jakee

And yet you voted for him, for the sole reason that he'd be best for the economy. So I guess you don't have a passing familiarity with either stochastics or Trump. Amazing how everyone else knew that before the election but you're only just figuring it out now.

What I can’t get my head around is how is he not getting hammered in the press every single day for his plan to not leave the jet in service for the next pres and the next pres and the next pres after him to also use?

Creating jobs isn’t in itself a solution, it’s a goal. How do you create those jobs? That’s where the solution would lie. Conventional neo-liberal ‘wisdom’ is that encouraging wealthy people and funds to invest in businesses so they can grow, make more profit and then create more jobs is the way to go. Top down investment in business, therefore top down tax cuts and incentives. But we’ve been trying that for a long time now and is it really working? Two major issues: 1) Rich people hoard money and businesses prioritise shareholder returns over employees. 2) Don’t businesses ultimately become truly successful by selling more of what they offer, bringing money in through the front door not the back door? In this way, a basic subsistence income is a job creation measure. Unlike with a rich person, if you give a person below the poverty line more money, they will spend all of it. Every single penny will go directly back into the economy through the front door of local shops and service providers which will have a direct effect on both profitability and need for new employees to manage the extra business. Plus the government gets an immediate rebate on its investment through sales tax which is a not insignificant discount in the overall cost. Of course if all that sounds too complicated you could just nationalise utilities and a range of public services and run them in a more socially responsible manner.

“In early April, the Floridian was sentenced to 18 months in prison and two years of supervised release, and he was ordered to pay more than $4 million in restitution. His pardon spares him both from serving time and paying the fees.” Son of a bitch. Nice to see that Trump’s commitment to reducing the deficit is as strong as ever.

When some pay is a given, what will motivate most people to work is a) more pay and b) wanting something to do. Most people would be bored shitless sitting at home on a subsistence wage and would much rather take an honest occupation and more money as a significant win-win situation. Contrast that with the behaviour of major companies who will do the sum total of sweet fuck all divided by a million for the greater good. Who will cut as many jobs as they can as often as they can and will treat the low level workers they sweat for 40+ hours a week (on whatever schedule benefits the company most) as lazy shiftless parasites. In 1930 Keynes predicted that technology increasing productivity would bring about universal 3 day weeks and a near utopia of personal freedom and leisure time. Instead, 40 years of increasingly neo-liberal global economic policies since the dawn of the Reagan and Thatcher era, which treat corporate growth and profit as the end goal from which all other good will somehow, somewhen flow (and every time that fails to occur the answer is we just haven't increased profit enough yet for the billionaires to be able to start sharing it) mean we are way past the point of technological advancements increasing quality of life for most people and are rapidly regressing the other way. Increasingly ruthless exploitation of the non-executive workforce at almost all levels is resulting in an increasing lack of employment opportunities for ordinary people, an increasing return to the workhouse conditions of the Industrial fucking Revolution for people that are employed, and an increasing concentration of wealth for people already so wealthy they live in an exclusively low tax environment. This leads directly back to quality of life for most people as local governments are asked to support more and more people for less and less money. Is anyone here going to stick their hands up and say their city has better public transport than it did 30 years ago? More childs playgrounds per capita than it did then? More parks and green spaces in general? Better roads? Better any public service of any kind? Someone did that, and it absolutely positively was not lazy benefit scroungers. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/sep/01/economics

Yet more self inflicted wounds at the DOD as Hegseth's team try desperately to blame anyone but Hegseth for the three Hegseth appointed aids that they fired for supposedly leaking against Hegseth. It seems they may have accidentally admitted doing something way worse than leaking in order to justify firing the alleged leakers. The conversation seems to paraphrase to approximately this: White House: It's getting difficult to point to any evidence that these guys were the leakers, are you sure they did it? Hegseth's Lawyer: Oh yeah, definitely. We uh, hmm how did we find out, oh yeah we got the NSA to tap their phones! They totally discussed it on the messages we intercepted with a phone tap. WH: And this is the first we're hearing about it? You didn't tell us when you got the warrants and shit? HL: Warrants? We didn't get any warrants, we just told the NSA to do it. WH: Dude you can't just tap someone's phone without a warrant! That's really freakin' bad, we've got to sort this phone tap stuff out right now. HL: Phone taps? I didn't say anything about phone taps. Where did you get that from? Are you hearing things again? Trump advisers lose confidence in Pentagon leak investigation Hegseth used to justify firing three top aides At least we know that there's no question Hegseth was the best possible choice for SecDef because, well y'know, he's white.

So? No one who has far more than they need to survive does anything for the greater good. I'd argue the more they have the less likely they are to do so. Take Covid as an example. In this country our entire vaccination scheme relied on thousands of dedicated volunteers - all of them ordinary everyday people of the working or middle class - standing in the rain hour after hour, day after day, organising queues, checking appointment slips, keeping order, doing all the thankless grunt work for nothing but a sense of duty to their communities. We also had politically connected businessmen and women already so priviliged that they're on the Sunday Times Rich List who thought it appropriate to leverage those connection to make tens of millions of pounds simpy for acting as middlemen between chinese mask and PPE factories and the UK government. Honestly show me a single rich bastard who jumped in to organise a PPE supply during the emergency who charged less than a 100% markup and then we can start talking about who's working for the greater good.

Don't be so quick to put limits on people. Since the white South African refugee scheme is a textbook example of what the right falsely claim that DEI is, you could say they're being woke and racist.

Well congratulations, I guess, on the US government once again becoming significantly more racist than South Africa. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czellw10ejdo

Meanwhile, in a move that by complete coincidence comes alongside a huge Qatar deal that Trump is attempting to claim credit for, Boeing has been let off the hook for intentionally breaching the plea deal that got them off the hook of being prosecuted for killing hundreds of people with engineering they knew was defective. I'm sure that'll make them learn their lesson and be safer next time.

Is that the code for being wrapped in anchor chains and dragged behind as shark bait? Because if so then yes.

Remember when we thought Sean Spicer lying about the inauguration crowd size was a bizarre new low? Ah to return to those halcyon days…

Yeah. And?

Didn’t the poorly educated try and overthrow a legitimately elected government because the election results weren’t as favourable to them as the polls had suggested? I guess they’ve forgotten about that already. After all, they are poorly educated.

Right - you’re an eye for an eye guy. You accuse me of being happy that Chauvin was assaulted in prison? No, you are happy that Chauvin was assaulted in prison. That’s what you think should happen to violent criminals in prison. Even if he was innocent (he isn’t, as you know), you don’t care, just as you don’t care about any other wrongly convicted person being beaten up or killed in prison. It’s just the cost of doing business. Of course it’s politically inconvenient for you to admit that right now, so you’re lying about it. Unfortunately, all of that is a lie. Your first set of facts were that if only you had been there to help hold Floyd down, Chauvin would have been able to let go. The real facts are that Chauvin didn't let go when two other cops were already helping hold Floyd down, he didn't let go when Floyd was unconscious, he didn't even let go when a paramedic told him that Floyd was already dead. What exactly have you changed your mind about as a result?

They did such great work on the committee to find out how to weaponise the federal government.

Didn’t the blanket layoff of probationary employees across the government mean that all the trainees in the pipeline were fired?

So you're saying that hiring and promotion in technical fields in results driven industries is not, in fact, done purely on merit? That it is always a subjective process driven by the personal preferences of the person doing the hiring? It's like you're so close yet still so far away from having a really important revelation.

He's a true man of the people. A veritable hero of the down home working class!

Yes, you claim to oppose discrimination in theory but in reality scream and shout and insult anyone who wants to reduce the amount of discrimination that happens. Why? Because the everyday racist reality of the workplace suits you quite nicely.

Right? At least it blows up all the pathetic excuses that Winsor and the like always deploy to deflect the truth. "Everyone who talks about racism are the real racists!" Well this brazenly white supremacist administration is laser focused on talking about racism now.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cpqe7rp388vt The emboldening of the racist right is quite something.

He ain’t gonna change, just let him do his racist thing.

What exactly do you think that comment has to do with the post you're replying to?

Except that you literally do support them. You voted for them. Even now if the election was tomorrow you would vote for them again, because you support what they're doing.