I don’t really think that there is such a distinction as “male voters”. People are people, from my experience, all want to live a good life, think positively about the future and be let the fuck in peace. Very few assholes exist among both men and women, and i wouldn’t say that it’s more or less on either side, they’re just assholes in different ways.

Oh dear this is gonna cause so much poverty.

On the one hand, i support independence from the US.

On the other hand, the messenger i’m using better be hosted in another country, so it’s less likely that local law enforcement can spy on my communications.

Höhere Steuern für Reiche braucht es auf jeden Fall, sonst gibt es keine Zukunft. So wie das Blut in unseren Adern zirkuliert, muss sich auch das Geld in der Wirtschaft im Kreis bewegen. Es darf nicht nur von arm nach reich gehen; es muss auch wieder von reich nach arm gehen.

Freibetrag von 1 Mio. Euro, das ist zu niedrig

Sehe ich auch so. Vor allem wenn man bedenkt dass KMU (Klein- und Mittelständische Unternehmer) wahrscheinlich deutlich drüber liegen. Ich würde die Grenze eher bei 10 Mio. ansetzen.

Ich denke mal es ist Werbung. Das Thema unter die Leute bringen, Aufmerksamkeit generieren, Diskussionen beginnen.

it all fits together really nicely, somehow. i’m not sure whether trump actually has a plan or things just randomly fit, though:

• texas wanted to secede from the US for centuries (i believe this is actually a big point that people give too little weight to)
• the US realizes that the US is not simply going to “allow” texas to secede
• conservative thinktanks realize that the only way that blue states are gonna be ok with texas seceding is if they themselves dramatically understand the relevance of state’s autonomy and self-responsibility
• trump attacks california and new york to make blue states understand the importance of having greater independence from the federal government
• blue states are gonna demand greater independence from the federal government in the next months (2025-2027)
• texas can then comfortably also claim greater autonomy for itself

i’m torn about this. most of these things happened in the middle east, and then it’s self defense, kinda, since the US invaded these countries.

if the interest is just as high as the general inflation, then the government can just take out extra loans to serve the interest without actually increasing the real total debt, because the nominal increase in debt is just eaten by the inflation.

Yeah, you’re right. I think the author tried to contrast jobs that add real value to the economy against financial trickery, which he accused of only serving the rich.

But indeed, white-collar jobs have played a tremendous role in the economy in the last 50 years or so.

basically when the federal government goes into debt, that basically means that the federal reserve which you can imagine like a big bank hands out a loan to the government.

the government doesn’t really have to pay back that debt, ever. (it technically has to but that can be avoided by simply taking out a new loan at a later time).

i hope i explained that correctly.

Ich finde es jedes mal wieder beeindruckend, wie viel hier über Personen, die Politiker sind, gesprochen wird, und wie vergleichsweise wenig über die Vorschläge die sie machen.

It’s also interesting for California and other blue states.

Since Trump is attacking the blue states especially, there’s a form of warfare there. As we all know, wars are really expensive and are often decided by who can stay solvent longer.

Normally, that would be California and other blue states, because they have the better economy. If they stopped paying taxes, that would severely harm Trump.

However, through the federal reserve, Trump can just print infinite amounts of dollars, and that effectively overrides the blue states’ strong economy.

So the blue states have a serious interest in de-dollarization, sothat Trump’s money-printing federal reserve becomes meaningless.

in general i would agree but many people were tricked into it.

are people in general for or against secession (i.e. splitting up the US into jesusland and the blue states)? poll by upvoting (pro secession) or downvoting (against secession) this comment.

Kolanaki, i guess you’re not really getting the point here. The point is intentional cruelty to demotivate these people to ever come to the US again.

We could lose more than our democracy. We could lose the very idea of America and, with it, the peaceful world we’ve anchored since 1945.

This is essentially nationalism.

I’m just trying to understand people’s sentiments here. Is “preserving America” something that the people in general want? Just trying to understand the situation here. Or would people prefer to live in their own, local communities?

The article is very well written, IMO, and i encourage people to read it.

First, let’s get back to basics. There are only two primary ways to grow a nation’s wealth: by extracting resources from the earth or by manufacturing goods, adding value to those resources. Everything else — lawns getting mowed, nails getting done, stocks getting traded — may move money around or improve quality of life, but don’t grow the actual wealth of a nation.

I agree and i call that “actual wealth of the nation” the real economy, while painting nails and mowing lawns is entertainment.

The Democratic Party has largely understood this since the industrial revolution, as did the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, who oversaw construction of the transcontinental railroad and funded over 70 free “Land Grant” colleges like MSU across the nation.

From FDR through Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden, Democratic presidents have consistently invested in the physical and human infrastructure that powers wealth creation. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the GI Bill, the WPA and CCC, the Clean Air and Water Acts, and most recently, the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act all fit this pattern.

Even Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, got it, although he was his party’s modern exception. He built the Interstate Highway System and warned Americans against the possibility that the military-industrial complex could corrupt Congress. His vision was of a balanced, productive America, not one dominated by war profiteers and Wall Street gamblers.

But the Republican Party since the 1920s (with the exception of Eisenhower) has marched in the opposite direction. […]

In a healthy economy, windfalls get invested in productivity: roads, R&D, education, healthcare for working people. In today’s GOP-run economy, however, they’re getting funneled into yachts, stock buybacks, and political influence. Economists call this the “voracity effect”; a dynamic where powerful groups extract so much from the economy that they ultimately destabilize and then crash it. It’s economic cancer.

Exactly what i say. The rich skim so much wealth from the economy that it simply starves to death. A wealth tax would be a systemic counter-measure to that development, and it’s bitterly needed.

only a systemic treatment can help. treating individual cases isn’t enough.

we need a good social safety net, including wealth tax and UBI.

while most people in the west will think that trump is finally coming to his senses about ukraine,

to trump, it’s just a distraction scheme from his problems at home. he thinks that if he starts a war with russia, the people at home will forget about the bullshit policies he’s implemented domestically.