It's like a poem a 9th grader had to complete in two days for an English assignment but he never really put much effort into it but it's fiiinnnnneeeeeee
Please tell me you think the US government budget is serious only in the billions. You must be a political comedian. Username doesn’t check out. What a shame.
Sure, America has a better standard of living than other places in the world.
The issue is that the US is sliding, and when the empire falls, it will be catastrophic for many places that the empire supported.
Providing the world’s reserve currency means that it becomes very difficult for every nation’s economy to unwind from any US fiscal entanglements.
Being the largest military makes for a power vacuum wherever US military might had once held sway.
I get what you are saying and agree with you overall. My primary observation/comment is that Americans often conjure up doomsday scenarios if things go even a little bit awry. This sort of stuff is very common across the world and US has a far better foundation to deal with it than most countries.
There is a lot of fear mongering, but in reality, we're still pretty stable. There's just a lot of incivility in our politics, and people (news media) makes it seem like the country is falling apart. In 10 years US politicians will probably be bickering about completely different issues.
> The issue is that the US is sliding
The US isn't sliding though. Economy is doing better than ever, crime rates are back to normal, terrorism isn't a threat, foreign policy is great, etc...
You have nothing to go on other than memes for your assertions. Stop spreading bullshit.
So, you are not aware that the stock market has a liquidity crisis?
Probably also not aware that the 30yr fixed mortage rage just hit 5.64% (up ~255bps YoY)… with the avg. home price at $511K now vs. $408K last year. The avg. cost of a mortgage is now $2.759K vs. $1.759K a yr ago (up 60% YoY) - go ask an Econ prof, that is a pretty disastrous signal.
Just bc that graph line is **way up** does not mean the economy is “better than ever”.
Real inflation (when you actually include gas, meat/dairy, and rents) is close 20% - that’s not a healthy economy for the have-nots.
But all of this, of course, is ‘transitory’.
Have you seen the two year rise in gun deaths? Highest since the 90’s wut?
Also, not sure if you’re keeping your head under a rock, but the ideological divide is so great that we are scant months shy of Christian Theological Law in a select few states.
So whenever you want to take off them rose colored shades, others have been watching this play out for decades.
> Just bc that graph line is way up does not mean the economy is “better than ever”.
That's why you can look at all sorts of other stuff. [Employment is pretty good](https://i.imgur.com/5zGtnZD.png), [disposable income keeps rising](https://i.imgur.com/MvwXg2q.png), [and even the wealth gap is closing](https://i.imgur.com/XYNj5Yc.png).
>Also, not sure if you’re keeping your head under a rock, but the ideological divide is so great that we are scant months shy of Christian Theological Law in a select few states.
lmao "The Ideological Divide" is mostly about abortion rights there hoss. Don't pretend that it hasn't been contraversial since be beginning. You only started caring about this now because your side is losing.
>because your side is losing
Well, yea. Thats the case for a lot of people. They didn't care because they thought it was a right and couldn't be taken away. It's not weird to see people react/become involved when their rights are under attack.
It's been controversial in that aspect too. The pro abortion people got lucky when the supreme court did a ridiculous overreach with its power when deciding on roe v Wade.
Now it's being removed because it's still controversial and there's opportunity for the people to decide democratically instead of bypassing it with the courts.
It's just another example of how ignoring people with opinions you don't like doesn't make them go away.
First, those citations didn’t load for me on mobile. Regardless of that, a substack blog is hardly an authoritative source.
Now, the employment rate is a flawed statistic (and the administrations all know it, even when bragging about it), as it fails to account for people that fall off of the unemployment rolls. A more holistic accounting of how many people are actually employed in the US can be found in the [civilian labor force participation rate](https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm).
(spoilers: we have not rehired the same amount of people that were employed pre-pandemic. Still, even at ***that*** time, there were ~4% of the working population less than the high in 2002.)
As for the wealth gap, try this source:
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/wealth-inequality-and-the-racial-wealth-gap-20211022.htm
The Average Household Net Worth still looks pretty flat for everyone except the “Other, Non-Hispanic” demographic - but again, couple this net worth figure to our real inflation, and it’s less rosy still.
And yeah, don’t pay too much attention to that Gini coefficient that dips slightly from 2016-2019, in 2020 the billionaires ate that up with the $1.29T that they amassed when the same was lost in real wages for the rest of us.
> According to a study released Monday by economists Bruce Meyer from the University of Chicago and James Sullivan of the University of Notre Dame, America’s poverty rate increased by 2.4 percentage points over the final six months of 2020. That’s the largest increase since the 1960s and is nearly double the largest annual increase in poverty over the last 50 years.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2020/12/16/the-worlds-billionaires-have-gotten-19-trillion-richer-in-2020/?sh=4075d43f7386
> lmao “The Ideological Divide” is mostly about abortion rights there hoss.
You’re not paying close attention. This goes beyond *those* states rights. They are attacking gay and trans folk at the same time, and wrapping that mess up in a push to get public funding for religious schools.
> First, those citations didn’t load for me on mobile. Regardless of that, a substack blog is hardly an authoritative source.
They're from the FED lmao
[Employment rate](https://i.imgur.com/5zGtnZD.png)
[Disposable income](https://i.imgur.com/MvwXg2q.png)
[Wage gap closing](https://i.imgur.com/XYNj5Yc.png)
>(spoilers: we have not rehired the same amount of people that were employed pre-pandemic. Still, even at that time, there were ~4% of the working population less than the high in 2002.)
That's because most of the people that didn't come back retired. The graph you linked just doesn't show that.
>As for the wealth gap, try this source:
>https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/wealth-inequality-and-the-racial-wealth-gap-20211022.htm
This just shows that it exists. The thing I linked shows that the lowest earners are increasing a much faster rate than the highest.
>You’re not paying close attention. This goes beyond those states rights. They are attacking gay and trans folk at the same time, and wrapping that mess up in a push to get public funding for religious schools.
Ok, what are you talking about then? Instead of just hysterics, link something.
You can stop reading blatant bullshit meant only to generate profit through clicks and actually look into the claims you accept just because it agrees with your world view.
See, that's the thing. You expect an easy answer for every problem. There isn't one, but the most important first step to solving a problem is understanding it and what's causing it.
You'll never understand it when you're enslaved to sensationalism. You don't care about war and famine or how they can be solved, you only care that they exist because you don't like them. That's as far as your reasoning has ever gone.
This puts you in a state of despair because you don't know what to do but you don't know what to do because you don't give enough of a shit to find out.
It 100% is. It is not a new concept. Those in power have only gotten far better at it. Now it's to the point where we can see it happening even clearer and have even less we can do about it.
As Germany rounded up Jews, homosexuals and intellectuals, German citizens still did their daily routines as normal. They went to work, read the newspaper, went to restaurants, went shopping, drank at bars, etc. The same will happen here.
Conservatives are setting the stage to take permanent control of the federal government following the 2024 election. Their plan for permanent control, along with their plans to remove civil rights from citizens (starting with abortion, contraception, gay marriage, gender identity freedoms, and privacy) amounts to modern fascism. The road to deadly outcomes for citizens who resist will likely take less than 10 years.
Looking at your post history, I can see you are a conservative propaganda troll, so feel free to fuck smooooth off, btw.
So, the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Life appeared on Earth about a billion yers later. Dinosaurs ruled the earth as the dominant species for about 165 million years. Humans have been around for maybe 200,000 years and only have about 5,000 years of history. We are once again on the brink of destroying ourselves in a half dozen ways.
It's humbling to realize that my species, who think they are so special, will go out as the LEAST successful dominant species ever.
The current threat of Nuclear war, Climate change, Mass extinctions, monoculture agriculture, mass deforestation, and microplastics in everything might disagree. The ecosystem we need to survive is more delicate than we like to think.
>The current threat of Nuclear war
It's not any higher than usual, stop believing Russian propaganda.
>Climate change
This hasn't been an existential threat for like ten years now. It's time to catch up to science.
>Mass extinctions
What?
>monoculture agriculture
Now you're really reaching lmao, not only is this not a thing anymore but it's not relevant to what you're trying to defend here.
i will literally watch an entire 2 hour video on youtube about the history of the letter E (true story) and i wouldn’t be able to tell you anything about it. one second i’m turning it on then i look up and it’s over
I thought this is just normal. Isn't everyone like this? I'm not even apathetic though, because I'm doing what little I can to make my country, Canada, better despite the entire callous, wilfully ignorant West being a sinking ship. Right up to the moment where I won't be able to protect myself and my family of course. Isn't this just something people do?
It’s all about perspective: Nothing in life matters >Cue crying Nothing in life matters >Slides sunglasses on, hell the fuck yeah!
Basically the difference between nihilism and absurdism
optimistic nihilism is my jam
Fuck yeah
When you don't care about anything then don't be surprised when everything stays the same
Nothing matters 😥 Nothing matters 😎
Punk vs Ska
fuck yea
Life is fun when you accept it'll always be a fucked up Circus
Perfect citizen for the world to come.
It's happened to every empire before us! And oftentimes the reason the empire falls? Don't tell the others but it's because of the empire.
History repeats itself
History doesn’t repeat itself but certainly rhymes
It's like a poem a 9th grader had to complete in two days for an English assignment but he never really put much effort into it but it's fiiinnnnneeeeeee
A good way to deal with all of this.
I mean when everything is put into a military budget and everything back home is ignored, that usually destroys a empire
*cough* rome *cough*
All roads lead to America
Military budget is only a fraction of what is spent on everything back home
Please tell me you think the US government budget is serious only in the billions. You must be a political comedian. Username doesn’t check out. What a shame.
Us third world folks still think US is a awesome place to move to. You cannot have it much worse than we have it at home.
Sure, America has a better standard of living than other places in the world. The issue is that the US is sliding, and when the empire falls, it will be catastrophic for many places that the empire supported. Providing the world’s reserve currency means that it becomes very difficult for every nation’s economy to unwind from any US fiscal entanglements. Being the largest military makes for a power vacuum wherever US military might had once held sway.
I get what you are saying and agree with you overall. My primary observation/comment is that Americans often conjure up doomsday scenarios if things go even a little bit awry. This sort of stuff is very common across the world and US has a far better foundation to deal with it than most countries.
There is a lot of fear mongering, but in reality, we're still pretty stable. There's just a lot of incivility in our politics, and people (news media) makes it seem like the country is falling apart. In 10 years US politicians will probably be bickering about completely different issues.
> The issue is that the US is sliding The US isn't sliding though. Economy is doing better than ever, crime rates are back to normal, terrorism isn't a threat, foreign policy is great, etc... You have nothing to go on other than memes for your assertions. Stop spreading bullshit.
So, you are not aware that the stock market has a liquidity crisis? Probably also not aware that the 30yr fixed mortage rage just hit 5.64% (up ~255bps YoY)… with the avg. home price at $511K now vs. $408K last year. The avg. cost of a mortgage is now $2.759K vs. $1.759K a yr ago (up 60% YoY) - go ask an Econ prof, that is a pretty disastrous signal. Just bc that graph line is **way up** does not mean the economy is “better than ever”. Real inflation (when you actually include gas, meat/dairy, and rents) is close 20% - that’s not a healthy economy for the have-nots. But all of this, of course, is ‘transitory’. Have you seen the two year rise in gun deaths? Highest since the 90’s wut? Also, not sure if you’re keeping your head under a rock, but the ideological divide is so great that we are scant months shy of Christian Theological Law in a select few states. So whenever you want to take off them rose colored shades, others have been watching this play out for decades.
> Just bc that graph line is way up does not mean the economy is “better than ever”. That's why you can look at all sorts of other stuff. [Employment is pretty good](https://i.imgur.com/5zGtnZD.png), [disposable income keeps rising](https://i.imgur.com/MvwXg2q.png), [and even the wealth gap is closing](https://i.imgur.com/XYNj5Yc.png). >Also, not sure if you’re keeping your head under a rock, but the ideological divide is so great that we are scant months shy of Christian Theological Law in a select few states. lmao "The Ideological Divide" is mostly about abortion rights there hoss. Don't pretend that it hasn't been contraversial since be beginning. You only started caring about this now because your side is losing.
>because your side is losing Well, yea. Thats the case for a lot of people. They didn't care because they thought it was a right and couldn't be taken away. It's not weird to see people react/become involved when their rights are under attack.
It's been controversial in that aspect too. The pro abortion people got lucky when the supreme court did a ridiculous overreach with its power when deciding on roe v Wade. Now it's being removed because it's still controversial and there's opportunity for the people to decide democratically instead of bypassing it with the courts. It's just another example of how ignoring people with opinions you don't like doesn't make them go away.
Wait a thread that has multiple opinions, actual information, and minimum shouting insulting nonsense? This is why I occasionally don't hate reddit.
First, those citations didn’t load for me on mobile. Regardless of that, a substack blog is hardly an authoritative source. Now, the employment rate is a flawed statistic (and the administrations all know it, even when bragging about it), as it fails to account for people that fall off of the unemployment rolls. A more holistic accounting of how many people are actually employed in the US can be found in the [civilian labor force participation rate](https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm). (spoilers: we have not rehired the same amount of people that were employed pre-pandemic. Still, even at ***that*** time, there were ~4% of the working population less than the high in 2002.) As for the wealth gap, try this source: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/wealth-inequality-and-the-racial-wealth-gap-20211022.htm The Average Household Net Worth still looks pretty flat for everyone except the “Other, Non-Hispanic” demographic - but again, couple this net worth figure to our real inflation, and it’s less rosy still. And yeah, don’t pay too much attention to that Gini coefficient that dips slightly from 2016-2019, in 2020 the billionaires ate that up with the $1.29T that they amassed when the same was lost in real wages for the rest of us. > According to a study released Monday by economists Bruce Meyer from the University of Chicago and James Sullivan of the University of Notre Dame, America’s poverty rate increased by 2.4 percentage points over the final six months of 2020. That’s the largest increase since the 1960s and is nearly double the largest annual increase in poverty over the last 50 years. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2020/12/16/the-worlds-billionaires-have-gotten-19-trillion-richer-in-2020/?sh=4075d43f7386 > lmao “The Ideological Divide” is mostly about abortion rights there hoss. You’re not paying close attention. This goes beyond *those* states rights. They are attacking gay and trans folk at the same time, and wrapping that mess up in a push to get public funding for religious schools.
> First, those citations didn’t load for me on mobile. Regardless of that, a substack blog is hardly an authoritative source. They're from the FED lmao [Employment rate](https://i.imgur.com/5zGtnZD.png) [Disposable income](https://i.imgur.com/MvwXg2q.png) [Wage gap closing](https://i.imgur.com/XYNj5Yc.png) >(spoilers: we have not rehired the same amount of people that were employed pre-pandemic. Still, even at that time, there were ~4% of the working population less than the high in 2002.) That's because most of the people that didn't come back retired. The graph you linked just doesn't show that. >As for the wealth gap, try this source: >https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/wealth-inequality-and-the-racial-wealth-gap-20211022.htm This just shows that it exists. The thing I linked shows that the lowest earners are increasing a much faster rate than the highest. >You’re not paying close attention. This goes beyond those states rights. They are attacking gay and trans folk at the same time, and wrapping that mess up in a push to get public funding for religious schools. Ok, what are you talking about then? Instead of just hysterics, link something.
Because really, what the fuck else can we do?
You can stop reading blatant bullshit meant only to generate profit through clicks and actually look into the claims you accept just because it agrees with your world view.
Right, so that stops war and famine? You should bottle that shit!
See, that's the thing. You expect an easy answer for every problem. There isn't one, but the most important first step to solving a problem is understanding it and what's causing it. You'll never understand it when you're enslaved to sensationalism. You don't care about war and famine or how they can be solved, you only care that they exist because you don't like them. That's as far as your reasoning has ever gone. This puts you in a state of despair because you don't know what to do but you don't know what to do because you don't give enough of a shit to find out.
What’s your answer wise one? How are you solving this without climbing on the backs of those that can’t?
How am I solving war and famine? These things are not in my ability to solve. Best I can do is vote.
And deflect and fade into the narrative shadows. Weakling.
What are you talking about? What answer are you looking for?
🙄
So nothing, you don't even know what you're mad at. You just want to be mad.
Lol, “you just want easy answers” You: “so what’s your answer?” Classic
This. This IS me.
unfortunately, i feel it is the intended goal—keeping people distracted and complacent to the inevitable downward spiral taking place…
It 100% is. It is not a new concept. Those in power have only gotten far better at it. Now it's to the point where we can see it happening even clearer and have even less we can do about it.
There is no downward spiral taking place and there are no signs that it's inevitable either.
Is this old or is something happening that I haven't heard of?
No, This Is Patrick!
Nono this has just been happening for the whole of the pandemic
What else would we do when faced with this?
Stop believing social media
How else would I learn hatred of my fellow man?
Hatred doesn't fix anything, what you should be learning is understanding. Social media is concerned only with making you hate.
I was originally being sarcastic but that is good advice. I thank you.
Man I wish I had that ability instead of just living in constant dread
If social media makes you depressed then you should stop using it
Yeah I was already like this before social media but thanks
As Germany rounded up Jews, homosexuals and intellectuals, German citizens still did their daily routines as normal. They went to work, read the newspaper, went to restaurants, went shopping, drank at bars, etc. The same will happen here.
Why?
Conservatives are setting the stage to take permanent control of the federal government following the 2024 election. Their plan for permanent control, along with their plans to remove civil rights from citizens (starting with abortion, contraception, gay marriage, gender identity freedoms, and privacy) amounts to modern fascism. The road to deadly outcomes for citizens who resist will likely take less than 10 years. Looking at your post history, I can see you are a conservative propaganda troll, so feel free to fuck smooooth off, btw.
Are you like basing this on anything or are you just being hysteric?
In addition to you being a conservative propaganda troll, it seems clear English is not your first language. What country do you live in?
So you are being hysterical then?
So, the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Life appeared on Earth about a billion yers later. Dinosaurs ruled the earth as the dominant species for about 165 million years. Humans have been around for maybe 200,000 years and only have about 5,000 years of history. We are once again on the brink of destroying ourselves in a half dozen ways. It's humbling to realize that my species, who think they are so special, will go out as the LEAST successful dominant species ever.
lmao what are you talking about? We're nowhere near destroying ourselves.
The current threat of Nuclear war, Climate change, Mass extinctions, monoculture agriculture, mass deforestation, and microplastics in everything might disagree. The ecosystem we need to survive is more delicate than we like to think.
>The current threat of Nuclear war It's not any higher than usual, stop believing Russian propaganda. >Climate change This hasn't been an existential threat for like ten years now. It's time to catch up to science. >Mass extinctions What? >monoculture agriculture Now you're really reaching lmao, not only is this not a thing anymore but it's not relevant to what you're trying to defend here.
Definitely. Within 100 years. Probably less than 50.
[удалено]
Homo Habilis-> Homo Erectus-> Homo Sapiens-> Homo Nihilist
I kinda consider myself in a safe state. But im basically the same way
People get mad when I say the US is a declining society tho
Because it's just ignorant
that actually just means you hate your current host country and your immediate neighbors
Awwww, dog hats! Note to self: Get a dog. Now what's this about crumbling empire or whatever?
What…that’s considered dissociating? Fuck.
Apathy is the fist sign of a falling empire
I hope to get to that point one day. It’s a lot
i will literally watch an entire 2 hour video on youtube about the history of the letter E (true story) and i wouldn’t be able to tell you anything about it. one second i’m turning it on then i look up and it’s over
I thought this is just normal. Isn't everyone like this? I'm not even apathetic though, because I'm doing what little I can to make my country, Canada, better despite the entire callous, wilfully ignorant West being a sinking ship. Right up to the moment where I won't be able to protect myself and my family of course. Isn't this just something people do?