Only the worst of the excesses of the right got addressed at all. Shitter has become a total shithole.