361–370 of 836 posts
I grew up in the US and lived there for 30 years, but now I live in Europe. Every single one of my friends in their 30's finds visiting the US absolutely terrifying (even those who have previously been). I have yet to meet a single friend in today's day that has expressed any interest in visiting.
I live in Europe and was in California in November. No issues.
There's a vibe in at least the PNW that feels like the tech sector is sloughing jobs and avoiding creating new ones courtesy of AI. I genuinely wonder if that feeling is backed by reality and whether it's large enough to be translating into national statistics across all industries.
I mean Dorsey literally just said publicly that he’s laying off people in order to utilize AI like what more clear point do you want? Whether or not you believe that this is a good or bad move, correct or lying move, whether AI is capable or not, “AI” is the reason that CEOs are utilizing to cut roles The timing of this is based on the fact that Capital is striking from deploying money to anything else outside of the…
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This reminds me of an incident with a friend of mine. He flew to the US and entered through Texas. He is white with blond hair and he was wearing a t-shirt very reminiscent of the Confederate flag. A security guard picked up his bag from the carousel, handed it to him, and very emphatically said "Welcome home, sir!".
How would a guard know who a bag belongs to?
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Last year we cancelled a planned US vacation, this year we didn't even think about it. Going back to Europe two years in a row. I don't give a fuck about tariff policy of our supposed "friends" but when our "friend" repeatedly threatens our independence and sovereignty, no thanks. Not going to step into the USA for a long time.
Can't blame you. Coming from the US I have been making a point to vacation in Canada, fwiw. Short of voting, protesting and getting into arguments with MAGA people I don't know what else I can effectively do.
I do not see the tourism industry mentioned here but I have to imagine that is a huge loss right now. Most of the world is not visiting the US right now which means projects and planning that was made in anticipation for summer has probably been halted or heavily reduced.
There is a significant majority of people in Canada who not only vocally decided to not go to US but discourage their friends from doing so too. People have judged me for driving through the states.
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In Washington it is much broader than the tech sector. Washington is being buried in indefensibly bad legislation that is extremely hostile to large companies and tech companies of every size for openly ideological reasons. It has rapidly become one of the worst business environments in the country when it used to be one of the best. Many companies have stopped or reduced hiring in Seattle and are moving operations t…
Which policies specifically? Certainly not the income tax on million+ income, seems pretty modest. We moved from TX. Property tax rate is low, no income tax sub million in income, schools are great (and almost all new), roads are fine and transit seeing massive investment. They definitely need to fix budget, but there's _ample_ wealth here to deal with it. I think they'll figure it out. _Oregon_ has bad policies (10%…
And then you have a litany of new business regulation across every sector of the local economy. My recent favorite, which fortunately did not make it out of this session due to heavy lobbying by tech, was requiring data centers to turn-off power during periods of high electricity demand. It's insane that this is even being seriously considered.
Oregon is also a mess but it has always been a mess.
Texas isn't the only alternative. Turning Washington into California with worse weather even makes California relatively attractive.
Mass deportation means economic contraction. The administration has promised to deport millions of people. Mass deportations on this scale will have a somewhat drastic effect, and the true mass deportation hasn't even started, because they haven't built enough concentration camps to facilitate the deportations. Unless it is stopped the job losses will be absolutely massive, and a tiny tiny footnote to the massive hum…
This is actually why Trump won’t do them, by the way. He’s already changed his rhetoric to “criminals only”. Trump is completely captured by business interests and is not America First. Mass immigration is the billionaire first position. Younger generations understand this, so we likely won’t see some change for a bit, but it is coming. And it makes sense - they’re the ones suffering most from unfettered immigration.…
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It’s a large and incorrect assumption, and not mathing, to lump non-voters into supporters, especially when the administration is purging eligible voters.
Eligible voters should absolutely be lumped in as implicit supporters. Disenfranchised voters have been made ineligible so should not have been in the statistic.
“Unexpectedly” lol We’ve been digging ourselves a giant AI-inflated hole in the economy for months and folks have just been playing musical chairs to grab as much money as possible before the music stops. Hard to believe it’s taken this long. I never wanted to live through the late 70s / early 80s economically but I guess I’ll have my chance!
Unexpectedly is because it's a big miss from the projected job numbers. If you felt like the expected numbers were obviously wrong for this month, you should have traded on that information.
I do not see the tourism industry mentioned here but I have to imagine that is a huge loss right now. Most of the world is not visiting the US right now which means projects and planning that was made in anticipation for summer has probably been halted or heavily reduced.
There is a significant majority of people in Canada who not only vocally decided to not go to US but discourage their friends from doing so too. People have judged me for driving through the states.
That said, I do think some people are doing things for the wrong reasons and there is some manipulation of the masses at play here. One example is I expect most people don't really understand the tariff situation between Canada and the US and that most goods are still exempt from taxes and the agreements hold. I think some people want to punish the US for tariffs that don't exist.
As a Canadian we should push back strongly against attacks on our sovereignty. We should also be somewhat concerned about the direction our neighbor is going in general. But it's also a reality that the US is very very close to us both geographically, culturally, and economically. That's not going to change. It's not an "enemy country" despite their very questionable choice of leaders. I think the correct long term direction is open borders and open trade, somewhat like the EU, and we shouldn't lose sight of that because a bad leader is in place today.
It's very weird to me to see all the focus on US policies in the Canadian discourse while not enough focus on Canada. That feels like political distraction.