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Cake day: February 27th, 2024

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  • Do you have one reason to not vote for Harris, or Many reasons not to vote? Lets say in this Trolley like problem scenario that Flipping the lever to run over one is voting for Harris, flipping it to roll over the list is voting for trump - and rejecting making the choice is walking away.

    Thing is - this gets complicated: Just because someone publicly says they aren’t voting because of Gaza does not mean 1. they didn’t vote, and 2. doesn’t mean they don’t see all the other problems - because left organizations/groups have a tendency of vilifying anyone that opposes their view points excessively - because they have the moral high ground supposedly - the end result is: People won’t speak up about the real reasons, they will stick to the socially acceptable one and move on. It’s far easier, simpler.

    So: What is on the long list of problems?

    1. Biden ending the “Stay in Mexico” Agreement.

    2. Tax payer dollars being sent to illegal immigrants in various ways.

    3. The way deaths were assigned to Covid - even when the person had stage 4 cancer, and covid was maybe a contributing factor.

    4. Catch and Release policies found in a number of Democrat stronghold cities - to a point that stores are giving up trying to operate in the regions. And I’m not talking small locations - I’m talking big businesses. Small ones end up going belly up because they can’t eat the costs, insurance premiums for protecting your inventory in the areas have gone up and that means small businesses can’t afford to insure, and that raises their risks.

    Should I continue?

    Trumps anti-sanctuary city, record on putting in effective policy to deal with the southern boarder problem, and take on the fact that US cities should be sanctuaries for US citizens - well: That resonates with people. It resonates in California (where voter support from previous years to today went up ~8%), it resonates in New york (comparing previous years to today is ~+7% over previous years), even in Texas (~3% uptick). Trump WON the popular vote with fairly high voter turn out.

    The Truth is

    No person struggling in their own life, cares all that much about people in another country. When the government can find money to fund a foreign war - people are going to start wondering why they can’t find money to fix roads, law enforcement, housing, and other issues back home: It would be far cheaper over all.

    In a world where crime has gone up since 2020, while being down from 2013: People are going to see it. And if you live in Seattle, or New York it’s difficult to ignore massive stores closing locations and a growing number of vacant store fronts. And should that problem continue - it’s going to cause further knock on effects. After all: Blank store fronts are not attractive, and if you make them look full - those looking for space are going to presume it’s filled. And these buildings are often times leveraged - and if they reduce lease rates to draw in interest, they may very well have debts called in: And that will hurt the current owners. Worse yet - without revenue coming in, it’s very likely that SOME of the maintenance needed is being avoided.

    So while some the Gaza issue is JUST the Gaza issue - my bet, is that to a lot of people, it’s just the socially acceptable excuse. But honestly - it has some legitimacy as well. After all: Supporting the war effort with a lot now, or a smaller amount over a bit of time nets the same result.



  • Trump is a result of the systems failure to address underlying problems. The underlying problems can all be associated with a single common source: Inflation.

    Governments printing money at a rate greater than value is created in the economy, nets you inflation - and that has been going on since around the mid 90’s in a very real way, and even before that. We can more or less call this the “NeoLiberal Era” if you like. Around the 90’s is when things get bad - and to more or less cover it up, the CPI was manipulated (read: Fixed like you would fix a wrestling match) to make inflation look acceptable - in reality: Replace Steak for Ground beef in the CPI shopping cart and tell people it’s still relevant.

    End of the 90’s you get the ,Com bubble and crash. 2008 Market Crash - and you get “Quantitative Easing” being sold as a fix - when all it is is, PRINTING MONEY. Then during the pandemic a huge push to shut down the economy (largely impacting the lowest wage earners the hardest just FYI) requiring the government to provide stimulus, coupled with grands, loans, and such to businesses in hopes they would keep people employed (hint: They didn’t). And so we have had a series of the most NeoLiberal thing possible: Publicize the risk, privatize the profits, and screw the poor over in the process.

    The fix: Reduce the Money Supply. Drive to a negative inflation number. But the kicker is? The wealthiest hedge funds, realestate investors, and what not would basically go belly up from that type of move. And why? Because if inflation lowers - the debts accrued cost more to maintain the interest on, than they can gain with inflation flipping for real profit over time. Once you reduce the money supply by at this point about 2/3eds - we can move to aiming for a 0% inflation number. The government should at that point be focused on reducing debt one way or another.

    The real problem for the US Economy is, if any action is taken to reduce the debt - it will be a clear signal that the US economy is not gaining value, and that the Dollar Value is currently overvalued. And that could in a very real way cause a spiral. And a fear of the Spiral is making the long term problem worse as it’s kicked down the road.

    By the way: You can take the US out of this and replace just about any western nation into the mix and find the same problem. Actually, China really fits in here. And oh boy a correction is coming and it’s going to be ugly.