Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
GlyphGryph
Jun 23, 2013

Down came the glitches and burned us in ditches and we slept after eating our dead.

Gripweed posted:

I am having trouble understanding, at a conceptual level, how someone so opposed to fascism would support a system that allows fascists to peacefully take control of the government.

You're just repeating me at this point and confirming what I said, and you don't even seem to realize you're doing it. I'll say it again: Something does not have to be my ideal in order to be worth supporting over another thing. Please, try, fundamentally, to understand this concept, since this conversation is just you saying over and over and over in different ways that you don't get that idea, to the point where you are countering it by describing how you don't get that idea as if that is somehow a counterpoint.

Even beyond that - what system are even you proposing that doesn't allow fascists to take control of the government? I must have missed that. It's worth pointing out that "fascist takeover" isn't the only possible bad outcome, so my "ideal" system is one that at least involves a path to achieving as many good outcomes as possible, but I'm not even sure I can think of a system that doesn't allow for fascists taking over, only ones that make it more difficult.

Gripweed posted:

Ok, let's talk about this. What changes would you like to see? A return to parties picking the candidate would have prevented Trump from being the candidate in 2016, 2020, and 2024. That's three shots at fascism taken off the board. So would you support an end to party primaries? An end to presidential elections, going to a system where the Senate or something chooses the president probably would have eliminated the chance of Trump becoming president, would you support that?

Every one of of these proposals is just "reduce the number of people that need to be convinced to support the fascist for him to take over", which might offer some additional resilience (I'm not entirely convinced) but is still fundamentally the system you just said you couldn't understand someone supporting... they still allow for a fascist takeover. So why, in your mind, within your rhetorical structure you've set up here, would I support them?\

Gripweed posted:

No? I'm not talking a fascist take over, just a reduction in the level of direct citizen involvement in choosing politicians.

Your proposal was literally to put the fascists in power solidly enough that the Democrats would be forced to "wander the woods for a while". So yes, you were talking about that.

Gripweed posted:

Oh, so it's based on the idea that Trump is a uniquely dangerous and unusual candidate. More dangerous than Bush, who did the dang Iraq War. And once he dies we'll be able to go back to normal, less important elections against sensible Republicans like DeSantis and Boebert.

I think I disagree with that.

You're putting words in people's mouth and drawing weird conclusions. The argument wasn't that Trump was unique, it's that not everyone is Trump, even other bad people, which seems obviously true. And even if Trump was uniquely dangerous, that doesn't mean the others aren't dangerous or couldn't be more dangerous than Trump in other ways.

GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Dec 11, 2023

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Gripweed
Nov 8, 2018

GlyphGryph posted:

You're just repeating me at this point and confirming what I said, and you don't even seem to realize you're doing it. I'll say it again: Something does not have to be my ideal in order to be worth supporting over another thing. Please, try, fundamentally, to understand this concept, since this conversation is just you saying over and over and over in different ways that you don't get that idea, to the point where you are countering it by describing how you don't get that idea as if that is somehow a counterpoint.

Because your position makes no sense. If every election is a referendum on fascism, that's not "not ideal" that's a loving nightmare. It's not even "not fascist" it's literally just the step before fascism. It turns all politics into nothing but a holding action against making that tiny little last step into fascism.

If you don't have any other ideas, fine, but you should admit that. You should be able to admit that the system where every four years we either go fascist or not, forever, is not an acceptable system. Somebody needs to think of something new. Either that or you aren't that bothered about fascism. It has to be one or the other.

Bwee
Jul 1, 2005
Perfect, what should we do instead

Kalit
Nov 6, 2006

The great thing about the thousands of slaughtered Palestinian children is that they can't pull away when you fondle them or sniff their hair.

That's a Biden success story.

Gripweed posted:

Because your position makes no sense. If every election is a referendum on fascism, that's not "not ideal" that's a loving nightmare. It's not even "not fascist" it's literally just the step before fascism. It turns all politics into nothing but a holding action against making that tiny little last step into fascism.

If you don't have any other ideas, fine, but you should admit that. You should be able to admit that the system where every four years we either go fascist or not, forever, is not an acceptable system. Somebody needs to think of something new. Either that or you aren't that bothered about fascism. It has to be one or the other.

I think democracy is a good thing and we should strive for it. Reducing democracy makes it easier for a fascist to take and maintain control. If the majority of the population continues to vote to reduce democracy and embrace fascism forever, then that's the will of the people. If that occurs, hopefully there will be a future point where a reversion to more democracy is possible if there's massive regret among the populace.

My name is Kalit, thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Kalit fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Dec 11, 2023

Eric Cantonese
Dec 21, 2004

You should hear my accent.
If there is fascism, the conversion/reversion to democracy usually requires violence.

Maybe having to veer between these different ways of running things is an unavoidable consequence of human nature, but Iwould really prefer just to stay in some order where government is directly accountable to its people without the need for guns or bloodshed.

mawarannahr
May 21, 2019

Misunderstood posted:

Some extremely interesting stuff from the New York Times today that ties into the discussion of algorithmic pricing from last week. It talks about some of the ways companies have kept prices up and how some of those strategies might be starting to falter. This is the mechanism that could lead to the food deflation that some business leaders and economists are anticipating over the coming months.

This is from the business section so it's kind of framed as "bad news for business!" but it seems like better news than not to me. It's possible that the pullback in overspending could lead to an economic slowdown, which could be okay, provided it wasn't too severe, considering economic growth is currently very strong.

e: lol that the business section is written like a sports column, with a bunch of one sentence paragraphs. I guess the mean attention span isn't so hot in the finance world these days.

e2: Oh, as we were talking about this yesterday. I wanted to pull out this quote.

Was it "underpriced," in the market sense, or were Pepsico and Coca Cola underutilizing their price fixing scam that makes them never attempt to undercut each other, despite the huge margins that make it a completely viability strategy?

Interesting article. Here's the link, I think you missed it: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/business/economy/profit-margins-inflation.html

Combed Thunderclap
Jan 4, 2011



Gripweed posted:

I'm not talking about the fascists taking over, just reducing the level of democracy in America.

We live in a country where the Electoral College already ensures the person with the most votes doesn’t win elections, which is how the fascists took over last time.

Before you go any further with this argument, would you mind showing us exactly how even less democracy than our current rather non-democratic system will also equal less fascism rather than just redistributing it out of the hands of the people (who are, again, consistently majority non-fascist) and into…what anti-fascist force, exactly?

Main Paineframe
Oct 27, 2010

Misunderstood posted:

e2: Oh, as we were talking about this yesterday. I wanted to pull out this quote.

Was it "underpriced," in the market sense, or were Pepsico and Coca Cola underutilizing their price fixing scam that makes them never attempt to undercut each other, despite the huge margins that make it a completely viability strategy?

No amount of price fixing or collusion can stop people from saying "you know what, a soda is just too expensive, I'll have a lemonade instead". If they can raise the price without anyone saying that, then the soda was underpriced.

That's the fundamental limit in raising prices on non-essential goods. No matter what kinds of excuses or tactics companies use to increase prices, they all come up against the intractable barrier of "people can just buy less of that thing, or even none of it".

Gripweed posted:

If they just ignored all the current discussion of people not voting for Biden because of the genocide, and all post election surveys and polling, sure, they could come to that conclusion. They would have to be intentionally disingenuous to do so but yeah I wouldn't put it past them.

But of people who do think Palestinians are human go ahead and vote for Biden anyway, then the obvious and inarguable conclusion is that the Palestinians don't matter at all and Biden can continue facilitating their genocide without fear of repercussion.

If post-election surveys and polling show that Biden's support for Israel's war in Gaza is a major reason why people aren't voting for him, then they could come to that conclusion. But for the most part, pre-election polling isn't showing that. It's showing that people are mad about crime, immigration, and the economy.

Gripweed posted:

Because your position makes no sense. If every election is a referendum on fascism, that's not "not ideal" that's a loving nightmare. It's not even "not fascist" it's literally just the step before fascism. It turns all politics into nothing but a holding action against making that tiny little last step into fascism.

If you don't have any other ideas, fine, but you should admit that. You should be able to admit that the system where every four years we either go fascist or not, forever, is not an acceptable system. Somebody needs to think of something new. Either that or you aren't that bothered about fascism. It has to be one or the other.

The "something new" is to convince Americans to stop loving fascism. The system is window dressing over the fact that a substantial portion of the American populace wants fascism. Changing the system is just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

GlyphGryph
Jun 23, 2013

Down came the glitches and burned us in ditches and we slept after eating our dead.

Gripweed posted:

Because your position makes no sense.

It makes perfect sense if you understand that "Something does not have to be my ideal in order to be worth supporting over another thing", which, again, you do not. You also don't seem to understand the meaning of the words you are using, based on the rest of this post, it makes more sense if you use words correctly.

quote:

If every election is a referendum on fascism, that's not "not ideal" that's a loving nightmare.

Do you not understand what "not ideal" means? Nightmares are practically by definition not ideal. Also, we are not in a situation where every election is a referendum on fascism. We have too many elections right now where that is unfortunately the case, but it's not all of them by any means. Letting the fascists win in those elections, as you propose, would not somehow make things less nightmarish, it would make them moreso.

quote:

It's not even "not fascist" it's literally just the step before fascism.

The step before fascism is by definition not fascism. That's what makes it the step before fascism. Otherwise it would be fascism.

quote:

It turns all politics into nothing but a holding action against making that tiny little last step into fascism.

How does it do that? Because that's not the situation we are in right now. There are many other kinds of politics happening at every moment. Even if fascism wins, there would still be non-fascist politics happening, just in an even less ideal structure and system and environment. Also, the step clearly isn't as tiny as you believe, or as singular, since in 2016 we lost the election, and it still wasn't sufficient to push us over the edge, only much closer.

quote:

If you don't have any other ideas, fine, but you should admit that. You should be able to admit that the system where every four years we either go fascist or not, forever, is not an acceptable system. Somebody needs to think of something new. Either that or you aren't that bothered about fascism. It has to be one or the other.

I do have other ideas, as I've already mentioned. I have worked to get some of those ideas implemented, and tried to argue and build public support for some of the others. Turning ideas into reality is long, hard, fraught work with no guarantee of success. Making any of those ideas reality requires us, in the meantime, to continue "not going fascist". That's a really important fundamental component of all of them.

A system where we decide every four years whether or not to go fascist is more acceptable than one where we have gone fascist. Why don't you seem to understand this? Defeating fascism is not my only goal, but it is a goal and most of my other goals rely on it. Why don't you seem to understand that either?

I'm not even sure what you think my position is, but I get the feeling at this point it's not remotely similar to the position I actually hold, even though I have said what my position is over and over again.

Now, please, answer my questions:

What fascism-proof system are you proposing as the alternative i should be supporting instead, and how does letting the fascists take over our current system (your existing proposal) get us to that system? How does not voting for Joe Biden for President make that system happen? Why should I believe pursuing that system is more likely to succeed than alternative approaches such as "convincing people fascism is bad actually and they shouldn't vote for it" when that is still a possibility?

GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Dec 11, 2023

Bar Ran Dun
Jan 22, 2006




Main Paineframe posted:

The "something new" is to convince Americans to stop loving fascism. The system is window dressing over the fact that a substantial portion of the American populace wants fascism. Changing the system is just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

This is the root of it. A class good analysis will reach this conclusion.

Staluigi
Jun 22, 2021

Gripweed posted:

If you believe that Donald Trump is a fascist who will kill millions of Americans and dismantle democracy, why do you think that last part is a bad thing? Why are you committed to a system of government that gives Donald Trump a very good shot at enacting fascism in America every four years? Shouldn't' you be opposed to that system? Why do you think preserving democracy is a good goal when all democracy does is put America at risk of fascism?

quote:

If you don't have any other ideas, fine, but you should admit that. You should be able to admit that the system where every four years we either go fascist or not, forever, is not an acceptable system. Somebody needs to think of something new. Either that or you aren't that bothered about fascism. It has to be one or the other.

So I'm hearing you out here at the razor's edge of how I'm even supposed to take this at face value as a good faith argument. Apparently, democracy only does one thing: equip fascism. Only that one thing. Literally as you say, "all democracy does is put America at risk of fascism" ... It satisfies no other purpose, it is not associable with any kind of improvement in material conditions, freedoms, quality of life, stability, or human rights.

The answer, therefore, if we are to accept your logic, is clear: to defeat fascism, we must defeat democracy!

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

I believe in liberal democracy.

Politics is never solved, you are always going to have to participate in some way. Even if all your ideological allies sweep every office, you're still going to have to work to keep them there. Every election is the most important election of your life. This is true even in lower stakes, much more so when you have a candidate on the other side like Trump, who is committed to authoritarianism.

zoux fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Dec 11, 2023

WarpedLichen
Aug 14, 2008


Gripweed posted:

Because your position makes no sense. If every election is a referendum on fascism, that's not "not ideal" that's a loving nightmare. It's not even "not fascist" it's literally just the step before fascism. It turns all politics into nothing but a holding action against making that tiny little last step into fascism.

If you don't have any other ideas, fine, but you should admit that. You should be able to admit that the system where every four years we either go fascist or not, forever, is not an acceptable system. Somebody needs to think of something new. Either that or you aren't that bothered about fascism. It has to be one or the other.

What you're saying sounds like the only way to not turn fascist is to be fascist already, which is an incredibly bad take if you actually don't like fascism.

Ultimately, if people are to have a say in government, there will be a risk that people want fascism. The only alternative is to make people who like fascists not able to vote, and any effort at disenfranchisement is ultimately saying fascism but for the guy I like. There is no perfect system for you specifically unless everybody else wants the things you want.

Leon Trotsky 2012
Aug 27, 2009

YOU CAN TRUST ME!*


*Israeli Government-affiliated poster
The Associated Press has an interesting article about the reasons that personal/overall impressions of the economy have diverged for the first time in history.

They essentially come to the same conclusion as everyone else: There's lots of things it could be and probably isn't any one specific thing, but nobody can really prove anything for sure. :shrug:

Even though the overall conclusion is kind of uninteresting, they do talk to a lot of economists, average people, political figures, and data scientists who break down each and every potential reason in a clear and detailed way.

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1734241880848621817

quote:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden goes into next year’s election with a vexing challenge: Just as the U.S. economy is getting stronger, people are still feeling horrible about it.

Pollsters and economists say there has never been as wide a gap between the underlying health of the economy and public perception. The divergence could be a decisive factor in whether the Democrat secures a second term next year. Republicans are seizing on the dissatisfaction to skewer Biden, while the White House is finding less success as it tries to highlight economic progress.

“Things are getting better and people think things are going to get worse — and that’s the most dangerous piece of this,”
said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who has worked with Biden. Lake said voters no longer want to just see inflation rates fall — rather, they want an outright decline in prices, something that last happened on a large scale during the Great Depression.

“Honestly, I’m kind of mystified by it,” she said.

By many measures, the U.S. economy is rock solid. Friday’s employment report showed that employers added 199,000 jobs in November and the unemployment rate dropped to 3.7%. Inflation has plummeted in little over a year from a troubling 9.1% to 3.2% without causing a recession — a phenomenon that some once skeptical economists have dubbed “immaculate.”

Yet people remain dejected about the economy, according to the University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment. The preliminary December figures issued Friday showed a jump in sentiment as people seem to recognize that inflation is cooling. But the index is still slightly below its July level.

In a possible warning sign for Biden, people surveyed for the index brought up the 2024 election. Sentiment rose dramatically more among Republicans than Democrats, potentially suggesting that GOP voters became more optimistic about winning back the White House.

“Consumers have been feeling broadly uneasy about the economy since the pandemic, and they are still coming to grips with the notion that we are not returning to the pre-pandemic ‘normal,’” Joanne Hsu, director and chief economist of the survey, said of the overall trend in recent months.

Jared Bernstein, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, stressed that a strong underlying economy is “absolutely necessary” to eventually lifting consumer sentiment. His argument is that as the economy continues to improve, more people will recognize the benefits and sentiment will improve.

“We’ve got to keep fighting to lower costs and build on the progress that we’ve made,” Bernstein said. “We just need more time to get these gains to working Americans — that’s our plan.”

The White House has made three major shifts in its messaging in hopes of building up confidence in Biden’s economic leadership. The president this summer began to pepper his speeches with the term “Bidenomics” to describe his policies, only to have Republicans latch onto the word as a point of attack.

White House officials have pointed out specific items for which prices have fallen outright. They noted lower prices for turkeys during Thanksgiving as well as for eggs. Biden repeatedly emphasizes that he lowered insulin costs for Medicare participants, while other officials discuss how gasoline prices have dropped from their peak.

Second, Biden recently started to blame inflation on corporations that hiked prices when they saw an opportunity to improve their profits, bringing more prominence to an argument first used when gasoline prices spiked. The president’s argument is suspicious to many economists, yet the intended message to voters is that Biden is fighting for them against those he blames for fueling inflation.

“Let me be clear: Any corporation that is not passing these savings on to the consumers needs to stop their price gouging,” Biden said recently in Pueblo, Colorado. “The American people are tired of being played for suckers.”


And Biden is now going after the track record of former President Donald Trump, the current GOP front-runner. Biden’s campaign sent out a statement after Friday’s employment report that said, “ Despite his claims of being a jobs president, Donald Trump had the worst jobs record since the Great Depression, losing nearly three million jobs.”

The Republican counter to Biden has been to dismiss the positive economic data and focus on how voters are feeling. As the annual inflation rate has fallen, GOP messaging has focused instead on multi-year increases in consumer prices without necessarily factoring in wage gains. And Republican lawmakers have argued that people should trust their gut on the economy instead of the statistics cited by Biden.

“Joe Biden’s message to them is just this: He says don’t believe your lying eyes,” Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, said in a recent floor speech.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, put the blame solely on Biden for inflation and people feeling downtrodden.


“The challenge is rising cost of living,” said Youngkin, speaking at a Monday event in Washington hosted by Bloomberg News. “And it’s just clear over the course of now the last three years of the Biden economy we have seen inflation really run away from a lot of folks and 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.”

Biden’s speeches over the past two years have done little to improve his anemic polling on the economy. Administration officials had once assumed that better economic numbers would overcome any doubts among voters, only to find that the negativity stayed even as the U.S. economy became likely to avoid a recession once forecasted by economists.

Claudia Sahm, a former Federal Reserve economist, has been surprised by the anger generated online when she has noted the signs of a strong economy.

A typical U.S. household is better off than it was in 2020. Inequality has lessened somewhat in recent years as wage growth has favored poorer workers. Yet people still seem rattled and disconnected by the shock of the pandemic, the arrival of government aid and the inflation that followed as hiring improved.

“People have really been jerked around,” Sahm said. “Things have been turned on and off. Everything has moved fast. It’s been disruptive and confusing. We’re just tired.”

There is no solitary cause for this gap between the major data and public feeling. But the experts trying to make sense of things have multiple theories about what’s going on. Besides the pandemic’s impact, it’s possible that social media has distorted how people feel about the economy as they watch the posh lifestyles of influencers. Many people also judge the economy based on their own political beliefs, rather than the underlying numbers.

It could simply be that people need time to adjust after a period of rising inflation. As a result, there’s a lag before a slowing rate of inflation boosts how consumers feel, according to a recent analysis by economists Ryan Cummings and Neale Mahoney.

“Sentiment is still being weighed down by the high inflation we had last year,” Cummings said. “As that recedes further into the rearview mirror, its effects are likely to diminish.”

Another possibility is that the loss of pandemic aid from the government left people materially poorer. Millions of households got checks from the government and an expanded child tax credit deposited directly into their accounts. Republicans blamed this funding for feeding inflation, but the money also initially helped to shelter people from the pain of rising prices.

Adjusting for government transfers and taxes, the average annual income for someone in the lower half of earners was $34,800 when Biden took office, according to an analysis provided by Gabriel Zucman, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.

That average fell to $26,100 by March 2023 in a sign that wage growth could not make up for the loss of government aid.


Samuel Rines, an investment strategist at Corbu, found that companies including Pepsi, Kraft-Heinz, Procter & Gamble and Kimberly-Clark latched onto the higher food and energy prices after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine to boost their own products’ prices and increase profits.

Earnings reports suggest that consumers started to tire of some companies’ double-digit price increases this summer, prompting those companies to indicate that future prices increases will be closer to the historic average of 2%.

Biden can reasonably argue that companies took advantage of the war in Ukraine and the pandemic to raise their prices, Rines said. But the increases happened 12 to 18 months ago and Biden’s current argument doesn’t apply to what businesses are doing now.

Rines said of the president’s message on price gouging: “It’s pretty much 18 months too late.”

Misunderstood
Jan 19, 2023

by Fluffdaddy
ah yeah, thanks, I did paste the whole text but it’s good to have a link.

Kavros
May 18, 2011

sleep sleep sleep
fly fly post post
sleep sleep sleep
price deflation is usually chained directly to extremely weird, troubling financial situations, but it's weird and troubling enough now that i'm ambivalent about any way it could supposedly be worse than to have cost of living concerns finally start going down.

Everything's sticker shock these days, you go on one bowling lanes outing with the kids, and maybe get some pizza and icecream. Oh oops that was 200 bucks. Lets take everyone to the movies! Oh no, 275 bucks. Gotta get groceries. Oof, 6.023 X 1023 bucks

haveblue
Aug 15, 2005



Toilet Rascal

Kavros posted:

Gotta get groceries. Oof, 6.023 X 1023 bucks

Try going to Trader Joe's instead of Trader Avogadro's

Kavros
May 18, 2011

sleep sleep sleep
fly fly post post
sleep sleep sleep
Avogadro toast? In THIS economy?

Killer robot
Sep 6, 2010

I was having the most wonderful dream. I think you were in it!
Pillbug

mobby_6kl posted:

I don't think Bush promise to exterminate the vermin an purge the marxists and communists on day 1.

Anyway there's a new genre of "this is bad for Biden"

https://jasher.substack.com/p/crime-in-2023-murder-plummeted-violent

Crime dropped for 20 years straight and people were by and large sure the opposite is happening, so it's really an old hit returning to the charts.

Leon Trotsky 2012
Aug 27, 2009

YOU CAN TRUST ME!*


*Israeli Government-affiliated poster

mobby_6kl posted:

I don't think Bush promise to exterminate the vermin an purge the marxists and communists on day 1.

Anyway there's a new genre of "this is bad for Biden"

https://jasher.substack.com/p/crime-in-2023-murder-plummeted-violent

To be fair, according to his own data, crime experienced a large drop in 2023 but it was still higher than the average for the last 25 years because it was coming off of the huge surge in 2020 through 2022.

So the question of "Is crime higher than it used to be?" is technically "Yes," if people are thinking "used to be" means "pre-2020."

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

WaPo WH Correspondent Jeff Stein is noticing some trends:

https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1734251924243837124

Interesting article in NYT about the rise in pedestrian fatalities. It argues that larger helltrucks aren't actually behind most of the increase

quote:

Beyond just display screens, new vehicles have also changed to be wider, longer, taller and heavier. Not only do heavier vehicles hit pedestrians with more force, but they also often have worse brake times, meaning a driver who notices a pedestrian at the last second may strike that person at higher speeds. Studies have also indicated that vehicles with taller hoods are more likely to kill if they hit pedestrians; they strike people closer to the head or torso, instead of the legs.

While researchers have pointed toward vehicle size as a factor explaining America’s high overall rate of pedestrian fatalities, several said they were skeptical that it explains much of the increase since 2009. That’s because American cars were relatively large even before 2009, and the rate at which new cars replace existing ones is slow.

“In explaining the big run-up in pedestrian deaths, it’s not actually a huge portion,” said Justin Tyndall, an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization. His research estimates that the change in vehicle type and weight since 2009 is responsible for less than 100 additional deaths per year. By comparison, around 3,300 more pedestrians died in 2021 than in 2009.

Similarly, ownership of smaller vehicles (like sedans, coupes and station wagons) is down since 2009. But total pedestrian deaths from these same cars are up more than 70 percent, suggesting the bulk of the problem cannot be attributed to increased car size alone.

They blame: darkness, people using their cellphones, and rising populations in southern states. One interesting thing they argue is that as fewer vehicles in the US have manual transmissions, it gives more people more time to gently caress around with their phones and other distractions rather than on shifting.

Well, the sun always sets every day, so why the increase?


Again, American only phenomenon. 3 in 4 American pedestrian deaths happen at night, in comparable countries, they say more pedestrians die during the day.



But sure enough, right around sunset, you see a spike in pedestrian deaths.

The article doesn't reach any conclusions, really, so it's up to the reader as to how compelling they find the various arguments. Seems to me like it's a confluence of all these things.

quote:

Individually, any of these theories seems unsatisfying. But put together, it’s clear that there’s been a particularly American mix of technological and social changes over the past decade and a half. And they have all come on top of a road system and an ingrained culture that prioritizes speed over safety. Whatever has happened over this time has reversed years of progress on daytime pedestrian fatalities, too, leading to a modest increase in deaths. Nighttime, however, has the potential to amplify so many of these new risks.

zoux fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Dec 11, 2023

the_steve
Nov 9, 2005

We're always hiring!

Misunderstood posted:

That has often not been the choice. Mitt Romney is not a fascist. Bob Dole was not a fascist. You could argue George W. Bush was a fascist, but it would be a stretch, and in any case he certainly never campaigned as one. To apply the dichotomy of "one candidate is always fascist!" to the past and to carry it forward into the future are both extreme forms of recency bias.

I was only in 6th grade during Dole's run, but claiming Romney and Dubya weren't fascist is some revisionist poo poo right there.

Dubya was constantly being called Hitler 2.0 and a wannabe dictator and the worst thing since unsliced bread.

And Romney, maybe throwing around the F word wasn't as in vogue with him, but he was still on the hook for all the same beats as Republicans nowadays. "He wants to institute theocratic rule" , he wants to revoke women's rights, he wants to put LGBT people into camps and fund conversion therapy.
He was in favor of all the same poo poo that Trumpists are wanting now.

The only notable difference is between Romney/Dubya and Trump is that the formers didn't make uncouth tweets like the latter does, but there was absolutely just as much :supaburn: about how they were a direct threat to the very concept of freedom and were going to outlaw apple pie and mandate all newborn babies be baptized.

Leon Trotsky 2012
Aug 27, 2009

YOU CAN TRUST ME!*


*Israeli Government-affiliated poster
The previously unnamed single member of the House that was preventing the bipartisan UFO disclosure amendment from getting a vote was revealed to be House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner.

He refused to bring any bill funding the government out of committee with the original language included.

As far as we know, he was the only one who was actively fighting the amendment. Some other Republicans likely would have voted against it, but none of them seemed to care enough to fight it except him.

Most of the original amendment made it into the final bill, but they removed a provision that would have required that all UFO documents be presumed to be public and released immediately unless the military or White House objected. If they did object, they would automatically be unclassified in 25 years.

:tinfoil:

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1733933361800925559

small butter
Oct 8, 2011

Bodyholes posted:

My girlfriend is trans and we're trying to find another country because I do think Trump's reelection is imminent. All the signs are there. I'm not interested in "finding out", unlike the death cult thread.

If it makes you feel any better, there's actually no good reason to think that Trump's election is "imminent," assured, or even likely. In fact, all the signs that are actually predictive of an election win (not polls one year out, which only start to get mildly predictive at the 200-day mark) point to Biden winning.

This is based on consistent Democratic overperformance in special elections and them turning the Red Wave into a trickle, as well as... well, Trump running and facing a thousand felony charges while doing so. The election season didn't even start yet. You'll have a loathed criminal who was recently found guilty of sexual abuse running against an old guy.

Biden's approval numbers don't help, but that's only if the other guy is doing better in this comparison.

As for Palestine, Republicans got smoked in November after a month of conflict there. I doubt this moves the needle too much.

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

the_steve posted:

I was only in 6th grade during Dole's run, but claiming Romney and Dubya weren't fascist is some revisionist poo poo right there.

Dubya was constantly being called Hitler 2.0 and a wannabe dictator and the worst thing since unsliced bread.

And Romney, maybe throwing around the F word wasn't as in vogue with him, but he was still on the hook for all the same beats as Republicans nowadays. "He wants to institute theocratic rule" , he wants to revoke women's rights, he wants to put LGBT people into camps and fund conversion therapy.
He was in favor of all the same poo poo that Trumpists are wanting now.

The only notable difference is between Romney/Dubya and Trump is that the formers didn't make uncouth tweets like the latter does, but there was absolutely just as much :supaburn: about how they were a direct threat to the very concept of freedom and were going to outlaw apple pie and mandate all newborn babies be baptized.

I was in college for W's first run and the race wasn't about how Bush was a fascist, it was about how there was so little difference between him and his opponent. I mean you've always had counterculture types that call everyone a fascist but mainstream discussion about if this guy or that guy is a literal fascist didn't start until Trump, as I recall it.

tecnocrat
Oct 5, 2003
Struggling to keep his sanity.



zoux posted:


The article doesn't reach any conclusions, really, so it's up to the reader as to how compelling they find the various arguments. Seems to me like it's a confluence of all these things.

I wonder if an aging population of drivers is contributing? I know as this dead comedy forum gets older, we have to recognize that our eyesight and reaction times aren't what they used to be.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
There have always been arguments that Republicans were fascist to some degree or other.

Nobody ever thought either Bush would refuse to leave office if he lost the election, though. Nobody. It was inconceivable.

ghost of kissinger
Oct 31, 2023

the_steve posted:

I was only in 6th grade during Dole's run, but claiming Romney and Dubya weren't fascist is some revisionist poo poo right there.

Dubya was constantly being called Hitler 2.0 and a wannabe dictator and the worst thing since unsliced bread.

And Romney, maybe throwing around the F word wasn't as in vogue with him, but he was still on the hook for all the same beats as Republicans nowadays. "He wants to institute theocratic rule" , he wants to revoke women's rights, he wants to put LGBT people into camps and fund conversion therapy.
He was in favor of all the same poo poo that Trumpists are wanting now.

The only notable difference is between Romney/Dubya and Trump is that the formers didn't make uncouth tweets like the latter does, but there was absolutely just as much :supaburn: about how they were a direct threat to the very concept of freedom and were going to outlaw apple pie and mandate all newborn babies be baptized.

George Bush isn't a fascist because he was elected using our democratic process.

Killer robot
Sep 6, 2010

I was having the most wonderful dream. I think you were in it!
Pillbug

FLIPADELPHIA posted:

The Bush from Bush v. Gore? Given the very distinct possibility that the 2004 and 2006 elections were also compromised by Republicans, I'm not so sure that Trump represents such a major break with honoring elections.

The Bush camp made a slimy grab because a national election was a coin toss with a raw count that favored Republicans, and it worked because their side had the courts after controlling the Executive (in landslide elections) for most of the previous 30 years. Somehow this turned into a folk history where people will insist that SCOTUS was gonna crown Bush no matter how the election went, with pages of blow-by-blow and speculation that mysteriously always leaves out the "close initial count favoring Bush" that made it all possible. Usually because it's in service of an argument that hesitance or disunity on the left couldn't possibly be a contributing factor to the Bush presidency . I suspect there's probably a big correlation between those on the left who really internalized that omission and those who show such learned helplessness about opposing fascists today.

Leon Trotsky 2012
Aug 27, 2009

YOU CAN TRUST ME!*


*Israeli Government-affiliated poster

the_steve posted:

I was only in 6th grade during Dole's run, but claiming Romney and Dubya weren't fascist is some revisionist poo poo right there.

Dubya was constantly being called Hitler 2.0 and a wannabe dictator and the worst thing since unsliced bread.

And Romney, maybe throwing around the F word wasn't as in vogue with him, but he was still on the hook for all the same beats as Republicans nowadays. "He wants to institute theocratic rule" , he wants to revoke women's rights, he wants to put LGBT people into camps and fund conversion therapy.
He was in favor of all the same poo poo that Trumpists are wanting now.

The only notable difference is between Romney/Dubya and Trump is that the formers didn't make uncouth tweets like the latter does, but there was absolutely just as much :supaburn: about how they were a direct threat to the very concept of freedom and were going to outlaw apple pie and mandate all newborn babies be baptized.

I don't think you are remembering 2000 or 2012 correctly here. Nobody seriously believed that Mitt Romney was going to implement a Mormon theocracy if he was elected President - outside of some crazy evangelicals. The big hits against him were all about his tax plan, his work in private equity, and wanting to dismantle Obamacare and Medicare. The extreme version of the narrative against him wasn't that he was Hitler 2.0, it was that he was a robot corporate overlord who wanted to chop up and sell off the government like he did in private industry and wants to raise taxes on working people to pay for corporate tax cuts.

2000 was literally the opposite of Hitler 2.0. The whole narrative was that it was the most boring election ever and the result didn't matter because the two candidates were basically the same, the Soviet Union was defeated, the economy was doing its own thing, and the country was basically on autopilot.

Misunderstood
Jan 19, 2023

by Fluffdaddy

Main Paineframe posted:

No amount of price fixing or collusion can stop people from saying "you know what, a soda is just too expensive, I'll have a lemonade instead". If they can raise the price without anyone saying that, then the soda was underpriced.
Yes and no... Coke and Pepsi are able to price their products as they do because they don't compete with each other on price and their competitors, for whatever reason, make absolute garbage. I could get a twelve pack for three bucks at Aldi, but I won't, because I'd rather just drink water than soda that tastes bad.

In a truly free market things are priced based on supply and demand - in turning themselves into a duopoly, Pepsi and Coke have artificially restricted the supply side of that equation.

It's not surprising to me that soda is inelastic, as somebody who has not really changed his usage of it as the price has increased (and to cite another classic inelastic good, I didn't too much with cigarettes either.) It's just that inelasticity doesn't have to mean a price set to the maximum somebody will pay if there is competition in the market.

Misunderstood fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Dec 11, 2023

Inglonias
Mar 7, 2013

I WILL PUT THIS FLAG ON FREAKING EVERYTHING BECAUSE IT IS SYMBOLIC AS HELL SOMEHOW

It looks like the Goons aren't the only ones confused about how bad things are. The Washington Post had two opinion pieces less than a week apart from each other that say things that are, frankly, mutually exclusive.

A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending. By Robert Kagan

quote:

Americans might take to the streets. In fact, it is likely that many people will engage in protests against the new regime, perhaps even before it has had a chance to prove itself deserving of them. But then what? Even in his first term, Trump and his advisers on more than one occasion discussed invoking the Insurrection Act. No less a defender of American democracy than George H.W. Bush invoked the act to deal with the Los Angeles riots in 1992. It is hard to imagine Trump not invoking it should “the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs” take to the streets. One suspects he will relish the opportunity.

This directly contrasts with what the next opinion piece states.

Enough with all the fatalism about a Trump dictatorship. By Greg Sargent

quote:

This might be easy to overlook amid Trump’s daily degradations, but the Trump years offer at least some cause for optimism. When Trump executed his 2017 ban on many Muslims entering the country, crowds descended on airports in a surprising outpouring of support. A year later, historians Lara Putnam and Theda Skocpol documented an unexpected groundswell of painstaking political organizing among formerly apathetic middle-aged women to defend democracy, fueling Democrats’ 2018 midterm blowout.

The subject matter is too serious for me to see this as funny, but it's definitely interesting to read these two articles side-by-side. Opinion pieces are wild, y'all.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

Misunderstood posted:

Yes and no... Coke and Pepsi are able to price their products as they do because they don't compete with each other on price and their competitors, for whatever reason, make absolute garbage.

This is slander against the Pepper Nation and the Doctor will not stand for it

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/28/business/dr-pepper-history/index.html

Misunderstood
Jan 19, 2023

by Fluffdaddy
e: double post

Misunderstood
Jan 19, 2023

by Fluffdaddy

Inglonias posted:

It looks like the Goons aren't the only ones confused about how bad things are. The Washington Post had two opinion pieces less than a week apart from each other that say things that are, frankly, mutually exclusive.
It's common for newspapers to post op-eds that are in conflict with each other. It's only editorials that are supposed to represent a consistent viewpoint.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

This is slander against the Pepper Nation and the Doctor will not stand for it
I am indeed very sorry to the good doctor. I was referring mostly to colas and especially diet colas. But your point is well taken.

Leon Trotsky 2012
Aug 27, 2009

YOU CAN TRUST ME!*


*Israeli Government-affiliated poster

Inglonias posted:

It looks like the Goons aren't the only ones confused about how bad things are. The Washington Post had two opinion pieces less than a week apart from each other that say things that are, frankly, mutually exclusive.

A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending. By Robert Kagan

This directly contrasts with what the next opinion piece states.

Enough with all the fatalism about a Trump dictatorship. By Greg Sargent

The subject matter is too serious for me to see this as funny, but it's definitely interesting to read these two articles side-by-side. Opinion pieces are wild, y'all.

People with different opinions are published in Op-Ed sections all the time. An Op-Ed isn't an endorsement of the argument, so the WaPo isn't "arguing" two different things.

Both articles also basically argue the same thing if you read through them.

They both say that Trump will try undemocratic or autocratic things if he gets a second term. One of them just thinks that people will go along with it and the other says that people can resist it to prevent some of his goals. They aren't really contradictory.

Staluigi
Jun 22, 2021

if i have my dumbshit pundits right, robert kagan wrote articles at The Weekly Standard screeching about how saddam's WMD threat to the US was increasingly inevitable. right around the corner. that we had to stop denying the reality of it

Gumball Gumption
Jan 7, 2012

Kagan is dumb even by neocon standards.

I AM GRANDO
Aug 20, 2006

Inglonias posted:

It looks like the Goons aren't the only ones confused about how bad things are. The Washington Post had two opinion pieces less than a week apart from each other that say things that are, frankly, mutually exclusive.

A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending. By Robert Kagan

This directly contrasts with what the next opinion piece states.

Enough with all the fatalism about a Trump dictatorship. By Greg Sargent

The subject matter is too serious for me to see this as funny, but it's definitely interesting to read these two articles side-by-side. Opinion pieces are wild, y'all.

“Look, fascists ain’t so bad really, ‘cause sometimes some people try to fight ‘em for a while if total power ain’t consolidated immediately.”

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Misunderstood
Jan 19, 2023

by Fluffdaddy

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

The Associated Press has an interesting article about the reasons that personal/overall impressions of the economy have diverged for the first time in history.

They essentially come to the same conclusion as everyone else: There's lots of things it could be and probably isn't any one specific thing, but nobody can really prove anything for sure. :shrug:
For what it's worth, I remain fairly convinced that the underlying health of the economy matters more electorally than what people say when pollsters ask them "what do you think about the economy?" It's hard to test this hypothesis because the disconnect of the last two years is unprecedented - but we can look at 2022, when the Democrats' performance certainly didn't seem like something you would get in the disastrous economy voters claimed they were experiencing.

You may also look at 2006 for the opposite/inverse phenomenon... voter opinion about the economy was still very high, but there were a lot of extremely troubling indicators, and the incumbent party got absolutely wrecked. The economy was not part of the narrative of why the 2006 blue wave happened, but maybe, in aggregate, people sensed the rot.

And both public sentiment and underlying conditions were significantly worse a year ago than they are now (and I think it's reasonable to expect that trend to continue, barring any outside shocks.)

zoux posted:

WaPo WH Correspondent Jeff Stein is noticing some trends:

https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1734251924243837124
This is what step one of economic sentiment turning around looks like. Six months ago it was only the odd duck like LT who was talking about "actually the economy is pretty all right;" now it's becoming a very common position.

Kavros posted:

Avogadro toast?
lol

Misunderstood fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Dec 11, 2023

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply