The Next President is...

[disgruntledemployee]

12 hours ago, blueingreen said:

Words...

In chatting with some younger gens, the ones that talk 'burn it all down' say it, I think, because they can't/won't figure out how to compete in the world/reality we are in.  They think if it's all torched that it levels the playing field. They think they can then gain an advantage.  Maybe for an instant, but when it comes to success, I think there are two main types, sharks/hunters and prey/sheeple.  The shark is successful today and will be successful tomorrow in any new world.  The sheep will remain sheep.  That saying, dog eat dog world, will likely always be valid.

-‐----------------------

As for the Trump 2.0 experiment, how's everyone's investment portfolio looking?

[blueingreen]

21 minutes ago, disgruntledemployee said:

In chatting with some younger gens, the ones that talk 'burn it all down' say it, I think, because they can't/won't figure out how to compete in the world/reality we are in.  They think if it's all torched that it levels the playing field. They think they can then gain an advantage.  Maybe for an instant, but when it comes to success, I think there are two main types, sharks/hunters and prey/sheeple.  The shark is successful today and will be successful tomorrow in any new world.  The sheep will remain sheep.  That saying, dog eat dog world, will likely always be valid.

-‐----------------------

As for the Trump 2.0 experiment, how's everyone's investment portfolio looking?

You're not wrong, I just think there's more to the story. I'd say that among my generation (Z), 80% are neurotic lemmings who get anxious about ordering a pizza on the phone, and 20% are some of the smartest, most capable, and forward-thinking people I've ever met. The problem is that the "American Dream" wasn't meant for just the sharks/hunters who are able and willing to ferociously compete. They'll always do fine, regardless of the circumstances. Maybe that dream also wasn't meant for neurotic lemmings, I don't know. It just seems to me that you were supposed to be able to follow the rules, do your best in school, stay out of trouble, go to college or work in the trades, etc. with a relative guarantee of employment, property, family, and peace. Now, educational institutions have been hollowed out and a college degree's value has been inflated into oblivion (nearly 40% of Americans now have a bachelor's degree).

The truth is that older generations did not have to work as hard to afford the standard of living that younger generations are seeking today. The data is pretty clear when you look at median home price compared to median wages over time. For many smart and well-meaning young people, affording a home in a nice neighborhood while supporting a family is simply a mathematical impossibility.

The question is, what happens to a society when lots and lots of young people, especially young men, become restless and disenfranchised with little to no economic, social, or marital prospects?

[HeloDude]

47 minutes ago, disgruntledemployee said:

As for the Trump 2.0 experiment, how's everyone's investment portfolio looking?

So in 2019, Dems said the Trump economy was due to Obama, but less than two months in, this is all on Trump…which is it?  Honest question.

[BuddhaSixFour]

1 hour ago, HeloDude said:

So in 2019, Dems said the Trump economy was due to Obama, but less than two months in, this is all on Trump…which is it?  Honest question.

Fair question. Generally, I’d say that to the extent the president is responsible for the performance of the economy, there is a big lag of even a year or two.

But Trump came in and started banging the sticks around far more aggressively than anyone else ever has in my lifetime. You can see the markets reaction responding to him minute by minute. What he’s doing is different and I think he owns the consequences. It’s fair to look at his actions and draw a line. There isn’t some blanket “if your economy after x months” rule. It’s situational and this situation is radically different. 

Edited March 13 by BuddhaSixFour

[icohftb]

2 hours ago, HeloDude said:

So in 2019, Dems said the Trump economy was due to Obama, but less than two months in, this is all on Trump…which is it?  Honest question.

Seems to me the stock market confusion is a direct response to the tariff roller coaster ride.

(Stock market =/= economy)

 

[ViperMan]

This guy gets it.

17 hours ago, blueingreen said:

Big businesses have been taking advantage of illegal labor and legal programs like the H1B visa (which is basically indentured servitude under threat of deportation) to undercut domestic wages while countless young Americans are applying to hundreds of jobs without receiving a single response, let alone an interview.

Yep.

17 hours ago, blueingreen said:

This influx of people also clogs up the housing market and drives up demand while Byzantine development and zoning regulations + huge asset management firms keep the supply of homes artificially low. Not to mention the damage done to the demographics and social trust of a society that imports millions upon millions of foreigners without any plans for assimilation.

The other dimension here is that increased demand for housing - through artificially increasing the population - places downward pressure on wages. This effect is across ALL jobs. ALL careers. Not just menial, day-labor type employment. So not only does the cost of available housing increase, the amount of work required to net yourself housing goes up also, driving a further divide. For everyone.

17 hours ago, blueingreen said:

You're probably right about the economic austerity on the horizon. I think the key is that, especially among young Trump voters, people actually want this to happen.

We (still) haven't fully flushed out the recession from 2008, and all these present effects are still downstream from that and now all the COVID spending too. Banks withheld housing after the crash, lest they really get caught holding the bag. Post 2008, banks stopped foreclosing on certain delinquent mortgages. In 2019, some people saw this coming:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-bubble-era-home-mortgages-are-a-disaster-waiting-to-happen-2019-02-25

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-bubble-era-mortgage-trick-could-smash-major-us-housing-markets-2019-03-18

In 2024 some of these mortgages are now coming back to bite:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/zombie-mortgages-debt-haunt-homeowners/

All that cash which should have been collected from people who "spent" that money on housing found its way into other parts of the economy, instead. Personally, I don't have any questions on why the price of stuff is so high. We injected fake dollars into the system during the run-up to 2008, and we did it again during COVID. When you mainline billions upon trillions of dollars into the economy without concurrent economic productivity to absorb those dollars, you get what we have now. It's simple arithmetic. It sucks that there will be pain, but we're not choosing this course presently. We made this choice a long, long time ago, and much like global warming, much of it is baked in at this point. We kicked the can in '08. We kicked it again in '20. We're eventually going to have to pay the piper, and the sooner, the better.

@Negatory, I think you're mistaking a desire for austerity, with folks' acceptance that the cure is going to be painful.

Edited March 13 by ViperMan

[17D_guy]

https://theaviationist.com/2025/03/13/portugal-f-35-plans/

We'll see if they follow through.

[disgruntledemployee]

@HeloDude

I said investment portfolio, not economy.  I was tempted to follow what Buffett did, cash out.   Those above they answered it well enough for me.

[HeloDude]

3 hours ago, Banzai said:

Yeah agreed. So to fix it we should embrace the policies of promising everyone $5k from DOGE, raise taxes on the working and middle class via regressive tax policies like tariffs…

So you’re against all the tariffs and regulatory taxes/fees that existed before Jan 20th?

[ClearedHot]

On 3/13/2025 at 12:12 PM, disgruntledemployee said:

As for the Trump 2.0 experiment, how's everyone's investment portfolio looking?

If you are basing your assessment on two months of the stock market, have not made hedges and actually made money off these events...then you are most certainly a sheeple.

[Banzai]

19 hours ago, HeloDude said:

So you’re against all the tariffs and regulatory taxes/fees that existed before Jan 20th?

Whataboutism at its finest.

[BashiChuni]

wow -6 we are so fucked.

dork.

[GrndPndr]

Actually, it's a good time to buy!

[HeloDude]

3 hours ago, Banzai said:

Whataboutism at its finest.

Nah, just pointing out that you and other progressives didn’t have a problem with tariffs before January 20th, as well as the other taxes/fees that raise prices on goods/services that are also considered “regressive”.  

[disgruntledemployee]

Trump says he ended weaponization of Fed Govt.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-the-weaponization-of-the-federal-government/

Now he says Biden pardons (which I didn't agree with) are void and now he will go after them.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-says-biden-pardons-now-113131037.html

Isn't that, going after political enemies, the definition of a weaponized DOJ?

Hypocrite.

[Swizzle]

Preemptive pardons are a novelty. So is a shadow governor using an autopen. It'll all probably go to SCOTUS, and perhaps for good reason. 

[disgruntledemployee]

On 3/16/2025 at 8:54 AM, ClearedHot said:

If you are basing your assessment on two months of the stock market, have not made hedges and actually made money off these events...then you are most certainly a sheeple.

I'm asking how your/BODNers investments are doing (I'm not making an assessment) with the turmoil created by T2, dun dun da dunt.  If you predicted the downturn and shorted everything, congrats.  But I think most Trump voters expected him to make everything great and didn't short the market and when they checked their accts recently, went WTF.

[BuddhaSixFour]

This is a pretty cool legal theory. Autopen signatures aren’t valid unless you can prove that the President had specific knowledge of the thing being signed, and maybe not even then. 

That makes a ton of sense in the case of fraudulent signatures that the President didn’t intend, assuming this is a thing that happens. 

But that’s only tenable if the standard is that voiding something requires proof of fraud, not a presumption of fraud. 

Otherwise, none of you are retired. Your retirement orders were auto penned and the President was very likely entirely unaware you even exist or that the order was signed.

Careful what you wish for. 

[HeloDude]

27 minutes ago, Banzai said:

I see we've moved from 'intentionally crashing the economy is good actually' to 'but what about your politics?' Classic distraction. By the way I'm an independent.

The free market doesn't care about your feelings or mine - it responds to reality. Nations that deliberately sabotage their own economies get replaced by competitors who don't. That's not progressive or conservative - it's just history. The Dutch and British empires learned this lesson the hard way. But please, keep ignoring historical examples while you jerk off thinking about how you're owning "progressives." I'm sure China, India, and the EU will politely wait while we experiment with economic self-harm.

Reminder you still haven’t engaged in the discussion at all.

Dude, if you (not me) are going to bring up “regressive” tariffs/taxes/fees, then be willing to have the discussion…as in all of these existed before January 20th of this year.  If not, you just have TDS (which we all knew anyway).

[Blue]

2 hours ago, Swizzle said:

Preemptive pardons are a novelty. So is a shadow governor using an autopen. It'll all probably go to SCOTUS, and perhaps for good reason. 

Yeah, this.

The question of using the autopen is just one of many threads to start pulling.  The real questions I'd hope to get insight on would be the reality of Joe Biden's mental state throughout his presidency, who exactly was making decisions on his behalf, and the extent of those decisions.

Edited March 17 by Blue

[bfargin]

2 hours ago, disgruntledemployee said:

Trump says he ended weaponization of Fed Govt.

………

Isn't that, going after political enemies, the definition of a weaponized DOJ?

Hypocrite.

Mayorkas should rot in a federal hard-core pound-in-the-butt prison (in gen pop) with the murderers and rapist for what he did to our nation. That’s not weaponizing the DoJ, that’s being just and punishing him for his treason.

[GrndPndr]

I believe the statute or code/law does not specify how a pardon may be signaled/codified by the President.  Apparently, both Obama and Trump I used the auto-pen on a number of occasions, including the signing of Bills.  So WTF - anything goes?

[HeloDude]

47 minutes ago, Banzai said:

It's actually impossible to argue in good faith with you. I don't know why you're saying I have TDS lol, give me any examples backing up your claim. Or is this just the point in the argument where someone would typically just call you a magat and then you'd feel really justified in your bad feewings?

Economics for dummies: "Regressive" is a word to describe economic tax policy that impacts the working class more substantially than the upper class. Our tax structure is progressive now. Really caught up in semantics (about all the wrong things). You probably still call your fries freedom fries, don't you?

You haven't engaged with a single point or discussion about real economic policy. You have essentially only brought up false dichotomies and examples that are not related. Finally, people like you that screech TDS as a defense are exactly the same as libtards who screech about pronouns or being racists - change my mind. Just a fundamental lack of ability to defend an intellectual position.

I'm good bro. Stop coming onto me.

Are you seriously saying we don’t have taxes/regulatory fees that poor people also pay?  Here’s just one easy one for you:  The gas tax.  Unless you were for getting rid that before January 20th? 

And I’m a libertarian…I don’t care if bad policy is enacted by Trump or a Democrat, it’s still bad policy.  You seem to only be exist against a policy if Trump is for it.  

[BuddhaSixFour]

26 minutes ago, GrndPndr said:

I believe the statute or code/law does not specify how a pardon may be signaled/codified by the President.  Apparently, both Obama and Trump I used the auto-pen on a number of occasions, including the signing of Bills.  So WTF - anything goes?

For anyone who actually cares about the topic itself, this is the legal analysis written during Bush 2 that has been the guiding principle: 

“The President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill he approves and decides to sign in order for the bill to become law. Rather, the President may sign a bill within the meaning of Article I, Section 7 by directing a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to such a bill, for example by autopen.”

I get that the argument is that Biden was too senile to possibly knowingly direct a subordinate to autopen on his behalf, but there are remedies to remove an unfit president and those weren’t taken. It’s a can of worms to say we get to go back and relitigate every law or executive order based on what we think the mental state of the president was at the time. I mean, I’m willing to declare Trump functionally illiterate, and incapable of understanding the documents put in front of him (I.e. not understanding the mechanics of tariffs), but he is the president. Unless he’s removed from office, that’s that. 

[bfargin]

If he’s using these tariffs to bully neighbors into doing the “right” thing, some targeted tariffs might not be a bad idea. If he’s using them to incentivize US companies to bring more industry and manufacturing home, targeted tariffs might not be a bad idea either, as long as he recognizes that prices will rise for consumers. 

If it’s a long term strategy to make the country stronger with full knowledge that’s it’s going to hurt middle and low income citizens in the short run, it may or may not be a great idea. We’ll know in 5+ years more fully the consequences.

Personally I’d love to see more manufacturing return to the US.  Last I checked there were only 2 companies that actually make nails and screws here in the US. There are only 2 or 3 aluminum smelters still here. 2 ship builders and they take years longer to make ships than many intl shipbuilders. I have no idea how many steel producers are still around, but I’d guess very few. 

I’m not positive this is the right move on Trumps part, but what we’ve been doing for the past 40+ years has gutted our industrial/manufacturing base.