"The U.S. is Soviet Russia" 

 

Tell me you're a braindead moron without telling me you're a braindead moron.

6 hours ago, vikas83 said:

Much more importantly, it's just about the worst idea ever imagined. Removing people from the obligation to repay debt they willing took is just idiotic, and it's insulting to those who paid for their education (or repaid their loans) and those who didn't go to college (the majority of Americans). It will simply drive up the cost if education even higher since the government will still be in the business of giving loans to anyone, but now people will assume those loans will be cancelled in the future (because no shot this is a one time thing). So we'll drive up demand even more and...prices will rise. Leading to people ****ing about student debt, and cancellation round 2. It's just monumentally stupid and immoral.

But it's also political suicide for the left. You'll please a group of voters that is notoriously unreliable while angering the majority of the country. The Dems already seem elitist and out of touch, and wiping away 150k of debt for some 28 year old with a gender studies degree...the GOP attack ads write themselves. Biden won because he appealed to moderate and GOP voters who couldn't countenance Trump's behavior and imbecility. Those people will turn on him now.

It's wrong morally. It's wrong financially. It's wrong politically. So of course the Democrats will do it.

While you’re not wrong… this is a drop in the bucket in terms of political suicide. If and when Roe v Wade is overturned, which I not only expect but I’m actively rooting for, Republicans will have committed the greater act of political suicide. As unpopular as Biden and the democrats are, running against Trump and illegal abortion is the best thing that could happen to them. 

6 hours ago, Kz! said:

Pedro Gonzalez is right, you know.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10760907/amp/Biden-starts-Disinformation-Board-led-Russia-expert-called-Hunters-laptop-Trump-product.html

Paging George Orwell. The Ministry of Disinformation coming soon. 

Wow she is a moron

8 hours ago, vikas83 said:

Much more importantly, it's just about the worst idea ever imagined. Removing people from the obligation to repay debt they willing took is just idiotic, and it's insulting to those who paid for their education (or repaid their loans) and those who didn't go to college (the majority of Americans). It will simply drive up the cost if education even higher since the government will still be in the business of giving loans to anyone, but now people will assume those loans will be cancelled in the future (because no shot this is a one time thing). So we'll drive up demand even more and...prices will rise. Leading to people ****ing about student debt, and cancellation round 2. It's just monumentally stupid and immoral.

But it's also political suicide for the left. You'll please a group of voters that is notoriously unreliable while angering the majority of the country. The Dems already seem elitist and out of touch, and wiping away 150k of debt for some 28 year old with a gender studies degree...the GOP attack ads write themselves. Biden won because he appealed to moderate and GOP voters who couldn't countenance Trump's behavior and imbecility. Those people will turn on him now.

It's wrong morally. It's wrong financially. It's wrong politically. So of course the Democrats will do it.

But I’m guessing you think bailing out big banks who made risky decisions is a smart thing to do, right?

1 hour ago, Dave Moss said:

But I’m guessing you think bailing out big banks who made risky decisions is a smart thing to do, right?

I was vehemently against it, despite knowing full well it likely would have led to economic catastrophe. I owned buckets of sovereign CDS, but frankly the counter parties would have all failed - the unsecured claims would have gotten something. 
 

Maybe stop guessing and just keep quiet in the future. 

6 hours ago, vikas83 said:

I was vehemently against it, despite knowing full well it likely would have led to economic catastrophe. I owned buckets of sovereign CDS, but frankly the counter parties would have all failed - the unsecured claims would have gotten something. 
 

Maybe stop guessing and just keep quiet in the future. 

Bailing out people or companies, subsidizing companies or whole industries, etc. is silly, but it’s even sillier to allow a wealth gap that leads to all kinds of societal problems.  You have admitted yourself that you prefer L.A. over S.F. because you can avoid homeless people

 

lmfao. Joe Biden is a failure of epic proportions in Every. Single. Metric. 

As I understand it, one of the main drivers of inflation was the economy "overheating" or growing too quickly/haphazardly, so...

I read the Jankowicz interview. It was...interesting, and I say that both seriously and somewhat derisively. Suffice it to say, you don't get anywhere near the full picture from a right-wing Tweet or tabloid like the Daily Mail. Let's look at a few highlights and lowlights. 

 

Quote

MARTIN: As you've probably heard, the tech titan Elon Musk has launched a hostile bid to take over Twitter, the social media platform favored by many politicians, celebrities and journalists. That's because he says he's a free speech absolutist. But our next guest says there's a group of people who are essentially censored on social media right now - women, especially women of color and public-facing women, because of the vicious, sexist and racist abuse they're subjected to online.

 

The host is actually the first one to use the term "free-speech absolutist" in what is apparently a quote from Musk. I'd call myself one as well. I'm old enough to remember the days of the ACLU promoting the "hate speech is free speech" slogan. I do think some of the vitriol lobbed over social media easily qualifies as abuse or harassment, but saying that they "Essentially censored" is misleading. "Intimidated" would be the correct term. There are reasonable steps that a company can take through ToS to reduce this kind of abuse.

 

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Nina Jankowicz is known for her research on online disinformation and its effect on democracy. Her latest book is called "How To Be A Woman Online." It describes in disturbing detail the vastly disproportionate attacks that women face compared to men when they try to have an online presence.

 

This is probably true, but I'm not sure that the nature and scope of the attacks is really as different as she'd make it out to be.

 

Quote

MARTIN: All right. Give it to me straight. How bad is it? Give us some parameters about how to think about this.

JANKOWICZ: Well, you know, it's hard to put a number on things because it's hard to detect this harassment a lot. The harassers online are quite creative in the ways that they harass women. But when my team at the Wilson Center sought to document some of the harassment during the 2020 presidential campaign, over a period of two months on six social media platforms, we found over 336,000 pieces of gendered or sexualized abuse and disinformation directed at just 10 U.S. candidates. And most of that was directed at then-vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris, 78% of it, in fact. So that's just a short period of time, just a few platforms. And when you compare what women receive, as some of my colleagues have done in other organizations, with what their male counterparts receive, it's just far and away much, much worse, especially if you're a woman of color or a woman of an intersectional identity.

Sounds about right.

 

Quote

MARTIN: And what kinds of things are we talking about? 

JANKOWICZ: Well, it's a whole spectrum of abuse. Some of it is a little bit more anodyne, you know, men referring to you as girly, dear, princess, sweetie, honey. I get the bimbo slur a lot, B-word, C-word often come up. Men will comment on my hair, my breast size, the symmetry of my face. There's a lot of assertions, especially among women who are public facing, voicing their opinions online, that these women must be transgender because otherwise they wouldn't be so assertive. They look for evidence of an Adam's apple or a 5 o'clock shadow. Sometimes we hear men sexualizing or diminishing women's roles in society, saying, oh, you know, she's just arguing with you online because she wants to sleep with you. Or I've had someone say to me, she's angry at you because no one would hit it and stick with it. I've had men say, you birth babies, we build bridges.

And then often I get from the far-right memes of empty egg cartons which are sent to women to say that our fertility is declining and we should get back to our homemaking activities. And then there's the more violent stuff. I've had people say, you'll be dealt with in the streets. You know, if a civil war comes, you're going to be first. Some people say things like I'd fixed her. And then, you know, I've gotten emails directly to my work account, including just after January 6, when it was quite tense here in Washington, saying things like you sound like a hysterical bleeping snowflake lesbo bleep.

 

Ok, so while many of these things are gendered and carry sexual undertones,  I have to say that most of them are really not that different from the kinds of attacks men are subject to. I see it on Facebook all the time, but I mean, you can see it right on this forum when posters go at it. They comment on appearances (or imagined appearances). They directly question your masculinity or virility, your stature or your build. I've seen posters on social media respond to arguments with comments about the other persons hair or facial features, sometimes making direct comments insinuating that they're  transgender. We see people everywhere being degraded along the lines of sexual inadequacy or undesirability. We constantly see the use of homophobic insinuations or slurs. The notion of gendered or sexualized attacks as something that occurs everyday in high volume is an accurate one, but the sense that they are reserved for women is off-base. Calling a woman a b**** is like calling man a dick or an a***hole, calling a man a b**** is like calling a woman a c***, and calling a woman a dyke is like calling a man a f****ot. Human beings often attack each other through speech on these grounds. It cuts both ways, but the particular terminology varies.

 

Quote

MARTIN: ...So there are people who think, well, this is just - air quotes here - "words," it's just mean words. You make the argument that this is not just words, that this has personal security implications, but this really does cause women to censor themselves and to avoid engagement in the public sphere. Why do you say that? You say this is, in fact, a form of censorship.

JANKOWICZ: Yeah. In my own life, it is a form of censorship. Right? Every time I am online thinking about, OK, am I going to tweet, am I going to pitch this article today, I think about, you know, do I have the emotional capacity right now to deal with what might come if that's going to be out there in the real world? I now carry a personal safety alarm around with me because I am worried about if one of these people who has threatened me online shows up in real life. Particularly women of color have had offline threats that originated from online threats.

 

Ok, so this is not censorship, it is possibly verbal/emotional intimidation depending on the nature of the comments. Yes, sometimes these comments do rise to the level of direct threats that do have personal security implications, and they should be handled accordingly by the platform to protect its users. You are free to speak your mind, but you are not free to threaten people. There are laws against this, and they should be exercised, but just sort of blanketly saying that insults are censorship and mean words together with threats of violence is ignornant and foolish.

 

Quote

And, you know, I've spoken to many women, many of whom are prominent in their field, who say, when I know I'm going to be getting a lot of attention, let's say, for a congressional testimony or if I'm going on TV, they lock down their accounts, which is closing themselves off to opportunity. And that's women who are, you know, at the peak of their careers. When I spoke to young women about this, women who are high school and college aged, who are very much digital natives, they said to me, you know, I don't want a lifestyle that public anymore. I'm going to lock down my account. I don't really voice my opinions online except to my friends. And that just breaks my heart. We need their voices.

I can have some sympathy for people who are literally driven into isolation through harassment, but the idea of putting yourself out there and opening yourself up to harsh criticism and even. direct insults has always been there in media, it's just that the access has changed. People would hear vitriol through letters to editor, they'd be threatened through anonymous hate mail. Now, every Tom, Dick, and Harry has the means and methods available at their fingertips to do this. It's definitely made the situation worse, and we need to be wary of where this is taking us as a society and do what we can to mitigate it, but censorship is not the answer.

 

Quote

MARTIN: So, you know, you can't help but notice that many of the free speech absolutists are often online trolls themselves, and/or they are wealthy white men who presumably have ample means to protect their personal safety. They have personal assistants. They have security guards. They have, you know, people who can provide, you know, a zone of personal safety for them. But to the argument that it is just words, what do you say?

JANKOWICZ: It's not just words. So if I were walking on the street and a crowd of hundreds of people were shouting the insults that we spoke about at me, police would intervene. Bystanders would intervene. It would not be acceptable. And yet it is happening to millions of women around the world and worse every day. And I think you make a really good point, Michel. You know, for people of means, for people who are in the majority, it's a little bit easier to deal with. The onus always falls on the target of the abuse. The platforms aren't doing very much right now.

There are some fair points raise here, and this is probably the most interesting part of the interview for me. I thought the bolded part was particularly salient. Social media has become the public forum, but the conditions that exist online are much less favorable to the general public and law enforcement offering some kind of protection from abuse. This often does rise to the level or harassment, which is illegal, but there's often very little opportunity for it to be handled accordingly. This is where the company's need to step in and moderate content in a sensible manner that upholds both open discourse and user safety.

 

Quote

And I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities all around the world, which are already shouldering so much of this abuse, disproportionate amounts of this abuse, and retraumatizing themselves as they try to protect themselves from it, you know, reporting, blocking, et cetera. We need the platforms to do more, and we frankly need law enforcement and our legislatures to do more as well. And in other countries that are looking at this, you know, the U.K. has an online safety bill that's being considered right now where they're trying to make illegal this currently, quote, "awful but lawful content" that exists online where people are being harassed.

 

Ok, this is where she completely loses me. The argument all along that you would get from me is that free speech means the government does not censor or otherwise infringe upon free speech through the legal code, but companies have every right to restrict content according to their ToS (if I invite you over to my house and you start acting like a dick, I can kick you out), and it is their best interest to do so in a way that gives them mass appeal as safe and inclusive forums. There needs to be pressure put on the people that manage these sites to manage threatening and hateful commentary, but the buck stops there.  The government has absolutely no business intervening here. Frankly, it would be overtly unconstitutional to do so. IDGAF what they're doing in the UK.

The concept of a "free speech absolutist" is largely laughable to me as it pertains to the government's relationship to its citizens. In that context, free speech must be absolutely absolute. SCOTUS has affirmed this multiple times.

Also, I gotta chuckle a little bit at her clamoring for "law enforcement" to  to step into protecting "marginalized communities." I thought this was the "F***k the police/BLM crowd?" I'm resolutely against advancing the creeping police state. F that.

 

Quote

MARTIN: Your book offers very practical advice to individuals about how to address these matters in their own if they have to or feel that they have to engage with these platforms. But from a broader policy standpoint, what should happen is - and part of the reason, you know, first of all, your book is quite timely. I mean, it was due to come out now, but it's interesting that it comes out at this moment where Elon Musk, as we said, has engaged in what he says is this campaign to take over Twitter because he wants it to be sort of an absolutist, free speech environment where there are no rules. From a policy standpoint, what do you think should should happen?

JANKOWICZ: Well, I think what we've actually been seeing Twitter do in the past couple of months to a year has been pretty progressive on the side of platforms. We've seen them introduce what they call human-centered reporting, which looks rather than at their terms of service hierarchy, it asks people what happened in their own words and to report it that way. I think that's in the right direction. What I would love to see is more incident reporting on platforms.

So rather than just reporting one-off pieces of content or accounts that are abusive, being able to report the whole picture to a content moderator because usually these campaigns are started by one high-follower individual or several of them, and they come in waves. And if you see, you know, one tweet and you're a content moderator and you have 20 to 40 seconds or even less time to evaluate that tweet or piece of content, it might not look that bad. But when you see hundreds or even thousands of tweets coming from people all around the world that are generally quite vitriolic or disgusting in some way, the combined effect of that on one human being, I think, would be taken much differently.

So that's something that I've advocated for in the past, but really any enforcement of consequences against abusers would make such a big difference because part of the reason this happens right now is that hardly anything ever happens to the people who are levying the abuse. Once in a while, they're asked to take that content down. Maybe in some extreme circumstances, their accounts are disabled, but they often just make another account. There are no consequences right now because there does not seem to be the political will within companies to crack down on content that drives engagement. And we know that that emotional, vitriolic content does drive engagement online.

https://www.npr.org/2022/04/16/1093212502/women-face-disproportionate-attacks-online-one-expert-shares-some-of-the-details

Ok, I actually like these proposals and agree with her perspective here. Don't get the government involved; pressure the social media companies to be more responsible and responsive. Stop having robots use trigger words an algorithms to ban people for every little off-color remark or provocative post. hear both sides of the story and get actual people with fair-minded, functioning brains to enforce content moderation.

Overall, I appreciate her analysis, as she does shed on light on a lot of what's going on and where the roots of the problems lie. She does offer good perspective on how online forums are not subject to the same kind of natural moderation that would occur in, say, the public square when an  unruly, potentially violent mob harasses someone. However, I really can't get past her support for the government legally intervening here. I'm pretty much against any kind of government involvement in the internet other than to protect free speech and open access. While her understanding of the nature of online abuse seems pretty incisive, her legal opinions are pretty off-base.

 

43 minutes ago, Kz! said:

lmfao. Joe Biden is a failure of epic proportions in Every. Single. Metric. 

You cannot print $7T and not have high inflation followed closely by a recession. This is exactly how this works. 

1 hour ago, EaglesRocker97 said:

As I understand it, one of the main drivers of inflation was the economy "overheating" or growing too quickly/haphazardly, so...

This is the content I'm here for.   

1 minute ago, Kz! said:

This is the content I'm here for.   

 

I know...you're always in need of a good education, and I appreciate your thirst for knowledge. Luckily, I'm here to help!

 

Quote

Definition and Examples of an Overheated Economy

An overheated economy is one in which output is above potential output or unemployment is lower than the natural rate of unemployment (NRU). Both can happen when the economy grows too fast.

Potential output is the output an economy can sustainably produce given the available amount of resources such as workers, technology, and equipment. The NRU is the lowest level of unemployment an economy can have without creating inflation. It is also called "full employment” and it is considered to be between 4% and 6% in the U.S.1 An overheated economy is one in which the economy is growing beyond a sustainable rate.

The problem with an overheating economy is that supply can’t keep up with the demand for goods. This can result in rapid price increases, then businesses may offer higher wages to attract workers, which further pushes up prices. If the general price level rises enough, it creates inflation, which can hurt economic growth.

An example of an overheated economy is the period surrounding the financial crisis between 2007 and 2009. Prices rose rapidly in the U.S. and annual inflation was 2.9% in 2007 and 3.8% in 2008, which is higher than the target inflation rate the central bank sets at 2%.2 The unemployment rate was 4.6% in 2007, which was also on the low end of (or below) the NRU. The unemployment rate eventually rose to 5.8% in 2008 and over 9% in 2009 and 2010, and inflation dropped back down below 2%.3

Is the U.S. Economy Overheated?

While the Federal Reserve maintained that the U.S. economy was not overheating and inflation was temporary in 2021, there were signs that the economy was beginning to overheat.

 

In a Federal Reserve report from July 9, 2021, the Fed showed the increase in demand for goods and the decrease in the supply of goods due to materials and labor shortages. As a result, prices began to increase, and by the fall, inflation was at a high not seen since June 1982.5

 

In November 2021, inflation reached 6.8% and the unemployment rate was 4.2%.6 Global demand also surged in 2021 due to many stimulus measures and low interest rates. This pushed up prices on many consumer goods and assets even more. In response to the added wealth of businesses, the wages of workers increased. Workers had more money to spend by the end of 2021, and demand was further pushed up. In addition, there were and still are supply chain bottlenecks due to a shortage of workers and raw materials, which has further pushed up prices and contributed to inflation. These were all contributing factors to the rapid rise in prices in 2021—a typical sign of an overheated economy.

 

In December 2021, the Fed released a statement acknowledging the imbalance between supply and demand. While it maintained a low federal funds rate of between 0% and 0.25%, it did state that it was prepared to change that rate if and when the labor market reached levels in line with its ideal employment.7

https://www.thebalance.com/overheated-economy-5214761#toc-definition-and-examples-of-an-overheated-economy

 

 The rugrat's actually arguing that the economy contracted because Pop Pop's doing too good of a job.

we all need to buy more biden flags & signs to help raise his popularity!  there's still time! 

23 minutes ago, The_Omega said:

 The rugrat's actually arguing that the economy contracted because Pop Pop's doing too good of a job.

 

Oh, look, a moron putting words in my mouth. A Trumpbot distorting reality to make himself look good, what else is new?

It's really cute how you constantly project your immaturity onto those those who possess the requisite brain cells to discuss complex things. You're not fooling anyone, dumdum.

Not that anyone cares about facts, but the main drivers of the negative GDP print were a massive trade deficit and a slow inventory build. Makes sense with the USD being so strong and high inflation (less inventory build as people hope prices drop in future).

Quote

Together, trade and inventories subtracted about 4 percentage points from headline growth. Government spending shrank, also weighing on GDP. But real final sales to domestic purchasers, a measure of underlying demand that strips out the trade and inventories components, accelerated to a 2.6% annualized rate.

 

14 minutes ago, vikas83 said:

Not that anyone cares about facts, but the main drivers of the negative GDP print were a massive trade deficit and a slow inventory build. Makes sense with the USD being so strong and high inflation (less inventory build as people hope prices drop in future).

 

Just a question, isn’t the ‘’real final sales’’ number less than the rate of inflation during that period?

3 minutes ago, The_Omega said:

Just a question, isn’t the ‘’real final sales’’ number less than the rate of inflation during that period?

Believe so, but I'm not an expert on economic stats

4 hours ago, Dave Moss said:

Bailing out people or companies, subsidizing companies or whole industries, etc. is silly, but it’s even sillier to allow a wealth gap that leads to all kinds of societal problems.  You have admitted yourself that you prefer L.A. over S.F. because you can avoid homeless people

Right...because all of those homeless people clearly are just saddled with student loan debt.

Seriously, maybe take a break champ.

From a manufacturing standpoint, the slow inventory build isn't because people are waiting for lower prices, it's because manufacturers can't get the materials to build product any faster.  In fact, for the first time in decades, we have customers wanting to give us orders so that they can build inventory trying to lock in current prices (which are 25% - 50% higher than they were a year ago), but we're having to turn them down because materials are on allocation and we just can't get enough to fulfill their demands. Every single company that I represent could build new capacity and fill it immediately, but it wouldn't matter because they couldn't get the materials to fill the orders.

3 minutes ago, The_Omega said:

From a manufacturing standpoint, the slow inventory build isn't because people are waiting for lower prices, it's because manufacturers can't get the materials to build product any faster.  In fact, for the first time in decades, we have customers wanting to give us orders so that they can build inventory trying to lock in current prices (which are 25% - 50% higher than they were a year ago), but we're having to turn them down because materials are on allocation and we just can't get enough to fulfill their demands. Every single company that I represent could build new capacity and fill it immediately, but it wouldn't matter because they couldn't get the materials to fill the orders.

it can be tougher in some areas over others depending on the industry and/or product. my company is diverse enough where they can overcome this slow down in certain GBU's with the high volume of others. but yeah, the biggest issue these GBUs have is waiting on manufacturers to get their product out the door.  

5 minutes ago, The_Omega said:

From a manufacturing standpoint, the slow inventory build isn't because people are waiting for lower prices, it's because manufacturers can't get the materials to build product any faster.  In fact, for the first time in decades, we have customers wanting to give us orders so that they can build inventory trying to lock in current prices (which are 25% - 50% higher than they were a year ago), but we're having to turn them down because materials are on allocation and we just can't get enough to fulfill their demands. Every single company that I represent could build new capacity and fill it immediately, but it wouldn't matter because they couldn't get the materials to fill the orders.

Good point. One of our companies is paying in advance to lock in production slots 3 months from now in SE Asia. It's nuts.