That’s context we don’t actually have.
It’s possible that Democrats are simply clueless as you suggest, but we don’t know how many people supported this not because they intend to join Musk’s third party, but because they also know that it’ll split the GOP vote and make Democrat victories easier.
I’m actually very much in favor of Musk starting a political party that effectively splits the Republican vote and makes Democrat victories that much easier. Go Musk!
So you’re only going to read the first half? :P
I’ve been lurking on r/Conservative
There’s problem #1. Don’t lurk on conservative. Excessive exposure to conservative has been shown to make you statistically dumber just from the exposure.
to try and figure out why they back Trump so hard, call it research.
Because it gives bigots a convenient excuse to be bigoted.
They say that prices have gone down in stores; I have not seen that, things have remained the same or gotten more expensive in my experience. Gas prices have remained…the same, I haven’t noticed a difference.
Because they gaslight and outright lie to you.
I’ve noticed that companies that perform services are now using Tarrifs to quote insane prices wether or not they were actually affected by it.
This was always going to happen. Tariffs give companies plenty of excuses to price gouge, and the GOP are perfectly OK with that.
I know the main reason is immigrants, the absolutely terrible things we’re doing to them gets thier rocks off.
Ding Ding Ding.
But if they’re so adamant about prices going down and the economy doing well they’d have to be experiencing that themselves? They wouldn’t be saying that so confidently to each other in an echo chamber unless it was happening.
It’s called keeping up the ruse. There’s a saying. “Say something enough times to enough people, and eventually they will start to believe it.” . Say it first, say it most, say it loudest, and shout any dissenters down. Unfortunately, this is a tactic that works very, very effectively, especially over the mid to long term.
There’s also the fact that they’re pretty much forced to say it regardless of their feelings.
Speaking out against Trump has led to credible death threats against multiple politicians, judges, etc. Speaking out against Trump as an elected politician is also a great way to get yourself primaried, as evidenced by the number of former Republican politicians who have spoken out against Trump and then suddenly decided not to run for re-election. Thom Tillis is the latest, but far from the first example of this. And there are plenty of synchphants willing to get in line to be the next to suck Trump’s dick, just waiting for a Republican to speak out so they can be the ones to issue the primary challenge and get Trump’s (personal and financial) backing.
Confidently speaking the Trump mantra is a job requirement now. No, that’s not an exaggeration. These people have to repeat it, even to each other, if they want to keep their jobs.
So where the fuck are prices going down at?
They’re not. Remember those egg prices from a few months ago? When everybody thought that was the ceiling? That’s about to become the floor.
And remember, prices do not go down. Prices only go up. When the economic pressures that cause prices to rise disappears, prices don’t go back down. The new higher price just becomes the new floor. And the reason for this has been ingrained in corporate America for at least as long as I’ve been alive, probably far longer: Corporations charge a price that the market will bear. It doesn’t have to bear that price willingly. If people buy XYZ at a grossly inflated price because they need XYZ (life saving medication, for example), then that means the market will bear XYZ at that price, and that price becomes the new floor. The fact that the market bears that price under heavy duress is completely irrelevant.
I guess my question is what is actually happening? I want a news source thats going to be honest and not exaggerate for rage bait. Because I now don’t trust either sides news.
Yeah, good luck with that. I’ve actually been lucky enough to talk to a couple of the more prolific Youtube ones, and they’ve confirmed something that most people figured out anyway: The hyperbole, over-exaggeration, and rage-bait is pretty much the only way to get noticed at all in today’s media environment. It’s either that, or not get heard at all. American readers love their tabloid journalism. And for what it’s worth, I agree with you: The more clickbait I see in a headline, the less likely I am to trust it or the reporter using it.
There’s numerous forces in play here. First is that the Trump administration and our court system has essentially decided that Freedom of the Press is no longer a thing. We’ve seen news reporters make the pilgrimage to Mar A Lago in order to appease Trump. We just saw CBS cough up tens of millions to Trump and forcing one of their own reporters to apologize for reporting factually correct information that Trump didn’t like. Most major media companies have opted to be much more Trump-friendly in their reporting rather than deal with retribution in the form of frivolous lawsuits, punitive EOs, legislative retribution, etc., and even a lot of independent media has toned down reporting because they literally cannot financially afford to be the next target of the Trump Hate Machine.
Another thing that has come into play: Some time back, Mitch McConnell started the GOP mantra that still exists to this day. No matter what the Democrats are in favor of, the GOP must be against it at all costs. Up to the point where he has torpedoed his own bills because they got Democrat support. This has ultimately led to both sides digging in their heels and taking the “Whatever they are for, you must be against” to ludicrous extremes.
It has led to the extreme political polarization of America. The other side is 100% wrong on all things, forever and for always. “Reaching across the aisle” is now seen as a betrayal to the party. Bipartisanism is all but a racial slur. Even admitting that the other side might have a point worthy of discussion is enough to get you labelled as a R/DINO. Compromise and negotiation are seen as capitulation and weakness. Virtually all significant votes are party-line and can be predicted well in advance, almost down to the vote.
People, on both sides, generally don’t look for objective political discussion on the Internet. People generally don’t like being challenged, even if they don’t want to admit it. What they’re looking for are echo chambers that will repeatedly tell them what they want to hear, how right they are, and how evil the other side is for daring to disagree with you. Conservative openly admits it in their side bar: They are not a “safe space”. They are not objective. They are not interested in hearing points of view that are not their own. They know all of the criticism, and their response is “Yeah, we know. And we like it this way. Now get out.”
But the left does the same thing. It holds true on Reddit’s /politics sub, and it holds just as true here. Post anything that favors the right. Anything. Could be an article, opinion, whatever. Even just a reply to someone else. Be neutral, objective, factual, and cite your sources. Watch as you get downvoted to oblivion and openly mocked and ridiculed. Watch as the words “Fuck off” get voted to the top. Watch as replies that are largely copium with absolutely no basis in reality get upvoted and treated as biblical prophecy because people like hearing it. Feels over reals goes both ways. Because people aren’t looking for information. What they want are echo chambers. And people in echo chambers typically don’t take kindly to someone new coming in and hurting their fee-fees with all of those things like objective facts and reality and stuff. As far as they’re concerned, you can fuck all the way off with that.
Why are they saying “abrupt”? Trump was explicitly campaigning on this, and the GOP in general have been climate deniers for years.
I wonder what the effect of raising wages for farm labourers would be?
Check my post history. I gave a couple of examples in another thread on the same subject. In a nutshell, if undocumented immigrants were getting paid a living wage + benefits and that cost was passed onto the consumer, it would likely cause the price of food to double, if not more. The wage gap between undocumented workers and even low-paid union workers working above board is fucking enormous, and society at large does not have a grasp of how much impact that has on food prices, and for that matter, goods and services in general. We live in a society where we have become accustomed to high quality goods and services that we think are created by people making a fair wage, without realizing just how much of that work actually is being done by people making barely a fraction of what they deserve. You’d be amazed at how many people think that the fair cost of labor is already baked into the price.
In another example, I discussed the fact that this is common in construction as well. If just one or two undocumented workers were replaced with union construction workers at a competitive wage, it would probably add anywhere from $30-$50,000 in extra labor costs to the cost of a house. A house worth $150,000 today would probably start at $200k+ if it weren’t for undocumented labor.
You’d end up with a whole bunch of people making what we would think would be a “living wage” until you realize that the cost of everything has gone up and you’re right back to being barely able to afford the basics. You started off making $400 a week and having $500 worth of expenses. Then your pay was raised to $500 a week, but that caused the price of goods and services to rise so now you’ve got $700 worth of expenses. So you demand a raise and now make $700, but this causes the price of goods and services to go up to $1000. So you…well, you get the idea.
And then when people stop spending money on tourism and electronics and luxury goods because they can only afford the basics now, that’s when you start seeing job losses. And more people unable to afford things, which causes more job losses. And the ripple effects just keep going on, and on, and on, and on…
And the reason for this unending loop is because our entire economy is built on the idea of cheap, exploited labor. Take cheap, exploited labor out of the mix and the entire system becomes unsustainable and quickly collapses. Why do you think we so heavily rely on shit from China and third world countries that wipe their asses with safety standards and pay their workers less than what a homeless man would make begging on a street corner, if they pay them at all. Because if we tried to make that stuff here while paying our workers a competitive wage, 95% of that stuff would be completely unaffordable to all but the wealthy. There’s a reason why, like I said, every President before Trump has done exactly nothing to address the problem outside of paying it some political lip service when they’re campaigning. Because they know that if you fuck with it, the entire thing comes crashing down.
I’ll say the same thing I said in the other thread.
There’s a reason why past Presidents have avoided this subject like it was the fucking plague.
An unspoken truth about our society that nobody likes to acknowledge or admit is that the exploitation of cheap labor (particularly in agriculture and construction) is literally the cornerstone of our society that everything else is built on. Before we were exploiting undocumented workers, we had literal slavery. There has never been a point in US history where agricultural workers were getting anything close to fair pay for the work they do, nor have citizens ever had to pay the prices they’d have to pay if workers were getting paid fairly.
You can’t claim to crack down on immigration, and then make huge carve-outs for farmers, hotel workers, etc., because that’s where the majority of them work. Trump is finding this out the hard way. He has to look tough on immigration to please his base, but even he acknowledges that it would devastate our entire agricultural system.
If you leave these industries alone, you are essentially and willfully turning a blind eye to the numerous legal and ethical violations these farmers commit on the daily, including sub-minimum pay, no benefits, hazardous working conditions, etc. You also appear to be weak on immigration to the general public, who see the policy as an open invitation for even more illegal migration.
If you were to try to force these industries to use legal labor under fair working conditions, the price of the goods and services they provide would be unacceptable to a general public who does not understand the true costs of labor and have never had to pay what the true cost of food would be if workers were paid fairly, and may not be able to pay it even if they were willing to accept it.
This is not a problem that is unique to Trump, though I’m sure he’ll find new and innovative ways to make the whole situation exponentially worse. This is a problem that has existed throughout US history, and there’s a reason why past Presidents have done little more to address the subject than pay some lip service that they never actually act on. Try to do so and you quickly figure out that the entire cornerstone of our society and economy literally relies on people turning a blind eye to this exact issue, and attempting to fix the problem – no matter what you think the ‘solution’ to the problem even is or what side of the issue you’re on – just risks causing ripple effects that bring the entire economy crashing down like a crack addict trying to play Jenga.
US-born citizens do not want these jobs.
They don’t want these jobs at a price farmers are willing or able to pay.
Of course US citizens don’t want these jobs. They’d make more money as a Wal Mart greeter. I wouldn’t want them either at that price. Offer $30 an hour, fair working conditions, and benefits to people and you’d have a lot more people willing to stand out in the sun and pick crops all day.
The problem is that people would refuse to pay the price for that fruit that the farmers would have to charge. That’s where the issue is. Start offering people $30 an hour and watch how fast those jobs get filled…until people see the new price of groceries. Then they’ll drive down to Mexico and start dragging the workers back to the US themselves.
That’s socialism in a nutshell.
Regardless of your opinion on socialism overall, the GOP would cheer Marjorie Taylor Greene leading an LGBTQ parade in honor of black gay atheists across the entire state of Alabama before they allowed that to happen.
You are correct, but those issues have no bearing on the fact that those people still would have no idea what their food would cost if they were paid a fair wage, and would likely not be willing to accept it even if you could mathematically prove that it was correct.
The gap between what most undocumented immigrants get paid vs. what a US citizen or permanent resident would get paid for the exact same work (assuming everything was above board) is absolutely gigantic. Especially in the agriculture and construction industries. Even if you took 100% of the rest of the corporate greed out, the price increases associated with paying them a fair wage would still send prices far higher than most people would be willing or even able to pay.
Look at it this way.
A quick google search shows that the average construction worker gets paid $25 an hour. Factor in benefits and you’re figuring $35 effective. Let’s say that, among the rest of the crew, A construction company hires 2 undocumented workers to do the low-level stuff for $10 an hour to cut a few corners and keep within budget. (A not-uncommon practice in the industry, to say the least. I’m sure some hire many more than that.)
A house takes about 6 months to build. So those two workers would work 40 hours/week for 26 weeks, for a total of 1040 hours, or 2080 hours between the two of them. The company pays them $20,800 under the table.
Had that construction company hired two union employees to do the same work, those workers would have been paid $72,800 in pay and benefits. That’s over $50,000 difference. Those costs would be tacked on to the cost of the house. A house that normally would sell for $150k would now be priced over $200k. That’s not corporate greed. That’s just math, and the true cost of what it would take to pay them a fair wage. If the owners were planning on renting out the property, this would probably result in the resulting rent for the property being about $500 a month higher, and even if the property were broken out into several apartments, you’d probably be still talking about tacking on a couple of hundred a month per apartment.
Whether it’s morally right is irrelevant. The price increases even after you factor out the things you correctly mention also have an impact would still likely be significantly higher than most people would be willing to accept and would likely cause severe negative impacts in the economy.
Wait, just hear me out, if we wait for the concentration camps to fill up with immigrants and political prisoners, they can provide the same labor FOR FREE while also providing a nice sum for the private prison firms that, in turn, grease the prison-to-profit machine!
All this with the added bonus that some of the labor will already be skilled. It’s brilliant!!
I actually thought of this myself, non-sarcastically. Maybe this is some kind of attempt to push out the undocumented and replace them with prison labor, especially since the Constitution still allows for prisoners to be used as slaves. And given this country’s history, a part of me was surprised that prisoners being used as farm labor wasn’t already the norm. My guess is that it would simply be too much of a logistical nightmare to monitor the workers to prevent them from escaping, and if you’ve gotta pay the guards to watch the prisoners, that kinda defeats the point. At that point, might as well just pay regular workers instead of dealing with all the BS and risks associated with using convicted criminals. Using criminals involuntarily would also run the risk of one of them contaminating the food supply (which, according to some prison documentaries, is not uncommon in prison kitchens to the point where staff members won’t eat food if it even if it came in contact with the prison kitchen due to the risk of contamination). A prisoner contaminating the food out of revenge or just for their own amusement wouldn’t mean that C-Block won’t get dessert today. It affects the food supply of millions of people.
That said, I’m sure Trump will try this. And then food costs will go up anyway because the overhead costs and the costs and risks associated with watching over the prisoners will exceed what the farmers were paying the undocumented workers, and Trump will still somehow tout it as a win.
The problem isn’t about what consumers are willing to pay for food.
This is how I can tell when people have either a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem or are severely underestimating the size of the problem.
For example, an apple costs around $0.20 right now. Which means that the supermarket is probably paying the wholesaler around $0.10, and the wholesaler is probably paying the farmer about four cents if he’s lucky. Let’s just say that $.02 of that is labor and $.02 is other costs not related to this discussion.
(Note that I do not have any clue about how much undocumented workers are paid, how much fruit they can pick, etc. I am making these numbers up for merely easy-to-understand illustrative purposes, But the underlying point would still hold if you plug the real numbers in instead.)
Let’s save the farm employs one undocumented worker for $5.00 an hour. He picks 10,000 apples over the course of a week, which breaks out to 2 cents an apple. Now let’s say he has to pay that employee a fair wage plus benefits. We’re probably talking about $15.00 an hour in wages, and $7.50 an hour effective for benefits period that comes out to $22.50 an hour. If that employee is still only picking 10,000 apples a week, That comes out to a price of $0.09 an apple. Which means even if the rest of the farmer’s costs stayed the same, he is now selling that 4 cent apple for about $0.11. The wholesaler is going to pass that cost onto the supermarket which means the apple they were previously selling for a dime now costs $0.22. The supermarket is going to do the same thing, so that means that the apple that you paid $0.20 for before now costs probably north of $0.40. So if you buy a bag of apples, you can expect the cost of that bag of apples to go up by around $3 to $4 per bag.
This probably doesn’t sound like a lot. Maybe you’d be OK with paying 3 to $4.00 more for that bag of apples. But here’s the thing. Now do that with oranges. Then carrots. Than every other fruit or vegetable you buy.
Then do the same with meats. Because they’re getting hit with a double whammy: not only do they have undocumented workers that are now being paid significantly more than before, but the costs of their feed that they feed the animals also just doubled. Which means one way or the other the price of your meat is going to go up by a lot.
Now do the same thing with every other grocery item you buy that requires food grown on farms. That three to $4.00 per Item now adds up to a $100 to $200 spike in your grocery bill. And if you go shopping twice a month, you’re talking about a $200 to $400 spike in the price of your food. At a minimum. I believe my estimates are conservative.
I am not a fan of all of the people who take copium by saying “This is it! This is the thing that will take Trump down!” with every passing day. But I believe if you tell people that they can expect the price of their groceries to go up at a minimum $200 to $400.00 a month, Even I think that might be enough to get his supporters to yank him out of the White House by the short and curlies. Remember the price of eggs at their peak? Imagine telling people that that’s now the new floor. Imagine the impact when restaurants have to start doubling their prices. Imagine the elderly, who in some cases already are foregoing medication to pay for food, only to find out that they still wouldn’t be able to eat. When the price of a McDonald’s value meal starts at 20 bucks just for their basic 2 burgers and a fry. And that’s only the beginning. I cannot begin to describe what kind of unforeseen side effects we could also expect throughout the economy.
People in the US have literally never had to pay a price for food that would be based on paying the workers a fair wage. We have been exploiting the undocumented for literal decades if not a century, and before that we had literal slavery. This has lead to a Society of people who have no idea how much their food would cost if they were paying the workers a fair wage, and would not accept it if they did because the price would be so high that it would seem unrealistic even if you could prove it to be mathematically correct. A shift like that would have an impact on literally every aspect of our economy in ways that I do not think our economy would be able to withstand, even if it is the morally correct thing to do.
Here’s the big problem. The elephant in the room that nobody is willing to talk about. The elephant that is and will forever prevent the issue from ever being solved.
Farmers aren’t worried about the lack of immigrants willing to pick the crops. They’re worried about the lack of immigrants willing to pick the crops at a wage that they are willing to pay. Very important distinction between the two. And that wage is often far below minimum with no benefits or employee protections. They could start hiring people at fair market wages, allow them to establish unions, and receive benefits. But that labor cost would be far, far higher than they’re paying now, and would likely lead to a sharp rise in food prices that the general public would likely not be willing to accept. Farmers have to consistently dodge the question of why not just hire US citizens and legal immigrants because they can’t answer them without admitting that they pay sub-minimum wages in violation of numerous laws and that paying regular citizens competitive wages would lead to huge spikes in food prices. This is because the vast majority of the public does not understand that the low food prices they’re accustomed to is because the farm industry has been exploiting immigrant labor for decades if not centuries, and have never had to learn what food would cost if workers were paid competitive wages and benefits. So the idea that competitive wages would lead to higher food prices is literally a foreign concept to a lot of people, because they’ve never had to deal with it.
Which is where we end up in a catch-22. Actually, several catch-22s.
Someone has to pick the crops. Pick one. Do you want undocumented immigrants doing it under the table with sub-minimum wages, no benefits, and no protections? Or do you want legal immigrants and US citizens doing the work with full pay, benefits, and protections but significantly higher food prices? If there were a way we could get the best of both worlds, farmers would be doing it already.
And Trump himself also has a problem. By trying to find a “solution” to this, he’s essentially admitting that the only way to keep food prices low is to employ (and allow farmers to exploit) the very undocumented immigrants he is trying to deport. He’s essentially admitting that our entire agricultural industry is dependent on the US essentially willfully turning a blind eye and ignoring its own immigration, discrimination, and employment laws. He’s tacitly admitting that enforcement of his own policies would lead to a spike in food prices that even he acknowledges would be unsustainable, either due to higher labor costs, lost crops, or both. He basically has to come off as looking ultra-tough on immigration while being forced to acknowledge the need of the very people he’s trying to deport. This isn’t exclusive to Trump. Any president would face the same dilemmas. It’s why previous Presidents have largely avoided the entire subject like the plague outside of giving some political talking points that they never actually act on.
We, as a country, need to start to fully understand and decide what we want. Do we want the employment practices of the agricultural industry to be above board, even if it leads to significantly higher food prices? Or do we acknowledge that our agricultural industry is entirely reliant on a supply of immigrant labor willing to work at sub-minimum wages and that maybe getting rid of all the brown people isn’t such a good idea after all. Because if that’s the case, we need to adjust our immigration laws and employment guidelines accordingly. Maybe we need a special class of immigrants who get a work permit only to work on these farms, and their visas become revoked if they become unemployed. Maybe a path to citizenship where if they come and work on the farms for X years at sub-minimum wages, they become eligible for a permanent visa where they can work anywhere?
I don’t know the solution. But I do know that as long as both sides keep tiptoeing around the reality of the situation, the problems will never get solved.
This baffles me. I just can’t see where, as a world leader, I would ever allow a foreign government access to my country’s banking system at all, let alone just yank money out of someone’s account. I’d be telling the US exactly where they can stick that idea. If they have a problem with a US citizen not paying taxes, then the US can handle it if and when that person sets foot on US soil.
I’d be curious as to how much revenue this generates for the US government. I’d also love to see other countries start rescinding these permissions in retaliation for Trump violating established trade deals. It might not be enough to get Trump to back down, but I still see it as a good opportunity to get bad policies off the books that should never have existed in the first place.
Countries need to start doing shit like that even if only to send a message to Trump and the US that no, the US doesn’t actually rule the world. It’ll never happen, I know, but one can dream.
The lawmakers argue that only Congress has authority to create, restructure, and abolish federal departments and agencies by constitutional mandate and through a long-established legal precedent.
The problem is that Congress has largely willingly ceded that authority to Trump, and the Supreme Court has largely kneecapped our court system’s ability to step in.
The Department of Education is statutorily mandated and cannot be unilaterally abolished by the President.
Given that he literally has control of all three branches of government, and the other two branches are actively allowing him to do it, I’d say that yes, it can be unilaterally abolished by the President. Doesn’t matter what a piece of paper says. If those who are tasked with upholding the law are unwilling or unable to do so, the law effectively doesn’t exist. Saying that he “can’t” do something implies that there is someone out there who is both willing and able to stop him.
Here’s a question I have never understood about this. I understand all of this if you are planning on returning to living in the US at some point. But if you’ve moved to a foreign country with no plans on returning to the US, why are you still paying taxes? What is stopping you from telling the US government to go pound sand?
I’m not meaning to sound sarcastic. It’s a legit question. I don’t know how any of this works and the issues surrounding it. Because I would think that if I lived in a foreign country I’d be telling Uncle Sam where he can stick his tax bill. That’s kinda the whole point of leaving. What prevents people from doing this, especially if they don’t plan to return to the US?
Here’s the list:
Cowards. Our media are fucking cowards.
So is every other institution.
I have literally never understood it from day one of Trump’s descent down that ladder. From day one, people have played Trump’s games by Trump’s rules, then wonder why they keep losing. It’s not just our colleges and media centers. It’s been our businesses, our tech industry, our legal system – both civil and criminal, and even other world leaders. For some reason, in the end, they all blink and just give Trump whatever he wants. I don’t know if it’s out of fear, a sense of appeasement, or whatever. But not one of them has learned yet that appeasement DOES. NOT. FUCKING. WORK. All it does is make him come back for more. Appeasing him just makes him believe that whatever he wanted in the first place is his by divine birthright.
Negotiating with this man DOES. NOT. FUCKING. WORK. He has openly admitted that he doesn’t honor his side of agreements, believing that he can use even that as a negotiating tactic, on the belief that you’ll return to the negotiating table if you want to receive even a part of what you were promised in the first place. He believes that conceding anything is an admission that you knew he was right about everything in the first place, or you wouldn’t be negotiating at all.
You can’t give this man chances. One judge already gave him ten fucking chances, and it still didn’t change his behavior. Then the judge went on and proceeded to do fuck all about it, and wondered why he just amped up the rhetoric. Why should he? The judge blinked and proved he had a whole lot of nothing. And so has every judge who has ultimately sat on the bench with a stupid look on their face when Trump all but said “Fuck you, what are you going to do about it?”. Why should Trump respect them when their answer so far has been “Nothing.”?
If you’re going to go on TV and denounce Trump, then go from the podium right to the negotiating table to give Trump exactly what he wants, you can’t be surprised that this is the end result.
Can you do something about it? Because if you can’t, Trump won’t care about whether you “accept” it at all. As far as he’s concerned, he’ll just stuff your ass into the first plane heading out to whatever 3rd world country he struck a deal with. The rest is your problem.
Actually, a new party that successfully pulls from both parties would most likely be centrist at best.