A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:More than half of Americans spend as much as they make each month, or more. Nearly the same percentage say they have favorable financial circumstances, which may just mean some of them are too frightened to admit they don’t. Or perhaps they are just too financially illiterate to understand their predicament.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Wages did go up, after a year of the highest unemployment benefits we've ever paid out.
Look at the prices.
You're going to have to raise minimum wage a shit ton more, and consistantly forever, if you're going to ever have any chances of fighting inequality.
The only way to do it is to raise the minimum wage every single year at double whatever inflation is the previous year.
I wonder how the "health experts" are going to feel when they're making just as much money as the guy cleaning toilets at Costco.
At least the guy cleaning toilets at Costco is providing a legitimate service.
I think we are finally getting it that the average American brain does not work around money naturally.
I suspect the average American's sense of impotence in the face of financial difficulty is not only a source of disillusionment, but also a source of the anger that now infects our national politics, an anger that gets displaced onto undocumented immigrants or Chinese trade precisely because we are unable or unwilling to articulate its true source.
“Financial impotence” has many of the characteristics of sexual impotence, not least of which is the desperate need to mask it and pretend everything is going swimmingly. It may be more embarrassing than sexual impotence. You are more likely to hear from your buddy that he is on Viagra than that he has credit-card problems. Much more likely.
America is a country, as Donald Trump has reminded us, of winners and losers, alphas and weaklings. To struggle financially is a source of shame, a daily humiliation — even a form of social suicide. Silence is the only protection. That, and noisily supporting Donald Trump.
https://bestmoneymoves.com/blog/2018/10/03/what-percentage-of-american
s-spend-more-than-they-earn/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
It's all good thoughts, until you have to bring up Trump because of your brain disease.
This is 100% to be blamed on our Public Education. For 12 years they have our kids and not one of them learns a single thing about budgeting, balancing a checkbook, or doing their own taxes and understanding how their money is taxed.
This is intentional. Mindless consumerism is wholly dependent on churning out mindless consumerists.
Of course people are going to deny they have money problems to strangers. Most of them are denying it to themselves everyday.
I just had a bit of an argument with my old man about this today. About a week ago he had a fall while going upstairs while my step mom was vaccumming and somehow he screwed the vacuum up during the fall. I let him borrow my 4" long Torx set to try to open it, but they're too wide to fit. Now she's using a jagged up vacuum cleaner that cost $300 and is going to buy another $300 vacuum cleaner.
This is just stupid.
You can, and I have, bought a completely brand new looking refurbished Shark vacuum from Amazon that comes with a full warranty that you'd get on a new one. Two different models, in fact. Total cost to me was less than $160 for $620 worth of vacuum cleaners, and they're amazing.
She turns her nose up at that though and would never buy one that wasn't new.
I told him about some jagoff I knew who bought a $300 pair of sunglasses and ruined his day when he sat on them when he got into his car. I do dumb shit with my sunglasses all the time. That's why I buy them at the dollar store and just throw them out without a care when it happens.
And then I came around full circle and gav
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Quote:Does anyone need to go to school to learn the lesson taught in the next 4 paragraphs from a book review about When a Factory Relocates to Mexico, What Happens to Its American Workers?
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
. . . People are stupid when it comes to money. At the very least, they're ignorant.
And unfortunately, simply just giving them more money for nothing isn't going to fix any problems because more money will just equal more stupid decisions for a vast majority of us.
Education is key. Until the people are educated, they will never live better lives.
With all the worthless shit that kids are taught in school, I'm sure that we can replace that with at least a few things that will help them live better lives as adults. Because the only two things that they learn today that will help (basic arithmetic and reading/writing) we're failing at miserably. . . .
For Shannon, Wally and John, making bearings is a means of climbing the economic ladder. Wages at the plant — $25 an hour — are above the U.S. average for manufacturing ($20 in 2016, $24 today). These workers become homeowners, make down payments on cars and consider sending their kids to college.
But 40-somethings belong to a generation for whom the number of jobs like this have disappeared. Manufacturing employment peaked in the summer of 1979 at around 19.6 million, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The 1980s and ’90s were tough, with nearly two million jobs lost, but the aughts were dreadful: About six million jobs vanished. The trend is not confined to the United States; in Britain, a quarter of manufacturing jobs disappeared in the 1980s, and nearly as many again in the 1990s.
John’s arrival at Link-Belt is a sign of the relentless cost-cutting that will ultimately kill the plant. A prior employer, another Indianapolis factory, had paid him $28 an hour. But then it moved its business to Alabama, where unions are weaker and workers accepted $18 an hour. Another warning bell pings when Link-Belt workers begin to assemble bearings from Chinese-made parts. The workers are reduced to finishing and checking, as the supply chain lengthens and the factory is quietly gutted. “Made in America” had become a slogan, no longer an economic truth. Taking repeated trips to Indianapolis over the course of three years, Stockman captures the sense of impending doom.
The climax of the book is its penultimate section, “Shutting Down,” about the factory’s final days. As closure looms, Rexnord announces that the Mexican workers will need mentors to teach them how to operate the furnaces, mills and lathes. Their American counterparts refuse, drawing a line in the union’s battle to save the plant. But a grimly predictable economic reality plays out: Wages are far lower at the new Monterrey plant (in Mexico, manufacturing pay starts at less than $5 an hour), so it makes sense for the bosses to offer American employees cash bonuses until they buckle. The Link-Belt workers are coerced by cash into passing on their skills to the people who will make them redundant.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/12/books/review/american-made-farah-st
ockman.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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I'm not saying that there aren't external problems. Of course there are.
Don't try changing the subject.
There ARE things that every one of us could be doing to make our situations better, but nobody is taught that in school and everyone ends up being a lost little lamb.
Some people figure it out. Most don't. That's how mindless consumerism continues, and that's how most of us end up being wage slaves and putting up with heinous shit because the alternative is simply worse.
If I never learned any lessons from when I was young and dumb, I'd be one of the people who's only options were getting the jab or starving to death. That's the position they want all of us in all the time.
Asses up. Wagging in the air. Begging to be fucked.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Quote:The subject is the false mental models used by most Americans to explain to themselves how America works. Those factory workers in the book about a ball bearing factory in Indiana? Their mental model was: "I will work at the crappy factory for the rest of my days and hope for the best and never plan for the worst since planning makes me anxious and interferes with my TV watching, game playing, overeating, and getting high." It is no surprise that the factory workers lost the factory. The factory never was for creating jobs for them. It was always only creating ball bearings for sale. That was its only purpose. The factory workers never seem to remember for more than an hour or two that the owner has no loftier purpose than selling ball bearings. The Federal government could force the owner to have a bigger purpose, but Americans, including the factory workers, do NOT support a bigger purpose. Since government will not be changing the owner's motivation, the owner will keep all focus on selling, not creating high paying jobs for Americans. Instead, low paying jobs in Mexico are created because that will sell ball bearings.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Don't try changing the subject.
That is one false mental model for working Americans. There are false mental models for spending money, which go something like: "Spend all your money because America's bosses owe you a good paying job." Americans cannot wrap their brains around the fact that their bosses owe them nothing unless government forces the bosses.
The government gets slightly involved here by allowing unions to force bosses, and bankruptcy courts to protect workers from the bosses' greed and Social Security for workers who spent everything and laws forbidding usury, but government doesn't try to stop people from spending away their future. Government could stop people from living like natural born fools who never will understand how Capitalism works, but Government won't because of other false mental models that Americans should be totally free to be the biggest, most obnoxious failures they want to be.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:The subject is the false mental models used by most Americans to explain to themselves how America works.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Don't try changing the subject.
Yeah. My point exactly.
Read a fucking book.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Quote:6ix, you pretty much are living Mal's life after Serenity -- attempt to keep off the government's list, while despising government, and reusing old junk rather than buy new. If the Firefly comics are a guide to where things will end for Mal, or even the history of Hippies who have given up most of their ideals from long ago, following Mal's path leads to isolation. The most recent comics have Mal sitting on his front porch, with a shotgun across his knees, on a lonely planet, at least until Kaylee shows up to drag him away to new adventures. He is reluctant to change his daily habits, but persuadable. Life gets pretty boring for Mal when all his time is spent avoiding paying taxes and shirking responsibility. A little violent adventure will seem a nice change of pace for Mal.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:The subject is the false mental models used by most Americans to explain to themselves how America works.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Don't try changing the subject.
Yeah. My point exactly.
Read a fucking book.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Don't care.
Let's go Brandon!
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Liberals need to pass a solid spending bill and take the Win!
The current line from the left about the Build Back Better bill is that centrists are forcing them to make an impossible choice. Who do we throw under the bus? The elderly? Parents? Kids? Students? The future of the planet?
This is so stupid it makes me want to bang my head against the wall. When President Obama pushed through Obamacare, did that mean he was disparaging every other liberal priority? Of course not.
The only difference now is that somebody has written down a list of those other priorities. That's it. The only question, as always, is which programs you think are best to pass. Then you pass them—or try to. This says exactly zero about the dozens of other programs that you haven't passed yet.
For my money, here are the ones to pass:
1 Long-term care
2 Increased Obamacare subsidies
3 Childcare
4 Pre-K
These are all great programs and, critically, they're political winners. This is what Democrats need right now and this is what they should concentrate on.
Apparently a lot of people would feel betrayed and heartbroken if the final bill ended up like this. That's beyond insane. It wouldn't just be a win for the liberal project, it would be a massive, unprecedented win. And it would be a massive, unprecedented win even though we barely have a majority in Congress. If Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are willing to vote for something like this, we should grab the chance and then celebrate for a month after Joe Biden signs it into law. And then it should be the backbone of the 2022 midterm campaign.
This is reality. And if it can be done, reality will be pretty damn good.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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No. We don't want that bullshit either.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Malcolm Turnbull on Murdoch, lies and the climate crisis: 'The same forces that enabled Trump are at work in Australia'
Systematic partisan lying and misinformation from the media, both mainstream and social, has done enormous damage to liberal democracies, the former PM writes
Biden is leading a more traditional and rational administration. The friends and allies Trump had outraged around the world are breathing a sigh of relief. The US has rejoined the Paris agreement on climate change and Biden is seeking to lead the world with deeper, faster cuts to emissions.
But the same forces that amplified and enabled Trump are still at work in the US and here in Australia. In April the Murdoch press bullied the New South Wales government into reversing its decision to appoint me chairman of a committee to advise on the transition to a net zero emission economy. My “crime” was to not support the continued, unconstrained expansion of open-cut coalmining in the Hunter Valley. In the crazed, rightwing media echo chamber so influential with many Liberal and National party members, the primary qualification to advise on net zero emissions is, apparently, unqualified support for coalmining.
As though we hadn’t had enough demonstration of the Murdochs’ vendetta tactics, right on cue on 2 May Sky News Australia broadcast a “documentary” designed to disparage me and Rudd as being, in effect, political twins separated at birth. As a job, I am told it gave hatchets a bad name. But the message was clear to anyone inclined to hold Murdoch to account: step out of line and you will be next.
And while politicians are accountable, the Murdochs are not. Their abuse of power has been so shameful that James Murdoch has resigned from the company. His brother, Lachlan, however, is thoroughly in charge and apparently more rightwing than his father. Yet he has chosen to move back to Australia with his family, fleeing the hatreds and divisions of America that he and his father have done so much to exacerbate.
More at https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/oct/18/malcolm-turnbul
l-on-murdoch-lies-and-the-climate-crisis-the-same-forces-that-enabled-trump-are-at-work-in-australia
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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