Professor Beetus posted:

I had a bad online date once where the other party failed to inform me that they had one of those in their car from a prior DUI and used it as a way to stay over.

Pobrecito posted:

Like chasing down black people with guns when they have the gall to stroll into the neighborhood!

Judakel posted:

Fun fact: the guy he chased down said he would vote for him if he could.

Cranappleberry posted:

Anti-DUI systems can also have high false positive rates, which means you need to go somewhere and your car won't start. They can also have high failure rates, and you're stuck paying the installer a premium for any repair, which you have to wait on.

Rebel Blob posted:

AmiYumi posted:

I’m sure these systems, if implemented*, won’t be as notoriously buggy as current systems that disable your car until you pay for expensive repairs only a single company can do. Nor will the cost of this nanny-state poo poo get passed right onto the consumer, with a hefty upcharge because they can, would the auto industry ever do such a thing??

Surely people stuck on the side of the road with cars that just glitched out and disabled themselves will be grateful to the Dems, pledging to vote for the party as they shell out hundreds of dollars to the one company with a monopoly on parts.

_{^{*they won’t be}}

eviltastic posted:

I mean, okay, if you want to say prices are all over the place I'll believe you. I don't take issue with your suggestion that subsets not impacted by particular price hikes will be better off. But there is absolutely stagnation of what we can call a typical wage "hidden in the numbers". BLS data shows real median wages going down, not up, for every quarter since Q2 2020, including the most recent one. FRED charts haven't been updated for Q3 2021 yet, but show the same thing.

e: and taking a slightly longer view, as that NYT piece invites us to do, suggests similarly disappointing growth. I'm pretty suspicious of their choice to reference growth in average numbers when claiming "sharp" increases, particularly contrasted with the suggestion that said sharp increase was driven by lower earners.

Mellow Seas posted:

This is good feedback, thanks. I'm willing to accept that on average, people's wages are about as stagnant as they've been since the Reagan era (outside of the late-90s blip). That's a strike against "the economy is good, actually" but it does still leave a question as to why people are interpreting the economy as being as bad it was in April 2009 when things were worse then by pretty much every measure except "if you want a thing and have the money for it, can you buy it easily?" If Democrats can address that (or if it addresses itself), it should help public perception of the economy, even if it doesn't bring us into "actually good economy" territory (which is something very few goons have actually seen in their lives).

Covok posted:

I guess that the Infrastructure Week meme is dead now that the bill passed.

Majorian posted:

It's a sense of precarity. I posted that Gallup poll about people's lack confidence in the economy a couple pages back, and I think that's what you're seeing in these other polls. Even if people are doing better financially than they were five, ten, or twenty years ago, it's hard to feel like the economy is doing "well" if you're afraid that the bottom's going to drop out again suddenly and blow away your life savings (or that you or a family member will get sick and suddenly face huge medical debts, or any other number of possible tragedies).

VorpalBunny posted:

In chimed the middle-aged, middle-class, white Republican shitheads, all ready to throw the book at her. One guy lept to the defense of the franchise owner and laughed at me pointing out she likely has no paid time off, no sick leave, no medical benefits and no retirement. It was a sobering reminder that somehow these assholes have the power in this country and are enraged at the existence of the working poor.

ex post facho posted:

Any news on the ongoing BBB negotiations? We got a pinky-promise swear we'd see a vote by next Monday.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

- New standards and requirements for "Smart Headlights" on new cars.

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-joe-biden-technology-business-health-068ee87392b0cca1444053b854a514dd

Abner Assington posted:

I mean, cool, but can we also get some regulations on the low beams on cars using HID/xenon headlights (which is to say, effectively every new-ish car on the road)? They're incredibly blinding on even low settings, and is only made worse by every dickhead in this country driving an SUV/pickup truck, so their lights are perfectly positioned at head level for me in my hatchback.

Abner Assington posted:

I mean, cool, but can we also get some regulations on the low beams on cars using HID/xenon headlights (which is to say, effectively every new-ish car on the road)? They're incredibly blinding on even low settings, and is only made worse by every dickhead in this country driving an SUV/pickup truck, so their lights are perfectly positioned at head level for me in my hatchback.

Ravenfood posted:

We could just ban SUVs or pickups unless you have some business need, that would be great.

How are u posted:

Those are far and away the most popular cars being sold in America, it's not even close.

So yeah don't hold your breath. I'd be all for it, personally.

quote:

By the usual measures, the U.S. economy has been booming this year. Employment has risen by more than five million since January; a record number of Americans say this is a good time to find a quality job, a sentiment reflected in the willingness of an unprecedented number of workers to quit (yes, high quit rates are a good sign).

Yet Americans are, or say they are, pessimistic about the economic situation.

quote:

Still, when you look into consumer surveys, you find that answers to the question “How is the economy doing?” don’t necessarily track with answers to the question “How are you doing?”

Here’s what the Michigan survey found when it asked people to compare their current financial situation with their situation five years ago; numbers greater than 100 mean improvement. That number has slid a bit since the beginning of this year, but it’s still quite high — in fact, as high as the average for 2019, when the Trump administration was boasting nonstop about the economy.

quote:

Other surveys find similar results. For example, Langer Research Associates breaks its Consumer Confidence Index into components; the number for “personal finances” is far higher than the number for “national economy”:

quote:

So Americans, while legitimately troubled by inflation, are feeling pretty good about their own financial situation; their downbeat economic assessment involves a belief that bad things are happening to other people. Where does that belief come from?

To some extent public perceptions may have been shaped by widespread media coverage of preliminary economic reports that suggested a struggling economy. After revisions, the data look much better — most notably, soft preliminary employment numbers for August and September received many headlines, while it’s a good bet that few Americans are aware of later revisions that added more than 200,000 jobs.

Professor Beetus posted:

They could start by regulating the gently caress out of them, why are literally all trucks and SUVs now enormous? It's dumb as hell and I think less of every single person who drives one without explicit need.

Mellow Seas posted:

This is good feedback, thanks. I'm willing to accept that on average, people's wages are about as stagnant as they've been since the Reagan era (outside of the late-90s blip). That's a strike against "the economy is good, actually" but it does still leave a question as to why people are interpreting the economy as being as bad it was in April 2009 when things were worse then by pretty much every measure except "if you want a thing and have the money for it, can you buy it easily?" If Democrats can address that (or if it addresses itself), it should help public perception of the economy, even if it doesn't bring us into "actually good economy" territory (which is something very few goons have actually seen in their lives).

Majorian posted:

It's a sense of precarity. I posted that Gallup poll about people's lack confidence in the economy a couple pages back, and I think that's what you're seeing in these other polls. Even if people are doing better financially than they were five, ten, or twenty years ago, it's hard to feel like the economy is doing "well" if you're afraid that the bottom's going to drop out again suddenly and blow away your life savings (or that you or a family member will get sick and suddenly face huge medical debts, or any other number of possible tragedies).

quote:

Volvo will put a nanny camera in its next generation of cars to keep you and others alive if you’re drunk, distracted, fall asleep, or have an unexpected ailment (heart attack) that renders you unable to drive competently. Combined with other sensors and software algorithms, the anti-distraction system would provide an escalating set of prompts and queries, ultimately slowing and then stopping the car and calling for assistance.

Speeding, distraction and intoxication disturb driver reaction time. We can address this by lowering speed, alerting a driver to a threat, and by detecting an intoxicated driver. It will also have a positive impact on drivers who get sleepy on a long trip, or after a long lunch, or after the two drinks that don’t make you legally intoxicated but do make you slower to react.

Hellblazer187 posted:

I don't necessarily disagree with your critiques of those two particular items. Yeah, Kerry and the Democrats are bad. We all know, there's no need to belabor the point. I still think there's a lot in that post that is still instructive about how people outside of boards like this think about politics. It's not based on an ideology.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Here's an economic analysis that came out today that's relevant to the previous discussion.

Seems to jive with the assessment some people were making that despite people saying that their personal economic situation has gotten better, that a lot of people are upset that things don't feel normal and have a sense that something is wrong because of inflation, uncertainty, and a belief that other people are probably not doing as well as they are.

People rate their own personal economic situation ~50% higher than they rate the economy overall. Prior to Covid, people rated the national economy about the same as their personal economic situation.

quote:

This has important implications, among other things, for the politics of economic policy. The economy is likely to get considerably better over the months ahead as the pandemic subsides and snarls in the supply chain get worked out. But there is no guarantee that the American public will even notice these gains. If the Biden administration wants to turn perceptions around, an objectively good economy won’t be enough; the good news will have to be sold, hard.

VitalSigns posted:

Eh a lot of the rest came off like unrepresentative anecdotes.

Some idiot was a Dean/Bush voter, that's bizarre and hilarious, but the media was similarly obsessed with Bernie/Trump voters who turned out to be basically insignificant.

Willa Rogers posted:

You should provide a link when you're quoting Krugman, although I don't blame you for not disclosing the author.

He's making the same excuses that Neil Irwin did in his own nyt piece: People don't know how well they have it! It's just like when people thought crime was getting worse! That Michigan survey said so! And those old chestnuts It's the Media's Fault for Their Negative Reporting! and It's Those drat Republicans!

His most honest moment is in his kicker, when he owns up to the propaganda effort it will take, with the help of him & Irwin & their enablers, to turn these fallacious "perceptions" around:

I expect to see more of this pieces in the liberal media and echoed here accusing voters of trusting their lying eyes instead of national averages or That Michigan Survey.

eta: To jive is to dance; to jibe is to agree to dance.

Willa Rogers posted:

But that's just all glittery farts from unicorn butts; the perfect is the enemy of the good, and most people are doing just fine economically, because Chase says savings are at a record high and lower-income workers are receiving 11 percent more on average than they were two years ago.

How are u posted:

Same. I'm not a motorhead but I read jalopnik every day to try to kind of keep an eye on that world. They can't figure it out either, best guess is honestly: toxic masculinity.

rscott posted:

I know this is an edge case, but I wonder how that weekly median income chart is generated exactly. In my case, I was forced to move to salary from hourly this summer and given a nominal increase in wages to compensate (lmao it's worth like 1 hour of OT a week). This summer I probably worked 150 hours of unpaid OT (before I said gently caress this poo poo and told my boss to reassign duties away from me to drop 15 hours a week), but in terms of hourly pay it looks like I'm making 7-8% more than I was last year or 2019, despite being on track to make like 20k less. Do they look at direct payrolls or do the extrapolate it from nominal hourly wages * 40?

Mellow Seas posted:

That's a strike against "the economy is good, actually" but it does still leave a question as to why people are interpreting the economy as being as bad it was in April 2009 when things were worse then by pretty much every measure except "if you want a thing and have the money for it, can you buy it easily?" If Democrats can address that (or if it addresses itself), it should help public perception of the economy, even if it doesn't bring us into "actually good economy" territory (which is something very few goons have actually seen in their lives).

Professor Beetus posted:

They could start by regulating the gently caress out of them, why are literally all trucks and SUVs now enormous? It's dumb as hell and I think less of every single person who drives one without explicit need.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Is your position that all of the survey data, exit polls, and studies where people say their own economic are being forged or something?

You keep responding to data with "NUH UH, THAT DOESN'T FEEL RIGHT" despite it being the results from every single survey, exit poll, and study. It is coming from the voters themselves. Did they forge 5 years of data and start pre-emptively forging the data in early 2020 because they knew they would need to do it to trick people years later?

You keep getting weirdly worked up about people posting actual data, but your last 4 posts have all been long sarcastic meltdowns responding to different people who provide data by just calling them "enablers" and yelling about "liberal media propaganda" without any actual evidence of your own.

The one piece of data you posted earlier actually contradicted your own point and you stopped responded when someone called you out on it.