• greenfire
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      266 months ago

      Mr Miller told me this was a REALLY GOOD IDEA!!!

      • @barneypiccolo@lemm.ee
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        86 months ago

        It all makes sense when you look at it from the perspective that he’s doing all this at the direction of Putin to destroy American hegemony in the world.

        As bad as the world thinks it’s been under Ametican leadership, its better than letting Russia or China run the show.

          • @barneypiccolo@lemm.ee
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            36 months ago

            Not the first time. Back in 2016, when he was first elected, it was quickly determined that Russia had onterfered with our election, and Congress voted to impose sanctions on Russia. When it came time to order the Congressionally-mandated sanctions, HitlerPig ignored it, saying the Russia wouldn’t do it again.

    • @HeyJoe@lemmy.world
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      276 months ago

      And everyone being deported as well. Even most of the illegals paid into the economy. Now we’re taking that away and spending who knows what to create chaos.

      • @P1nkman@lemmy.world
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        96 months ago

        But all the government institutions are being dismantled, so why have taxes at all?

        Need to pave a road to your house? Pay it yourself! Need to drive on a road you haven’t paid for? Pay the toll to the owner.

        • @pufferfisherpowder@lemmy.world
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          186 months ago

          Libertarian police

          I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.

          “Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”

          “What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”

          “Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”

          The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”

          “Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”

          “Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”

          He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”

          “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”

          I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.

          “Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.

          “Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.

          “Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”

          It didn’t seem like they did.

          “Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”

          Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.

          I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.

          “Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.

          Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.

          “Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.

          I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”

          He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.

          “All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”

          “Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.

          “Because I was afraid.”

          “Afraid?”

          “Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”

          I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.

          “Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”

          He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.

      • @pelicans_plight@lemmy.world
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        26 months ago

        It hits even harder then that, I know a family of truckers that never stops working, but they’re Lebanese and not natively born yet are all U.S. citizens, so for now they’ve all decided to finally take time off untill this blows over, leaving an even bigger hole in our economy to fill for natural born citizen.

      • @AnjunaSouls@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        “1,000,000 men out of employment”

        Certainly showing it’s age there. You’d never see unemployment statistics announced that way today. Not even sure if this is because of how “men” used to be used to refer to people in a more general way, or because women didn’t make up a significant portion of the workforce (or because they didn’t care about that demographic…)

        “Net loss of gold in exports” too… Usually we see GDP used for that kind of statistic now

    • @whotookkarl@lemmy.world
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      296 months ago

      That’s what I heard people said, but I suspect it was more the anti-immigrant, christian nationalist, white supremacist, misogynist not wanting to out themselves so they said things like the ‘price of eggs’ or ‘the economy’ instead of ‘I’m scared of everything I don’t understand like diversity and worker solidarity’ or ‘i don’t want to be treated the way I treat minorities’.

    • @Donjuanme@lemmy.world
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      36 months ago

      13 hours later and I had the arrogance to think I had an original comment.

      And you italicized it! Well done!

  • @rational_lib@lemmy.world
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    306 months ago

    As bad as this is, it can still get a lot worse. The market seems to be pricing in a high probability that Trump will reverse course. If the tariffs stay on for at least a few months, there will certainly be a recession, probably a depression, and possibly social unrest that will take decades to fully recover from.

    • @kameecoding@lemmy.world
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      216 months ago

      When things really crash is when the rich will decide to pay their cash and start buying up shit, and then we will think the economy recovered but really all that happened is another wealth redistribution in the wrong direction

      • @Knightfox@lemmy.one
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        56 months ago

        Maybe but it could crash anyways. JP Morgan tried to stabilize the stock market in 1929 by buying up stocks, but it collapsed anyways and led to the Great Depression.

  • greenfire
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    296 months ago

    Stable genius working his special magic in advance of the Super Bigly Oligarchs’ Enormous Clearance Sale of resources & remnants of US governmental assets!!!

  • Bakkoda
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    276 months ago

    Who knew that Tarriffs, a historically bad idea when used broadly and heavily, would be bad for an economy propped up by massive consumer debt and a stock market existing solely on speculation/over valuation?

  • Hossenfeffer
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    256 months ago

    It’s just utterly infuriating and miserable. This isn’t a Nelson-Ha-Ha.gif moment.

    Ordinary Americans will suffer for this. People will lose their homes, their jobs, their lives. And ordinary people in other countries will suffer for it too - job losses for companies who majorly sell to the US are inevitable. Car companies in the UK (Landrover, Aston Martin, Jaguar, etc are already making noises about job-cutting).

    And the vastly wealthy will benefit, as they always do, by picking up those bargain basement stocks which will, eventually, become valuable again. And it’s the plan. It’s always the plan. Transfer wealth from the many to the few. Brexit was a cash grab. Trump is a cash grab.

    • @booly@sh.itjust.works
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      36 months ago

      And the vastly wealthy will benefit, as they always do, by picking up those bargain basement stocks which will, eventually, become valuable again.

      I don’t think that’s correct.

      Imagine, if you will, an uptick in vandalism on Tesla Cybertrucks. Insurance companies notice and increase the price of insuring them. The used car market price for those vehicles goes down, with fewer people wanting to buy vehicles that are more expensive to insure and are more likely to be vandalized.

      Is that price drop a dip that a savvy investor can take advantage of? Is there an investment case for buying used cybertrucks and then hoping that Elon’s stink fades? I don’t think so. The value of that thing has permanently decreased.

      Look to American soybean farming. Trump put tariffs on China in 2018, and China retaliated with tariffs on soybeans, among other products. Brazil stepped in and started exporting a lot of soybeans to China, and maintained that market share even as the tariffs were canceled. Basically, American farmers never recovered. Buying up all that farmland for cheap wouldn’t have done anything because the new owners of that land can’t benefit from some kind of higher profits from that land.

      Sometimes things drop in price because they just become less valuable. I think that’s what’s happening with American stocks right now, because the damage that is being done is hard to reverse.

    • @alexplex@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      by picking up those bargain basement stocks which will, eventually, become valuable again.

      Everyone can do this. Even if it’s only $50. If you have nothing, you gotta start somewhere. I’m investing every penny I can spare right now.

  • @Gigasser@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    You know what I find funny. The US fucking whinges about China nearly all the time. Yet they seek to become Insular and Autarkic. They make the same mistake the Qing Dynasty did.

    Edit Addendum: The Qing dynasty, is often seen as prizing its material abundance and cultural legacy so highly that it sometimes failed to adapt to new challenges and technological advancements. This narrow focus is often cited as one of the factors that contributed to their eventual decline.

    Equating the greatness or state of the nation with it’s wealth.

    • @capital_sniff@lemmy.world
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      36 months ago

      We’re gonna get a shit ton of austerity here and then future children will learn about the Trump tariffs in school.

      I just find it a little ironic that the genius voters that ushered in Reagan and neo-liberalism are the same voters that support Trump and his destruction of said neo-liberalism.