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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 20th, 2023

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  • Because so far the fed has remained independent, and national debt matters far less than most people think it does. Take a look at Japan - theoretically in debt WAY over their head, but the Bank of Japan is actually trillions of yen in the black and mostly invested in the Japanese economy, getting yields of 6-7% on their holdings far above their debt service. Their pension fund is a majority stakeholder in basically all internal infrastructure, and despite stagnant “growth”, Japan’s real wage growth is like 4-5% YOY.

    As with anything economics, a single metric usually tells a bad story. Whether we like it or not, the US economy is pretty robust and even a moron like Trump can’t really kill it totally in 4 years without messing with the currency directly. The downfall will be long and drawn out.




  • I agree with most of that but not all. People don’t notice single digit, but it’s still meaningful when you’re talking real wage growth. Wages grew faster than inflation, even if only by single-digit. The reality was overruled by the fact that post COVID inflation had raised prices. The Democrat plan was to maintain positive, compounding real wage growth.

    Biden identified falling industrial output and employment and enacted subsidies via CHIPS etc al which resulted in real shovels in real dirt building semiconductor plants in upstate NY, new construction of wind and solar plants, etc. Biden identified high pharmaceutical prices and enacted the first ever group negotiated purchasing rates for 10 drugs with more on the way for his 2nd term. Anticompetitive practices, Lina Khan. Crimes against the state, Jack Smith. Historically low violent crime rates, a successful opioid addiction policy seeing massively falling OD rates…

    He and Kamala had two practical failures in Merrick Garland and Palestinian policy. The rest was an optical nightmare, and I’m not sure where the failure was but I’m not sure it was with “the donors”. Kamala spent a shitload more money than Trump and somehow all anyone ever heard was “Killer Kamala” and “but she laughs weird”. Whatever caused that, I think is the ultimate failure of the party.


  • I’m not going to say Biden was perfect, but many of the “investments” Trump is using as proof of victory came as a direct result of Biden policies like the inflation reduction act, chips act, etc. He inherited inflation directly as a result of Trump abandoning “project lightspeed” and choosing to let COVID run wild, which triggered free money which triggered severe inflation, which is why people were pissed off. By 2024, prices were still elevated but inflation itself was under control. Kamala ran on “we beat inflation, and its all uphill from here” (they did, and their policies are continuing to benefit Americans), and Trump ran on “I’ll reduce prices to what they were pre-COVID” (deflation is usually bad). Lina Khan was actually pursuing antitrust suits for the first time in this millennium, and the department of labor was generally siding with unions. I think the reality is that Democratic party PR is absolute shit. The main pressure of inflation was under control late in Biden admin, and Trump sold the voterbase a myth with directly lower prices.

    I get what you’re saying about people being desperate, but the reality is that real wage growth was higher under Biden than Trump 1 and they chose Trump 2 anyways.


  • Perhaps it’s both? Democrats certainly failed to get fence sitters to vote, but lots of people actively chose (and are still choosing) Trump. Look at the young male Black and Latino demographics. They didn’t just sit out a Democrat vote, they actively chose Trump. The Dems may be reasonably accused of failing to activate the leftist voters who sat it out/voted third party, but Trump is STILL sitting at 35%+ approval. Americans DID choose Trump. Trump is a symptom of the disease, not the cause. They love ICE abducting people. They love tariffs. They love him attempting to bully Canada, Mexico and Europe.

    It’s easy to lose sight of this on Lemmy which is pretty far left of the current Overton window, but enough normies actively support what’s going on. It may be a minority of Americans, but between MAGA core and undecideds, it’s very foolish to say America did not choose Trump actively. The leftist no vote/undecided demographic the Dems lost was far smaller than the MAGA and MAGA curious.


  • claude performs acceptably at repetitive tasks when I have an existing pattern for it to follow. “Replicate PR 123, but to add support for object Bar instead of Foo”. If I get some of this busy work in my queue I typically just have claude do it while I’m in a meeting.

    I’d never let it do refactors or design work, but as a code generation tool that can use existing code as a template, it’s useful. I wouldn’t pay an arm and a leg for it, but burning $2 while I’m in a meeting to kill chore tasks is worth it to me.






  • That is fair.

    IBT Media introduced a number of bad practices to the once reputable magazine and mainly focused on clickbait headlines over quality journalism. Its current relationship with IBT Media is unclear, and Newsweek’s quality has not returned to its status prior to the 2013 purchase. Many editors have noted that there are several exceptions to this standard, so consensus is to evaluate Newsweek content on a case-by-case basis.

    Lines up with the "nothingburger’ headline. Probably case-by-case is appropriate. Thanks for showing me that!