And to pressure allied nations to do the same. All the way with LBJ!
And then not include allied leadership in decisions about policy, and let them find out about them from US news services.
The Defending Joe Biden Mega-Thread
- Thread starter Gergar12
- Start date
And then not include allied leadership in decisions about policy, and let them find out about them from US news services.
From that link:Actually wage have increased across the board (with the poorest experiencing the greatest growth). This hold true even if you account for the increase governement transfer. And this doubly true for black and hispanic. But Biden isn't doing this by hurting group, he's just helping everyone get better off, so for most people rich getting richer = poor getting poorer, and so they think Biden is making them worse off.
The Purchasing Power of Household Incomes from 2019 to 2022
www.jpmorganchase.com
The increase across the board is only if you widen the timeframe back to 2019. Growth across all groups was ongoing from "2016 to 2019" trends, and negative growth in real wages is aiming us back to pre-pandemic levels. Look at this graph:
Do you not see the downward trend in the right side of that graph? The left side of that graph was Trump, the right side is Biden. I'm not one to blame the whole state of the world on just the president, especially in the context of a global pandemic, so I'm not trying to argue anything like Biden personally caused the economy to get worse. Most of this was the inevitable long-term consequence of shutting down the world for a year. But things have, statistically, gotten worse. People aren't imagining it. I think the suggestion that they are imagining it is insulting. And I think the suggestion that people are imagining their life getting worse because others aren't being hurt enough is rather silly.
Data is inherently noisy, so the downward slide toward the end isn't much to say, case in point there was a bigger drop around mid 2022, just for it to bounce right back. Also Trump was only "the left side of the graph" as in the first point, the rest is all 2020+. Every group is richer today than they were at the start of Biden term, the poorest by about 6-7%. The only way you could construct them being poorer is by comparing to the massive wealthfare of the pandemic, which may be what people are comparing it to, but that's obviously unsustainable and wouldn't be much of a reason to vote agaisnt Biden since the GOP mostly oppose those measure anyway. Sure people aren't 50% richer today, but to say that they've become poorer under Biden is just not true.
ThE eCoNoMy Is DoInG gReAt
Homelessness is at an all time high, rent keeps skyrocketing despite property prices falling, but this is probably the best indicator for Biden's "great economy"
It is true that on some level he was dealt a bad hand and certainly there are aspects that are beyond his control. There are also several deliberate actions that undermine any thought of good faith handling of a crisis.
Homelessness is at an all time high, rent keeps skyrocketing despite property prices falling, but this is probably the best indicator for Biden's "great economy"
It is true that on some level he was dealt a bad hand and certainly there are aspects that are beyond his control. There are also several deliberate actions that undermine any thought of good faith handling of a crisis.
This is a wild take that I have to agree on the literal writing of. He probably will be written about fondly by later historians, at least for a while. But how he's handling Israel and Palestine is absolutely atrocious, actual war criminal stuff that disqualify him from being a decent human being, let alone president.
True my bad, doesn't change the fact that no one is poorer under his term, like I said before there was a massive increase in temporary wealth fare payment that boosted income across the board due to pandemic. People did get poorer if you account for those, but that doesn't reflect on a poor handling of the economy by the current administration.
Would you care to walk back the claim that people think they are suffering only because they see other people doing better?
Not to worry, Mecha-Hitler will make him look like a saint
He really helped those railroad people out...
Trump ended up being mostly right about covid though. He was right about schools, he was right about masks. Yes, Trump said covid was like the flu, but so did the left during the early months as well. Biden knowingly ordered 2 things that were unconstitutional. Biden's admin also pushed boosters through the FDA and forced the top 2 FDA officials to quit. If Trump did that, people today still wouldn't shut up about it but since it was Biden, it gets a pass and never brought up. Biden imposed a vaccine mandate that was unconstitutional and with no evidence that it would actually do anything (and it didn't do anything), and that caused more divisiveness in the country and now people not getting standard vaccines because of it.
I'm for M4A but it's not possible in America currently because healthcare prices are so fucking inflated it couldn't be done. Over half the US GDP goes towards healthcare. Also, all that wasted money on covid tests for no reason, covid boosters, paxlovid, etc.
It's possible if you wanna continue printing shit tons of money and increasing inflation. Healthcare prices for everything in America is way too fucking expensive, that's the main problem.
As you're on a Biden love-in, I thought you might appreciate this article, which I found by coming across this article.
They are interesting as a perspective of the possibly surprisingly amount of stuff an administration can try to do make things better - the problem perhaps being that they can rapidly be undone by a hostile administration. And of course the fact that the mainstream media will probably pay almost no attention whatsoever.
I defend unpopular positions, and this is one I support. But it's not Biden's fault the GOP Congress and the House in particular don't compromise.
I'm not sure they are unpopular. I think the public would - broadly - be very happy to see the government attempting to uphold standards designed to combat corporate abuses.
My issue is more perhaps why don't they know the Biden administration has been doing this? I fear they don't because it's not "sexy". Some bureaucrat in the backroom fiddling the nuts and bolts is kind of dull: no showpiece legislating, no huge arguments, much less of the headlines and TV-friendly gladiatorial jousting. (I'm sure the Democrats would call this something like "holding businesses to account", and the Republicans "bureaucratic red tape holding back American business".)
Look the media is owned by the corps, and they don't want a powerful Biden given the fact that Trump despite my rash analysis does not seem to want to put Americans in camps, end our democracy, and so given the fact that growing numbers of Hispanics, and African Americans are joining him. He may put noncitizens in internment camps including people we know but he just maintains the immigration apartheid we impose on noncitizens who work America's most labor-intensive jobs vs massive million people deportations, camps, shooting people on the border, etc.. The other reason is Trump will lower taxes on corporations, I mean if Trump didn't say nutty anti-democracy stuff people like Jamie Dimon who recently in a bid to heal the partisan divide and likely get better business stated that MAGA is full of regular people would have stated that earlier.
My point is that corporations no longer see Trump as a threat to American capitalism, democracy, and the status quo. More, and more they see Biden as that threat. Biden rightly defends Taiwan against US export-import interests, Biden who staffs the NLRB with pro-union people, Biden who raised taxes on multinationals with the global minimum tax, Biden who has increased the IRS budget to a healthy capability. These are good things that will last into the future, and help America grow as a country but companies don't want them.
There are ways to do the 'wrong' thing and the thing many corporations want(Like give Taiwan to China and force Taiwan to give up semi-conductors FABs to the US), not staff the NLRB with pro-labor people, not do a global tax on corps at 15%, not fund the IRS adequately, etc.
I read an article about that.
Disillusionment with Biden is significant, and if they don't think Biden is delivering, it will cost votes. There are no bills on the table likely to lift them up any time soon, and the Ukraine-Russia inflation spike has killed a lot of real-term wage growth. What I found interesting was why they might think favourably of Trump. A lot of the comments seemed to approximate to "He gave us free money in covid".
None of this really makes sense as smart policy. Unless some other crisis craters the economy to justify freebies, it's not going to happen again. And it's not exactly like the inflation spike is something that the Biden administration could really do anything about. But it's how a lot of voters vote. "Do I feel better off? No? It's the other guy, then." Sometimes even if that guy looks very much like he might chuck you in a camp.
I don't know that that is true. I think they may be very aware that Trump has the potential to be a threat. But what is most important is to be on the winning side, or thought favourably of by the winning side. As long as there is a good chance that Trump will win, he will receive substantial corporate backing.
I would agree that corporate bosses tend to be short-termists. They don't give a shit what the national economy and share price will be in 10+ years, they'll be picking up their bonuses and cashing out well before then.
So I am going to answer the LBJ attacks. First, he suffered from Cold War syndrome. Yes, Ike stated the military was bloated, and the war industry was bloated, but given how much the US spent on the military at that time, it was pretty obvious. Plus he overthrew Iran's democratic government which has led to problems to this day. (somewhat, some of the blame goes to rural Shia Muslims in Iran who have nothing better to do than oppress women under their religious elders) LBJ also loved his advisors, and US advisors back then were pretty good, but they weren't gods, and LBJ wasn't out of touch and was pretty open-minded. He should have taken a heavier leadership approach.
JFK made too many enemies, LBJ didn't make enough, and MLK made just enough to get him killed. It wasn't the safest time to be even somewhat soft on the commies.
As for inflation, we are handling it better than most countries around the world which yes may be due to the US's geography with its vast resources and NAFTA, but it's also due to BIdenomics and free trade (minus China, and a few sanctioned countries). The US could have easily been another Japan, but it didn't due to immigration free trade, and general openness.
Again with Israel Biden is not a butcher he just can't control his allies, less people complained when the Saudis under both Obama and Trump killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis through direct(bombings) and indirect means(sanctions), and Biden ended that. He's doing what he can, and he and the DOD are likely having a yelling match with the Israelis over this.
JFK made too many enemies, LBJ didn't make enough, and MLK made just enough to get him killed. It wasn't the safest time to be even somewhat soft on the commies.
As for inflation, we are handling it better than most countries around the world which yes may be due to the US's geography with its vast resources and NAFTA, but it's also due to BIdenomics and free trade (minus China, and a few sanctioned countries). The US could have easily been another Japan, but it didn't due to immigration free trade, and general openness.
Again with Israel Biden is not a butcher he just can't control his allies, less people complained when the Saudis under both Obama and Trump killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis through direct(bombings) and indirect means(sanctions), and Biden ended that. He's doing what he can, and he and the DOD are likely having a yelling match with the Israelis over this.
Doing what he can, like providing the Israelis with more free weapons and information on refugee camps when the IDF is attacking refugee camps?
he bypassed Congress to send Israel more weapons to do the butchering! He seems not to be able to even consider the possibility of stopping the flow of weapons! He's attacking other countries that are putting pressure on Israel rather than joining them in the demand to stop the genocide!
Naturally, there are limits on how much the USA can control its allies. But the idea that the USA could not drive Israel to a ceasefire or negotiating table is laughable. Biden chooses not to.
He chooses not to - like every American president - because it makes no sense in terms of domestic politics. There are far too many Americans heavily attached to Israel on both sides of the political divide, plus a lot of lobbying money (e.g. AIPAC) in support. Any talk Biden and team have about mitigating casualties, ceasefires and two-state solution is nothing more than trying to reduce the damage with Democrat voters who are sympathetic to the Palestinians.