Politicians just use those accusations as cover for conducting fraud or enabling the conditions that they inherently benefit from. There's no reason to not use paper, ID checks, and same-day accounting.
> There's no reason to not use paper, ID checks, and same-day accounting.
Sure there is. ID checks make it impossible for people who don't have government-issued ID to vote, which is a lot of people; and furthermore ID checks don't actually improve election security. Same-day counting is impossible if you are going to count all mail-in votes that were sent before the deadline.
To be clear, I'm not saying that politicians aren't agitating for conditions that benefit them. That's there job. But I also believe in supporting access to voting and fair elections, and at least some of the politicians' arguments help achieve those ends.
Yeah, I forgot voter ID. All democratic countries mandate voter ID except the US and another couple(?). Yeah, as if only the US has the "voter access" problem
There are many reasons not to do those things, "lalala not listening" isn't an excuse.
It's usually very simple, too. For voting ID: ID isn't evenly distributed, and that's not an opinion, that's a fact.
So if you require ID, then obviously you will suppress some demographics more than others. That creates a bias. Again, not opinion.
This can be solved. You will notice none of the people championing voter ID make even a thinly-veiled attempt to solve it. Instead they say stupid things like "oh wow so black people can't get ID now? Uh, buddy, I think YOU'RE the racist one!"
> Nobody is cheering for inflation to get worse, they are celebrating it being held down to 2.7% after higher inflation a few years ago.
Trump is actively fighting the federal reserve to drop the interest rate to 0%. Members of his team regularly do interviews where they say "it's going to get worse before it gets better". Inflation is being held down despite this administration's best efforts.
> The U.S. is a net exporter of oil and food and self-sufficent for majority of its mineral needs as well.
And has been for a while. But the current conservative rhetoric is specifically about bringing manufacturing jobs back.
> There is no need for U.S. to crash its currency to incentivize domestic production, it can just impose tariffs on imports to do so.
I don't think autarky is this administration's only stated goal. They specifically see an export-led economy as being more important or even "legitimate" and are pushing for other countries to import our goods. Devaluing currency is a strong way to incentivize exports and China's currency manipulations were the key to their rise as a manufacturing power.
The reason it was 0 for so many years was because the Fed was trying desperately to create inflation during this time. (Which was chronically low for other reasons).
Lowering interest rates to create inflation is literally one of the core tenants of the Federal Reserve:
The problem with tariffs is really just trumps complete instability. Why would anyone invest in domestic manufactoring when Trump wildly flip flops on all tariff policy using it as a diplomatic punishment and reward system? Especially when his tariffs in general are legally questionable at best and the other half of us politics are against them just in principal. Imagine investing millions in a domestic factory and then trump gets a personalized jet from some random nation so the tariffs you were depending on for your profit margin are gone. Or Trump loses the midterms and now tariffs as a policy are gone. Unless Trump both becomes a dictator and sets the tariffs in stone without changing them too much, or democrats come out in wide support of tariffs themselves, I don't see how you could use them to invest your money.
Also, anything companies build inside the US (factories, supply lines, etc.) just becomes an economic hostage for a Trump to use for further rounds of extortion.
So it's not just that the policies are (A) counterproductive and foolish and (B) changed on a whim and (C) have no long-term foundation and (D) are changed for corrupt reasons... but even after all that, (E) the corrupt person "making deals" is incapable of honoring them.
This is how you grow a sclerotic, internationally-uncompetitive domestic industry. See: shipbuilding.
Where tariffs work is as a nursery policy. Give firms a safe haven to grow in. Then let competition hone them. South Korea has pioneered this playbook; China copied it. We were sort of doing it, but the current administration blew up our nascent new energy industry.
It's also debatable how important tariffs even are for "infant industries". In most situations, if you ever remove the tariffs, the native industry is just as likely if not more likely to die out to any serious foreign competition.
For South Korea and China, tariffs were not a very key part of their industrial policy. Which is not to say that the government didn't have a massive hand in the success of their native industries. Case in point: shipbuilding for South Korea. The government was key in securing the capital investment in the massive drydocks the entire world depends on.
In the late teens, China was dominating all of these industries.
Under policies of the Biden administration, these industries were growing domestically in the US and we were increasing our share of the global market.
Over the last year those domestic industries have been destroyed. They are barely surviving and have stopped rapidly expanding. All gains made against China's dominance in these technologies has been lost, and then some.
Hope and wishing aside, if you think anything Trump is doing is gonna benefit the economy, you really show your ideological side.
For example, businesses are hesitant to invest in domestic manufacture because the tarrifs can be undone by next president. But the reputation that US is building right now cant be undone. Investment in manufacturing takes years, not to mention that its not like America has lots of people wanting to go work in mines and factories. Meawhile as countries with sane leaders adjust, US is gonna be less and less relevant.
So in 5 or so years when your house value and investments are way down and there is a Dem president and you think about complaining about economy is bad under liberals, remeber who cause it all. Most of the current economic problems that existed in late 2020s have origins with Reagan era economics.
The U.S. is as stable as it gets. It has been one continuous republic and has 250 years of legal stability and a history of paying its debts. It has 4.2% GDP growth, with the largest economy in the world and growing.
Your ruler is no longer following the rules of law, nor the foundational constitution. USA ended with their declaration of dictatorship and the failure of your houses/legislature/military to act against that and defend the Constitution.
I can't see how, since the end of habeas corpus, you can claim legal stability.
Your leader is World renowned for reneging on debts and is demanding bribes for companies to operate.
Isn't borrowing through the roof to pay for things like your stasi?
Daily those stasi are murdering and disappearing people seemingly attempting to foment an excuse to escalate the violence.
I don't know how that knife edge can look anything like stable to you.
It's a very grandoise (or alarmist, depending on your perspective), but this isn't super new. The US has been "unstable" with rulers breaking their own laws domestically and internationally for many decades.
My money is that influence campaigns are active on HN and try to mold the discourse. The whole internet is manipulated to hell, and HN is a prime target, you have a bunch of smart people that probably have oversized influence, how could you NOT try manipulating this place?
This is most certainly happening. A lot of US-critical articles also get flagged to death, even when they have a lot of upvotes and healthy, civilized discussion.
I don't think mostly is true? Obviously it depends a lot on the time of day, but there are also a lot of Europeans on the site. Also, most comments here seem to be critical towards current US policy. So, I think there is quite a lot of manipulation going on, since the downvoting/flagging does not really match the comment section.
I think it's true. There is a significant audience here from other areas but this being an english language forum and one focused on tech means that the US is always going to have a dominant presence[1]. The US dominance also means that the news is highly focused on US events when it wanders out of tech which further reinforced the audience.
1. I believe Canada does have an outsized presence though!
The problem is the AI bubble, without it it is speculated that the US economy might actually be in a recession [2] - effectively, that web of investments, deals, ownerships, purchase contracts and god knows what is nothing more than wash trading that will come crashing down hard.
That is why for the 99%, the economy doesn't "feel" like 4.3% of growth. If you're not in AI directly or at least adjacent (e.g. datacenter or utility construction), you don't feel any of that money.
The U.S. chose to abandon the rules based international order that has made it a bastion of stability since WW2 when they decided they wanted a return to the monroe doctrine and that it was okay to arbitrarily invade countries and take their resources based on the impulses of a single person. The same person outwardly stated, "Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace". If you think this is "as stable as it gets", then we're living on different planets.
There more to stability than continuity of government. Though, that definitely is important.
It’s bad enough that America’s foreign policy lately swings wildly every four years. More recently, it’s been acting aggressive toward allies, and making very strange and unpredictable moves.
The USA’s tariff policies are, frankly, utterly insane. Yes, I do mean the tariffs are irrational and incoherent. The approach to the tariffs has been overly aggressive. They’ve been changing almost daily, at times. Now, tariffs are specifically a thing that must be stable and predictable on a multi-year horizon. This must be, at least, off-putting to other governments, and to any companies wishing to do business in or adjacent to the USA.
Monkeying with the Fed is dangerous and basically unprecedented. This is going to make people nervous because it marks the end of an era of stability in monetary policy. We may be at the start of a new era where interest rates, much like the tariffs, change frequently for bad reasons or for no reason at all. Who can say?
America was never a stable country. That 250 years includes:
* A decade of chaos under the impotent Articles of Confederation.
* The deliberately engineered election of George Washington to create the illusion of political stability, a reign which only ended because George stepped down voluntarily.
* An immediate constitutional crisis the moment a competitive election happened, causing the election of a President and Vice President from opposing political parties (imagine a Harris - Trump presidency). The ensuing chaos resulted in SCOTUS unilaterally declaring itself the final arbiter of the law.
* The Thomas Jefferson presidency, which in many ways is the alpha release of Trump.
* The Civil War, started specifically because the losing faction of slaveholders was angry at losing, and ending with the losing faction losing so hard the counter rolled back into flawless victory. They surrendered, then assassinated the President and got his party to give up on everything he stood for.
* Economy-destroying Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which are basically what Trump is doing now.
* A spectacular near-miss in which the country's business elites attempted to assassinate a Progressive president and only failed because the Marine they selected as their Hitleresque dictator ratted them out.
* Widespread civil unrest deliberately created to force America to reckon with its racist past and undo what the South had managed to convince the North to allow them to do after Reconstruction.
* The Richard Nixon presidency, which in many ways is the beta release of Trump.
* Too many foreign invasions to count.
In the entire history of America I can think of maybe 3 brief moments of political stability that weren't outright engineered fantasies. The two that are relevant to modern times are the 1950s and the 1990s. Both of these were the result of America winning a war of conquest.
How is that instructive? The British empire was mostly gone by the 1950s and a hell of a lot happened after that. It would be more instructive to look at Britain just before WW1 compared to the other countries.
At their peak, virtually all of the aforementioned empires brought enormous wealth to the homeland. It might not be profitable in the long run, but the long run can mean centuries before it becomes a net negative.
Also, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were part of a Danish empire at one point.
The British East India Company didn't create "billionaires" with vast estates?
The Dutch East Indies weren't returning home with spices of greater value than gold?
Spain didn't plunder so much gold and silver it devalued to the floor?
Belgium went broke under the crushing cost of exploiting the Congo?
I'll go with all empires eventually fall - but many grow on the inflow of wealth from their colonies.
Perhaps you mean "true" accounting - no resources are created, they just move from those that have them to the seat of Empire which wanted them - no net gain, just added costs of transport and military forces.
Historically, though, that's never been how wealth was counted by those that ran ledgers on everything they wanted.
> No one is making serious threats to invade Canada, that's ridiculous
Would you care to share a few actual quotes that show the obvious facetiousness of the US executive comments that have been made about invading Canada, and comparing them with the obvious seriousness of comments from the same administration about invading Venezuela?
This would be very helpful for foreigners who might have difficulties reading the difference between very public statements that seem quite similar from abroad.
Really love Scott for creating Dilbert one of the best all-time comic strips, teaching the psychology of persuasion, and for writing How to Fail At Almost Everything and Still Win Big. It taught me to focus on systems and habits as a preference over goals (goals are still useful, but can be unrealistic and less adaptable). Plus God's Debris was an interesting thought experiment about the origin of the universe. Really great thinker and humorist. RIP Scott.
What grocery store chain in the U.S. are you referring to? Every major chain grocery store generally stacks fresh food around the entire perimeter of the grocery store, reserving the aisles for boxed, canned, and frozen food.
You can find dozens of varieties of fruits and vegetables, tons of fresh beef, pork, chicken and fish, milk, cheeses, even bread, in every major chain grocery store in the U.S.
This. Sometimes I hear people saying random stuff about the US and I have no idea what they're talking about. I'm aware of food deserts, but that aside, I could find fresh food in most grocery stores in the many places I've lived in the US. When I say "most", I'm excluding places like Dollar General that explicitly aren't about fresh food.
Which ones are you going to? 90% of what is in a grocery store is pre-packaged processed food. In fact, many grocery stores are starting to sell clothes. The produce sections are small compared to the aisles and aisles of boxed foods, frozen foods, soda, alcohol, and candy. I've never been into a major grocery store in any state that wasn't like this.
Honestly I had the same experience, and I love exploring supermarkets in the US (I genuinely go there after work and spend hours just wandering around). I often found the variety of produce to be really limited, as in, half the kinds of fruit than you would find in a smaller supermarket in Europe. Jack's fresh market, Walmart, Hyvee and local chains.
The machine is risking not only his life but the life of every other person on the road. Meanwhile, the machine has no feelings and has no life to lose. It feels no pain. It has no memory nor identity.
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