• Gargleblaster@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Presidents do not control the economy. Obama wished people understood that.

    The economy is in covid recovery, and Biden isn’t a corrupt fascist running the government like it’s his personal toy.

    I’ll give him that.

    For all we know, Mr. Yale is just happy that people are paying their student loans again.

    • YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Presidents do not control the economy, Presidential Administrations do impact an economy. The only President I know that killed an economy was Trump due to allowing covid to rage out of control and denying that it was happening.

      • Gargleblaster@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Taking covid seriously was not going to save the economy. It would’ve saved lives, but the economic impact of covid was a global one.

        • Zuberi@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You forget if we had been inside for 2-4 weeks it would have been over.

          Plenty of other nations were done with it well before us.

          • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Everybody complains about the shut down, but we didn’t have a shut down. Half of Americans kept walking around, fighting mask requirements and coughing on shit deliberately. Schools closed, but so many went to private schools and makeshift daycares, and it wasn’t even the kids spreading it. Doctors stopped seeing patients and sent everyone to the ER. Millions died preventable deaths.

          • th0mcat@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            No. You would have had to keep every citizen from every country inside for 2-4 weeks and enforce incredibly strict N95/KN95-only mask policies. If you have a single city not doing zero-COVID in this scenario, you lose containment.

              • th0mcat@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                You seem to be stating if the US response had been 2-4 week strict lockdowns that we would have eradicated COVID.

                I am telling you no, it wouldn’t have prevented much unless every single human being on the planet was also in lockdown for the exact same 2-4 week period.

                • Zuberi@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Seemed to work for so many countries but sure let’s go w/ that lol. Americans will die on any/every hill.

        • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It was only a global impact because of widespread denial of the facts. Trump was at the forefront of that denial from the beginning, and many other countries seemed to follow his lead. Much of global impact could have been avpided entirely of Trump had instead decided to listen to the doctors that actually deal with epidemics and insisted people follow the basic protocols from the beginning before it expanded due to lack of action, instead of vilifying the medical community at every opportunity.

        • Saneless@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yes but pretending like it didn’t exist and allowing it to spike harder than ever, so bad things has to be shut down, was a big negative impact

          He told his followers it was bullshit and they acted accordingly, spreading it like mad

          • SankaraStone@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            And before people say that it didn’t need to be shut down, they ignore that the hospitals were overwhelmed and could have been even more overwhelmed if we didn’t have mask mandates and/or lock downs. People were being denied health care because the hospitals had no space.

      • EmperorGormet@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        How about repealing the Glass-Steagall act under Clinton? You cant look at things in a vacuum because impact from policy is delayed. 2008 didn’t happen because Bush signed one or two documents, it was decades of policy and corruption. Saying “The only president you know” seems quite unfair. Regardless if you think Trump is a shit-bag or not.

        • kgbbot@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Trump is absolutely a shit bag but also a terrible leader and bottom rung president who was so shitty it made Bush 2 look slightly competent.

      • Temple Square@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        In fairness, it was either or:

        • Take COVID seriously

        • Not destroy the economy

        Early lockdowns probably saved a million lives. But the supply chain issues we’ve faced since are the ripple effect from those two/three months. Countries like China that took the pandemic more seriously faced worse economic fallout.

        Additionally, the previous administration signed off on Congress sending each us of unemployment, PPP, and thousand dollar checks. All of that helped enormously.

        I hate the previous president personally, and feel he’s the most unqualified man to ever hold the office, and feel he’s the closest we’ve ever had to a fascist coup. But that does not mean every decision of that administration was automatically wrong.

        • Gargleblaster@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Are we already forgetting what happened 3 years ago?

          STATES and the CDC called lockdowns while the president told people it would just pass, it could be cured with sunlight, to drink bleach, and take horse dewormer.

          Trump did NOT take covid seriously.

          How many of the million people that died were due to him playing make believe is hard to measure, but he killed people by telling them bullshit.

        • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          In fairness, it was either or:

          • Take COVID seriously
          • Not destroy the economy

          Hornswoggle. Balderdash. Bull fucking shit. Countries that took it seriously suffered fewer economic disadvantages, spent less than we did per capita, and recovered more quickly.

          The countriea that fared the best

          • Had clear and unified messaging from their government, backed by science.

          • Shut down quickly and completely, paying people to stay home.

          • Provided universal healthcare and prioritized their frontline healthcare workers.

          Destroying the economy was a result of our slow, confused response, ignoring the recommendations of experts, making the response political, and bailing out industries instead of individuals.

          • Temple Square@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            How does a lockdown HELP the economy exactly?

            Work still has to be accomplished. Otherwise it’s money chasing NO product. Which is what we’re still recovering from.

            Sometimes doing the right thing (lockdown) has COSTS. Serious economic costs. A “have our cake and eat it” mindset is, sadly, a fallacy.

            • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              How does open heart surgery help your chest? You have to make a huge incision and poke around, causing all sorts of lasting damage.

              Of course the lockdown would have had costs. Global pandemics tend to affect the economy one way or the other. A total lockdown would have shortened the pandemic, getting people fully back to work sooner, killed fewer people, and ultimately cost less than the half-assed bullshit we couldn’t even get the President to do. Several countries managed to avoid the l9ng term economic downturn by doing exactly what I just said in the last comment.

        • 🐱TheCat@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          People are already rewriting history.

          Trump was in money printing mode all the way back in early 2019, heres one of many articles from APRIL of that year https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/30/trump-calls-on-fed-to-cut-rates-by-1percent-and-urges-more-quantitative-easing.html

          I’ll remind you all that Trump is always projecting, and he’s previously accused the FED of keeping rates low to help obama . So I find his motivations clear for asking the fed to drop interest rates in 2019 before his upcoming election.

          Trump and the GOP had to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing any additional COVID relief, it was nothing compared to the amount of money given in tax cuts to the rich FOREVER, and the PPP money went to the top 1/5 of households, people who were already rich

      • cyd@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I don’t even know if you can say that Trump killed the economy. If you look only at the economy, then comparing the US to Europe, the US economy weathered the pandemic much better. Congress, under both Trump and Biden, passed very generous support packages. The Biden package was arguably too generous, and kickstarted the current inflation.

        And inflation is the main reason polticially-disengaged people “feel” that the economy is no good under Biden. Last I checked, real wages for blue collar workers are still lower than when Biden took office.

        • Dark_Blade@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          This won’t be a popular opinion on Lemmy, but I agree. Biden is far from the worst president we’ve had, but some people tend to whitewash his flaws because he’s not an orange dullard LARPing as Hitler.

        • 🐱TheCat@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Same old lie. Trump started demanding money printing in early 2019 to juice the economy for an election year, because he knows republicans are simple and don’t understand that policy decisions take time to take effect. You had inflation coming your way before COVID.

          President Donald Trump, in his most brazen attack yet on the Federal Reserve, called for the central bank on Tuesday to cut interest rates by 1 percentage point and to implement more money-printing quantitative easing.

          Everyone I heard who wanted to vote for Trump was saying ‘my bank account has never looker better, screw inflation!’

          Well, fucking eat it you idiots.

      • PatFusty@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Rage out of control? So operation warp speed means nothing to you huh…

        You were probably one of the many who screamed racist when trump banned chinese people from entering in Feb 2020. You probably also applauded when Nancy Pelosi said to visit China town in SF days before shutdown.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          I mean… that is racist. China is a huge country and most Chinese people were not any more a danger than most American people because they had been nowhere near affected areas at that point. So banning every Chinese person? Racist. Sorry.

          • PatFusty@lemm.ee
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            You have either

            A. Literally no idea what you are talking about

            B. Agenda’d so far up the ass that anything anti trump must be true.

            It was only foreign nationals coming from china. If you were a resident or family of an American citizen you were still free to come. This was only 11 days after the first US death of covid in NY but also 8 days after the state of Wuhan closed all of its borders to quarantine. This was probably a mistake because he should have closed it to EVERYONE coming from China. On the other hand China waited until the end of March to close its entire border to the world, weeks after most countries and after tens of thousands of deaths had already occured.

            Either way, you still neglect the fact that this was a good measure when it wasnt sure how bad it would end up being. Im sure you would had preferred open borders until china closed theirs entirely though. You would prefer the ‘rage out of control’ part of your argument as long as someone you preffer does it but if its Trump its still ‘Rage out of control’. You also neglected operation warpspeed which is funny, seems like you guys always forget that Trump pushed the vaccine in the first place.

    • SankaraStone@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The clip said that that this is the best economic intervention since the New Deal. I’d argue with the trillions we’ve spent, it’s probably greater. We prevented a Great economic collapse.

    • Saneless@lemmy.world
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      Yes but the dipshits who vote blame him for it when it’s down so it’s not a message they will not ignore sending out when it’s up

  • sebinspace@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Well yeah. As much as it seems to be in fashion, blaming one person for a shitty situation on this scale is stupid, and the over effect from this individual has been a net positive.

    Shit, I didn’t even blame Trump when the economy started going to shit during his term. Shit just happens, there’s only so much any one person can do.

    • AlternatePersonMan@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I mean, sort of. Is the economy determined by one person? No. An entire administration, however, definitely has some sway. Interest rates, public projects, regulations (or lack of), so subsidies, those things all have an effect. It’s a very complex system with plenty of luck and unknowns that don’t change like a light switch just because a new guy was elected.

      Still, look at the economies under Clinton, Obama, and Biden, then compare those to Bush, Bush, and Trump. That’s either quite the coincidence, or the person running the show does matter.

    • blanketswithsmallpox@kbin.social
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      Not only that but Trump had the ability to really cement himself as one of the greatest economists ever during covid by riding on a Democrat’s economy pre-tax cuts… He got ahead of Covid pushing ‘HIS’ vaccine through… then did a complete fucking 180 killing by pandering to an ever growing, deluded, extremist base.

      Instead an extra ~319,000 people died when this was published in May, 2022… due to vaccine hesitancy, lies, and Republussian propaganda lol.

      It’s wild seeing the mental gymnastics they have to go through when Democrats end up agreeing with them on something. Meanwhile Biden has done so much work on one of the most evenly split governments in United States History by working with a whopping ~15? sane republicans across the aisle.

  • BurnSquirrel@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m glad we have strong GDP growth but:

    how does the average man paying 1500 for a basic apartment in a po’dunk town feel this

    • BrandoGil@lemmy.world
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      That’s a great argument for how out of touch the indicators they use are. Does it mean that we’re in a better position geopolitically? Almost definitely. Did these indicators at one point mean good things for the working class? Probably. But now, they feel more like gaslighting that temperature taking.

  • Upgrade2754@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Can we get this neolib bullshit out of here?

    The economy is not doing well for a majority of Americans. The majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and are not optimistic of the future.

    They dealt with inflation by raising interest rates which harms the working class. They use the stock market to justify the economy, when 80% is owned by the rich. They use job numbers to justify the economy, when more and more people need to get 2nd jobs just to be able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment.

    Please stop linking to mainstream media. It’s so aggravating.

    • btaf45@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The UK inflation rate was 7.9% in June, 2023. The US inflation rate was 3.0% in June, 2023. Britain has been controlled by its Conservative Party for years. The point is that things would have been way worse with other people in charge.

      • Upgrade2754@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Inflation rate in a vacuum doesn’t mean much. We lowered the inflation rate by harming workers, and our safety net is terrible. We could have dealt with the situation by using price controls and wealth taxes that affect the top rather than the bottom.

        • btaf45@lemmy.world
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          Worker are harmed more by inflation than low interest rates. The wealthy can ride out inflation with investments. Workers effectively have their salaries lowered by inflation.

          • Sl00k@programming.dev
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            1 year ago

            High interest rates also affect the working class via mortgage increases and Rental properties increasing rent to deal with increased interest rates.

        • lennybird@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          That would be great, but just get that past the Republican House and DINOs Manchin and Sinema (though now an “Independent.”)

          The reality is that for the vast majority of voting Americans, all they will see is “Inflation high” / “inflation low” and if Democrats don’t scrap together some way to reduce it, the worst party will use that against Dems and they will get back in, making everything 10x worse.

      • Yewb@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The calculation has been changed twice in 2 years to paint a better picture and remove some of the things!

        • btaf45@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Previous inflation rates are often recalculated. The point is that the USA has managed inflation far better than the UK and their Conservative Party, in which inflation peaked at a ridiculous 14% rate.

          • Yewb@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Can you educate me?

            From my perspective the change was specifically to make inflation look lower, do you shop at a grocery store? Are you kidding me?

            • btaf45@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              If you shop at a grocery store in the UK your prices would have increased 14% under Conservative Party rule. Not kidding.

              • Techmaster@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Grocery prices where I live in the US have more than doubled. If the prices didn’t double, then they probably shrunk the portions of food and the size of the packaging. So how do we more than double prices and call that 3% inflation? Housing prices around here have also doubled since the start of COVID.

                • btaf45@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  prices where I live in the US have more than doubled.

                  That’s weird. For everybody else, it was only an annualized 3% increase for the month of June 2023. Guess businesses in your city is screwing people.

    • ratboy@lemm.ee
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      Seriously 😭😭 my grocery bill for two people went up from 80 dollars a week to 130 practically overnight. Houses doubled in price in like 3 years in the town I live in. They also raised the cap on rent to 14 percent here. I only bring home 27k a year with 6 years of experience in a field that nobody cares about (social services).

    • PBCrisps@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The politics board here is just a Xerox copy of the politics board from reddit: a DNC propaganda dispenser.

  • Pulptastic@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    Things are improving for someone, but I make less and pay more thanka to economic effects and it is hurting my balance book.

  • theneverfox@pawb.social
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    1 year ago

    I don’t think it caused the inflation spike - the assumption that inflation is linked to wages assumes an economic system very different from ours

    We don’t have the capitalism of Adam Smith. Under such a system, we’d expect prices to go back down. That is based around competition, which we barely have anymore. We now have high barriers to entry due to hostile takeovers through the stock market, shutdown of competitors through outsized influence over regulators, suppliers, and financers. It’s all the hallmarks of monopolies through outright collusion or unspoken understanding that competition would kill both parties stock price for the duration of the conflict.

    The payments are long over and the money mostly went to companies - this isn’t traditional inflation, this is a lack of competition. Some people are terming our current system as feudal capitalism, because it’s closer to rent extraction than a free market

  • JakenVeina@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    “Strongest positive effect” is a wee bit different than “most successful.” And with the dumpster fire that he inherited, that’s arguably to be expected.

    Still, positive is positive, and worth recognizing, I suppose.

  • SankaraStone@lemmy.world
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    What? The New Deal was hardly successful at getting us out of the Depression? It took World War II. Most of FDR’s presidency was over the Great Depression (he didn’t cause it). That’s hardly a successful economy.

    The best Economic years of America were Eisenhower-Kennedy-LBJ followed by 6 or so years of Clinton. We might be finally getting back to Clinton good, but we’ll see.

    Ok, just saw the clip. The blurb is misquoting the guy. He’s saying Biden’s had the best economic intervention since the New Deal. I’d argue that Biden’s covid relief and infrastructure and climate bills are the best Economic intervention by the elected Federal government since WWII and better than the New Deal.

    • krayj@lemmy.world
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      The modlog is public, fyi, and it hasn’t logged any moderator-removed comments from this post’s comment section…so what are you talking about?

    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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      Where is that happening? I don’t see any comments tagged with “removed by mod.”

      When mods remove comments in Lemmy, Lemmy posts “removed by mod” in the thread. Source, I’m a mod of a silly meme community, and I remove spam and hateful crap all the time.

  • arin@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Yeah, no. Me and several friends and family are struggling to find jobs right now, and a we have worked in tech

    • YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.worldOP
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      The tech sector has been overly saturated for a while now. High School students are graduating with a lot of tech experience and if I was an employer I’d be hiring them and paying them a lot less as a result. That is how corporations see it. That or they want AI to do everything.