421–430 of 711 posts
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Can you keep the comments like this on Reddit and away from HN, please? For the non-UK users reading this: almost all of the bullet pointed statements are either incorrect or exaggerated.
[citation needed]
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Germany lost 2 World Wars and today it has greater GDP than UK by $1 trillion. It doesn't matter who is hit harder it matters whose economy is more efficient and has more innovations.
Nothing will ever sway people like you from neoliberal rhetoric, huh?
Heck, as a center-leftish frequent critic of neoliberalism, I mostly agree with the statement: while who was hit hardest has some effect, differences in the trajectory of the rebound from the bottom tends to matter more for the post-crisis position than differences in the depth of the bottom.
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How is shrinking the government to blame? It's expanded colossal ever since the new deal. Grover Norquist, the guy you're quoting, is not an elected official. He was just saying what he believes. That's pretty weak evidence for "the problem". The only nation that ended up containing it was China, because being able to tightly control what your population does is one of the perks of authoritarianism. That said, it doe…
the welfare state expanded dramatically after the new deal, but that reversed with the turn toward austerity in the late 70s. "the government" is an overly broad way of speaking about this, as it places budgeting for defense contracts & bailing out finance capital, or monetary policy geared toward preventing the labor market from getting tight (as opposed to full employment) under the same umbrella as tanf & snap.
People keep talking about "stripping away the safety net", but when I look at entitlement spending, it just keeps getting bigger.
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As of 3/21. Lockdown in California began in the evening of 3/19. Still not enough time for the numbers to react.
"Are we to believe that the remaining 800k+ people all filed on March 13th, or March 22nd through the 25th?" I could believe it over the 22-25 stretch.
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On the contrary, setbacks for globalization may very well leave us better off...after all, globalization is one of the main factors why we're experiencing this deadly pandemic now, and have vast swathes of our supply chain for essential pharmaceuticals and medical equipment farmed out to evil, duplicitous regimes like the Chinese state.
> after all, globalization is one of the main factors why we're experiencing this deadly pandemic now Not so. Pandemics travelled around the world before globalization. The black death, smallpox in the americas, syphllis. This just increases the speed.
A staggering number, and unprecedented in the modern era. I'm not in the US or an America, but my (retired), Father is and for the sake of the people around him and his family I hope this is the point where the American political system - and Republicans in particular - realise that their ideologies are dead. In the UK we saw an Old-Etonian Tory Prime Minister in the space of a couple of weeks: - Effectively national…
> and Republicans in particular - realise that their ideologies are dead Good luck. Their base doesn't care. I was speaking with my father a couple days ago, who is a US Board-Certified surgeon and ran his own practice for 40 years. He's a smart guy, but firmly lives in the Fox News/Rush Limbaugh bubble. He was saying how he was hoping this crisis would put the final nail in the coffin ... for the corrupt democrats.…
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> And just like the Depression, a few years of boom times afterwards and that effect will be negated Actually Depression changed consumer habits for entire generation. People saved more, spent less, kept money under the mattress etc. Not a generation that you can kick-start an economy with.
Weird memory but my depression era great Grandma (matrilineal side all had kids at like 18) was teaching me a "depression soup" recipe. The first thing she had me do was peel the potatoes. All I could think was "this is the best part of the potato... We are literally throwing food away right now." I think lots of experiences like this with her led to me quite unfairly latching onto the "ok boomer" ageist wave. Time a…
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There a lot of well paid individuals who have the job of convincing regular people that climate change is a hoax and lots of regular people believe them.
Are these regular people citizens of a democracy? Then the chain of responsibility stops there. No greater entity will swoop in to help if the citizens of a democracy can’t be trusted to make the kinds of decisions confronting them. It’s only a democracy if you can keep it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book)
> Bernays' thesis is that "invisible" people who create knowledge and propaganda rule over the masses, with a monopoly on the power to shape thoughts, values, and citizen response. "Engineering consent" of the masses would be vital for the survival of democracy.
> Bernays explains:
> "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of."
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I would like to be optimistic and think we all learn valuable lessons from this but realistically most people will just double-down in their convictions and blame some other externality as to why their own political/economic ideologies didn't pan out.
Looking like you are right about this. Approval ratings are up somehow: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
because this is seen as an external threat and not an internal blunder. Similar to 9/11. Countrymen tend to band together and support the leader when faced with a crisis, regardless of the leader.