• @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1001 year ago

    All I am saying, if I was locked in a room with Hitler, Bin Laden, and Reagan. I had a gun with two bullets. I would shoot Hitler and Bin Laden. Then proceed to beat Reagan to death with a giant purple dildo.

  • @AzPsycho
    link
    English
    411 year ago

    Republicans I know: “Gas is too high and it’s Bidens fault!”

    Me: “Actually, 203 Republicans voted against a bill to stop predatory gas prices and 0 voted to support it.”

    Republicans I know: “Cause it’s too expensive to enforce. We all know it’s another govt law to hold over us.”

    Fucking idiots.

    • @aidan
      link
      -21 year ago

      Not saying this bill was a price cap, but, price caps and other forms of price control don’t exactly have a good record of working instead of creating scarcity, hoarding, and aftermarket sales.

      • @uis
        link
        11 year ago

        They sometimes do those things except hoarding. It is 100% capitalism thing.

        • @aidan
          link
          11 year ago

          Grain hoarding happened in the USSR.

      • @uis
        link
        61 year ago

        It does in Europe

  • @Hazdaz
    link
    401 year ago

    Literally earlier this day I saw a bumper stick on a car in the Target parking lot which said “I miss Reagan” (or something like that).

    I wanted to vomit.

    Fuck Reagan.

  • mommykink
    link
    111 year ago

    Yeah I guess you’d have to be pretty rich to afford a mid-90s Ferrari in the 80s

  • PatFusty
    link
    fedilink
    11 year ago

    I think we detracted hard on how much affect Reagan as an administration did and its ripple effects vs a concrete proof of policy change. We can sit around jerking eachother all day about how the system became and what had bigger implications. I was just saying even if Reganomics had influence on why we got rid of glass steagall, the fact that we STILL dont have the appropriate regulation baffles me. I refuse to blame 40 year old politics and blame the current people not putting laws forward to make the changes we need. We repealed Steagall and not more than 3 years later, the fucking lawyers who pushed clinton to sign at Meryll Lynch got caught with misleading research that gave credence to the whole removal in favor of investment banking… And we STILL dont want to bring it back, the Clintons STILL stand behind the removal. The last time I heard any propositions made to bring more banking regulation was back when elizabeth warren was trying to bring some way back in 2017. I feel like im on crazy pills

    • @[email protected]OP
      link
      fedilink
      11 year ago

      Oh yeah, I get a ton of crap for refusing to accept the Democrats’ constant excuses for why they can’t get anything done.

      We need to hold both parties accountable. But most people who talk politics online are too scared to criticize Team Blue because Trump exists.

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky
    link
    fedilink
    English
    -291 year ago

    That shopping cart is way too loaded to be poor. By that year if you can afford more than a single grain of rice, you are gonna be considered filthy rich. If you have even a gram of fat on you or any muscle or energy in your body, you’ll probably be considered filthy rich.

    • Zorque
      link
      fedilink
      1031 year ago

      Because actions can have long term consequences, and fixing those consequences can take a long time. Especially when people invested in the status quo hold a lot of power.

      He’s not solely responsible, but he was a gatekeeper of a lot of shit that was let loose during his tenure.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        -70
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        I mean there is like 100 other things I can think of that are more responsible for todays economy than a president from 40 years ago. That would be like Reagan blaming Hitler for an economic slump.

        • @halcyoncmdr
          link
          English
          711 year ago

          Reagan was massive in solidifying the stagnation of employee wages we have today. It started to gain traction in the late 70s and Reagan just added fuel to that fire with his economic policies. Trickle down economics doesn’t work, it never has, it always was a bullshit phrase made to sound good because economics is complicated but the average person knows how the hell water flows. The rich don’t spend their money, they invest it and hoard it, always have. Businesses don’t increase employee wages, they buyback stocks and pay shareholders dividends while reducing employee wages.

          Combined with focusing law enforcement on the bullshit war on drugs which has led to the militarization of the US police force while ignoring underlying causes of crime entirely to instead focusing on punishment, It does nothing to actually prevent crime and solve issues and instead just exacerbates the issue while they arbitrarily deem certain drugs better than others, ignoring their own definitions because there is no actual check on it. Drug scheduling exists, but the DEA gets to decide where things get placed. They’re never going to move things around to reduce their funding as new research comes to light. Marijuana is a glaring current example. It was made illegal because of course, hippies, and it threatened both the paper (hemp) and cigarette industries… and to this day is still listed as a Schedule I drug… meaning:

          Schedule I: Drugs with no current medical use with high potential for abuse and/or addiction. Schedule II: Drugs with some medically acceptable uses, but with high potential for abuse and/or addiction. These drugs can be obtained through prescription.

          We know that is complete bullshit due to thousands of medical studies showing legitimate use, yet it is still classified as having no medical use.

          On that same track, why is crack cocaine a Schedule I drug while powder cocaine is Schedule II? They’re basically the same drug. Couldn’t possibly be due to certain types of folks (Blacks) generally using one type (crack) over the other. Drug scheduling couldn’t possibly be used to try and hide law enforcement racial discrimination in a veil of illegality. Why is Peyote listed as a schedule I drug? Couldn’t possibly be so they have a reason to arrest some Native Americans for their native customs. America would NEVER do anything terrible to the Native Americans without a good reason.

          And then there’s always his FCC abolishing the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, introduced in 1949, it required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints. That couldn’t possibly be related at all to the massive increase in dramatically party polarized and biased news and editorial programs and the widespread increase in misinformation from “news” companies in the 40 years since.

          Reagan isn’t solely responsible, but he helped lay the ground work for A LOT of bullshit we’re still dealing with today.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            -71 year ago

            why is crack cocaine a Schedule I drug while powder cocaine is Schedule II? They’re basically the same drug

            What medical use is there for freebase cocaine?

            • @halcyoncmdr
              link
              English
              101 year ago

              Good question. Ask the DEA since they determined that apparently there is a medicinal use that separates the two.

              • @[email protected]
                link
                fedilink
                -31 year ago

                Well, for freebase cocaine they determined that there isn’t one, given that it’s schedule 1. That’s why I was asking what medical use you think it does have that would warrant it being schedule 2 like cocaine hydrochloride.

                As far as I know, the freebase form legitimately doesn’t have the medical uses that the salt form does, due to the poor solubility, so the difference in scheduling with cocaine is a poor example of the DEA’s shittyness. Better to stick with good examples like their mis-scheduling of cannabis

              • @[email protected]
                link
                fedilink
                51 year ago

                That’s the medical use of cocaine hydrochloride, aka powder cocaine. The freebase has poor water solubility, and thus presumably wouldn’t be very useful as a topical anesthetic

        • HubertManne
          link
          fedilink
          381 year ago

          The precedence for not having adequate taxes for high wealth has been devastating for our busineesses. You use to have to be good to make money back then as opposed to simply having large amounts of money allowing to easily grow it. Earning an additional dollar in investment was harder and harder the more your company made which forced it to run efficently or several smaller ones could eat your lunch.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            31 year ago

            Can you elaborate or reference books or economic terms on this? Genuinely interested, never heard this before.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              171 year ago

              Honestly the biggest difference with the 90% marginal rate is that the reputation of your company used to be more valuable than cash.

              Back then to avoid the top bracket, you’d reinvest into your company and make sure it paid you and your family out for the next hundred years.

              Now you don’t have to deal with all that. Just sell out or cash out asap, and you don’t really need to deal with making sure the company is well run or maintains a reputation.

              In fact, a reputation since the 1980s has increasingly just been an untapped source of cash. Buy the company, cut every corner, and it’ll take years for the reputation to catch up to how shit the product has become.

              This has been the biggest driver of enshittification over the past fifty years.

              The current added push to enshittification is venture capital drying up. Consider Uber, a company whose entire business model was to skim money off of drivers who provided all of their own equipment. Once you’ve scaled enough to dwarf the relatively fixed cost of building the app, nearly everything they bring in should be pure profit. But they ran at a huge loss every year. Why? Because the way to make money in the 2010s wasn’t to build a better mousetrap and sell it for profit. The way to make money in the 2010s was to attract venture capital and cash out. The more you could spend, the more attractive you’d look to hedge funds and investors.

              Now with relatively easy 6% investments lying around left and right, the desperate search for investment dumps is gone. All these places that were structured for big numbers to get a higher valuation suddenly need to just be profitable off their mousetraps.

              Does that make sense?

              • @RGB3x3
                link
                211 year ago

                That article says the corporate tax was 30% to 52%, AND that the individual income tax got up to 90%. What you call myth is very much true.

                And corporate tax is much much lower now than it was then and we have rampant income consolidation to the top earners.

                Since January 1, 2018, the nominal federal corporate tax rate in the United States of America is a flat 21% following the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

                https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_tax_in_the_United_States

          • PatFusty
            link
            fedilink
            -31 year ago

            Last time I checked, Bill Clinton repealed glass steagall not Reagan. I feel like there is a bigger argument that this action has more impact than all the trickle down economics theory Reagan brought.

            • HubertManne
              link
              fedilink
              111 year ago

              much of that was defanged in the 80’s and clinton signed it when it was passed by the two majority republican legislatures. Its not like he was a big proponent he just decided not to fight that battle.

              • PatFusty
                link
                fedilink
                -1
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                I have actually never heard this argument.

                The way I understand it is glass steagalls main role was to limit bank investments. I have read that Clinton repealled because it allowed for global markets to start. Then we started getting banks overspeculating and the eventual bubble of 2008. This then prompted the fangless Dodd Frank act to go through but it didnt stop banks from acting as their own insurance anyway when silicon valley thing happened this year.

                Thats how I know it. If you have sources otherwise my infant brain would love to know.

        • @surewhynotlem
          link
          171 year ago

          Name a couple policies, and there’s a good chance a Regan policy was a step before that.

        • @SquirtleHermit
          link
          151 year ago

          I’m honestly not an expert on economic policy, but do you seriously think the effects from Hitler didn’t even last for 40 years? I mean ffs, we will be feeling the effects from that mess for the remainder of Humanity.

          • @turddle
            link
            41 year ago

            That dude out here tryna argue the whole Hitler-Nazi thing blew over after a few years. Oof

        • Zorque
          link
          fedilink
          91 year ago

          I can make up a list of things to blame instead of root causes as well, doesn’t mean those root causes don’t exist.

    • @[email protected]OP
      link
      fedilink
      25
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      He undid a lot of protections that were put in place after the Great Depression, and it’s been taking forever to fix them. Like stock buybacks.

    • Kalkaline
      link
      fedilink
      81 year ago

      Just like how we cut taxes to the rich under Trump and are now running a budget deficit.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      -12
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      He led the charge to get the US off the gold standard, which many regard as a bad move because it was. And this hasn’t been reversed or adjusted since, which is why it is linked to this particular dipshit.

      • chaogomu
        link
        fedilink
        131 year ago

        FDR pulled us off gold in 1933 after a bunch of bank failures, Nixon officially ended it in 1971.

        Neither were bad moves.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          11 year ago

          Oops, Nixon my bad. I confuse lying shitstains sometimes.

          Glad average wages in the US didn’t massively stagnate starting in the early 1970s. If they had, the connection would be hard to argue against.

          (/s)

      • PugJesus
        link
        fedilink
        61 year ago

        He led the charge to get the US off the gold standard, which many regard as a bad move because it was.

        It was neither Reagan nor a bad move, and goldbugs are living in the 19th century, drinking too much laudanum for their own good.

    • Neuromancer
      link
      fedilink
      -30
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      It isn’t. People love to blame Reagan but his policies helped fuel the growth in the 90’s.

      NAFTA is what destroyed the middle class. It’s the one black eye from an otherwise impressive run from bill Clinton.

      My dad was a gm auto worker. Lots of time off until Regan’s policies kicked in then couldn’t work enough. Lost his job when nafta kicked in and they shipped it to Mexico.

      If Regan’s policies were so bad then why haven’t the last three democrats presidents removed them ?

      Here is an article on Reganomics. https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa261.pdf

      https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa261.pdf

      • chaogomu
        link
        fedilink
        251 year ago

        Pouring concentrated sugar down someone’s throat will give them an energy boost, but there will be consequences if you do too much.

        That was Reagan’s policies. Most of the “wealth” generated only existed on paper.

        Take GE as an example. They used to have a bunch of factories and products that they made in those factories. Then the 80s hit and Jack Welch took over as CEO. He scrapped the factories and had GE start outsourcing, well, everything. He also used the GE financial department as an illegal bank.

        Anyway, the stock price went through the roof, because GE could always claim that they were making all sorts of profit with no expenses… except the truth was that they were basically just an unregulated bank with some product branding deals.

        They’ve gone bankrupt a few times now.

        That’s how most of the Reaganomics worked. Paper profits as the real wealth went into the hands of the super rich.

          • chaogomu
            link
            fedilink
            101 year ago

            The bad management was Jack Welch, and his bullshit was only possible due to Reagan loosening regulations on businesses.

            “legendary CEO” my ass. Dude was a fucking disaster.

            • Neuromancer
              link
              fedilink
              -81 year ago

              You have a cite for that as that does again every expert in the field.

              So I like to see where you’re getting this data. Since jack was brought In to save the company. It’s really strange to blame him for saving the company.

              • chaogomu
                link
                fedilink
                91 year ago

                https://www.npr.org/2022/06/01/1101505691/short-term-profits-and-long-term-consequences-did-jack-welch-break-capitalism

                Strange? Accurate.

                He took a healthy company that turned a consistent profit in to a house of cards built on lies. It blew up the stock price for a decade or two before the cracks began to show.

                Jack Welch was 100% about short term profit at the expense of long term stability.

                His stack ranking fucked over thousands at GE alone, and countless more at all the companies who followed suit. It was and still is a brain-dead policy.

                The list goes on, but it all boils down to taking an innovative company and turning it into an unregulated bank, an unregulated bank that was at the heart of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis.

                • Neuromancer
                  link
                  fedilink
                  -91 year ago

                  Did you ignore the previous article which shows the issues predate jack and jack is the one who saved the company?

                  I’m no fan of jack for many reasons but had he not been the ceo, there would have been no Ge today

      • @Wakmrow
        link
        21 year ago

        Imagine citing the cato institute in 2023