Presidential predictions for 2024?

[Seattle]

Yes, sorry, CPI does include those things. Core CPI doesn't. It leaves them out. This is usually because the numbers look better to do it that way.

Now as to whether someone is better off or not, they are generally better off when CPI is lower but if the debt is high and the interest payment is higher and the dollar was debased more then even that may not be the case.

You can't just say the consumer doesn't pay the national debt payment. They do, indirectly though the debasement of the dollar.

 

[billvon]

Facts don't bother me.

Apparently they do. You seem to have gotten triggered by the fact that income is growing faster than inflation.

 

[billvon]

The fact is that you, Billvon and Jeaves are particularly rigid in your views and anyone who says anything different must watch Fox News, must think like Trump, must make up "fake news" and all the rest of the nonsense.

I am fairly rigid in my views, in that I do not particularly care for ideologies based on wishful thinking or a favorite fact-free political ideology. It comes back to facts in the end, and I will continue to post them even if it makes you think me "rigid."

BTW there are far more right wing sources than FOX News that make up the right wing misinformationverse. Breitbart, OAN, Alex Jones, PJ Media, Epoch Times, Daily Stormer, Glenn Beck, O'Reilly and Tucker Carlson are all similar. FOX is merely the largest.

 

[Seattle]

Apparently they do. You seem to have gotten triggered by the fact that income is growing faster than inflation.

I don't get trigger. You?

 

[Seattle]

I am fairly rigid in my views, in that I do not particularly care for ideologies based on wishful thinking or a favorite fact-free political ideology. It comes back to facts in the end, and I will continue to post them even if it makes you think me "rigid."

BTW there are far more right wing sources than FOX News that make up the right wing misinformationverse. Breitbart, OAN, Alex Jones, PJ Media, Epoch Times, Daily Stormer, Glenn Beck, O'Reilly and Tucker Carlson are all similar. FOX is merely the largest.

Great. You seem to know (and read?) them all? I don't. There isn't actually anything in what I post that would suggest that. My comments are usually about economics. The rigid equate anything they disagree with as somehow being right-wing or somehow endorsing Trump.

There is nothing with what I just posted about inflation and excessive debt that you are actually addressing. It's mainly just sarcasm and mud slinging. Everything I just posted is correct and it's reality.

In the past you usually start out with "yep" and then post something that has nothing to do with what I just said. It's usually a Trump rant and then at the end you'll restate a reasonable interpretation of what I just said and you say "if you mean that then I agree".

So I don't know why you pretend to disagree? Paralee is different. He is just perpetually angry and irrational. You actually seem to understand and agree with economic realities even though you sometimes pretend that you don't.

I'm moderate in politics and you are "progressive". So we don't agree on everything. I don't exaggerate what you say to try to make a disingenuous point at your expense. You often do. It doesn't disguise that fact when you start it with "yep" or "nope".

Usually you end up agreeing with what I've actually said so why go through all the contortions. You actually (I think) understand that the inflation being reported is "goods" inflation and that monetary inflation isn't reflected in those numbers and these days with our excessive debt, it's the monetary inflation that is the larger number.

I don't need to "cite" anything. There is no subjectivity to what I'm saying. Anyone educated regarding any of these subjects or even just moderately informed needs a "cite". I don't think you need one. Parmalee needs much more than I am going to give him just like Tiassa, they don't want to know or understand. It's willful ignorance on their part and they are so far from mainstream thought that there's no need to much much effort into discussions with them.

Why you pop in and out of rationality, I have no idea. I "know" that if we were in the same office, having lunch together, you wouldn't react this way. Our politics would be slightly different and our understanding of economics would be very similar.

Here you join with the idiots and pretend that I'm some Trump idiot who is reading fake news and making up facts. I know that you know better. Why keep up this act?

 

[LaurieAG]

Gee Dick Cheney, now he's back as chairman of Halliburton since FEB this year, will be really disappointed if Trump gets in over Harris.

Call yourself Lefties, Huh.

 

[parmalee]

The fact is that you, Billvon and Jeaves are particularly rigid in your views and anyone who says anything different must watch Fox News, must think like Trump, must make up "fake news" and all the rest of the nonsense.

It's one thing when you post something wacky, like how more equitable countries tend to be poorer--like Denmark, Sweden and Norway, apparently. It's something else entirely when you make a cryptic claim about Trump having "better business instincts" than Harris, and then post a link to a Matt Walsh troll video about DEI hires. I'll indulge the former, at least for entertainment purposes, whereas I'm pretty "rigid" regarding the latter.

Do you recognize the difference?

 

[Seattle]

It's one thing when you post something wacky, like how more equitable countries tend to be poorer--like Denmark, Sweden and Norway, apparently. It's something else entirely when you make a cryptic claim about Trump having "better business instincts" than Harris, and then post a link to a Matt Walsh troll video about DEI hires. I'll indulge the former, at least for entertainment purposes, whereas I'm pretty "rigid" regarding the latter.

Do you recognize the difference?

Even now you've misrepresented the situation. One, you allow for no humor and take everything literally. You can get the concept, if you wanted to, that a poor country is an equal country...they are all equally poor. It's a joke, it's largely true, it's not too serious...get it?

I haven't intended to represent Trump as some uber business success story. Personally, he is inept and a clown. The basic approach that he and most other Republicans, now and particularly in the past, was to reduce taxes and at least in theory be for a limited government.

That's all that I was implying there as opposed to Biden and Harris.

I just watched that Matt Walsh video and almost randomly posted the link in case anyone else here wanted to watch it. It's funny although not "hilarious" as in a laugh a minute. I do agree with what he is trying to make light of. If that upsets you, OK. I think there is more true there than problems with it. We have gotten, IMO, too sensitive about everything.

 

[billvon]

I don't get trigger. You?

"You might as well be defending your family or rooting for a favorite sports team where it's not even expected that you would be objective. If that is how you want to roll, fine, it is what it is."

That is getting triggered; replies where emotion takes over from rationality, and angry replies replace discourse. Not a big deal. It happens here a lot.

You seem to know (and read?) them all?

Not at all. The time I see their content is when I am trying to look up an unusually absurd claim i.e. "the Sandy Hook victims were crisis actors" or "the liberals are turning the frogs gay." Invariably it's a far right source.

In the past you usually start out with "yep" and then post something that has nothing to do with what I just said. It's usually a Trump rant and then at the end you'll restate a reasonable interpretation of what I just said and you say "if you mean that then I agree". So I don't know why you pretend to disagree?

?? In the case you mentioned, I am not disagreeing. "Yep" is a colloqualism for "yes" which indicates agreement. I then paraphrase your argument to ensure I understand it, and then say that if that's accurate we are in agreement. That is not "pretending to disagree" that is actually agreeing. (Assuming I understood what you said.)

If you wonder why I would discuss it if I agree - keep in mind that this is a discussion forum, intended for just that.

so why go through all the contortions.

Agreement is not a contortion.

If you were at a restaurant and you said "I'll have the cod" and someone else said "yeah, the fish here is pretty good" - would you be annoyed at his contortion?

Here you join with the idiots and pretend that I'm some Trump idiot who is reading fake news and making up facts.

Since I never said that, I'll just smile and nod.

 

[Seattle]

"You might as well be defending your family or rooting for a favorite sports team where it's not even expected that you would be objective. If that is how you want to roll, fine, it is what it is."

That is getting triggered; replies where emotion takes over from rationality, and angry replies replace discourse. Not a big deal. It happens here a lot.

Except, I'm not angry.

?? In the case you mentioned, I am not disagreeing. "Yep" is a colloqualism for "yes" which indicates agreement. I then paraphrase your argument to ensure I understand it, and then say that if that's accurate we are in agreement. That is not "pretending to disagree" that is actually agreeing. (Assuming I understood what you said.)

Agreement is not a contortion.

If you were at a restaurant and you said "I'll have the cod" and someone else said "yeah, the fish here is pretty good" - would you be annoyed at his contortion?

Ok, fair enough. Although it would be more like if I said "I think Cod is good for you" and you said "Cod won't want make you a better person and that's just silly, but if you mean Cod is healthy for you to eat, I agree".

So of course I wasn't saying that Cod would make you a good person and of course I was just saying I think it's a healthy food to eat. I would just, in this case, be wondering why you even brought up me thinking that eating Cod would make one a good person?

You do know that all I really said in this long conversation that got everyone so bothered was that inflation is underreported and that's because monetary inflation isn't included in the CPI figures that everyone likes to quote as to why this "Biden" economy is so good.

It's not that it's so bad but the debt situation is bad and a big part of this "good" economy is simply because the government is "printing money" and stimulating the economy. So of course there isn't a recession when you are doing that but it does have a cost. It's not a sign that someone really knows how to run a good economy. I'm also not implying that debt was any better under Trump.

That cost is monetary inflation and that is larger than the goods inflation being talked about. The real "cost" is about 7% inflation which is what I said from the beginning and what I said isn't even subjective or crazy, or "fake news" or requiring a cite.

If you understand economics, it's just reality. So there is nothing I said that should have been controversial and certainly nothing that should have lead to name calling, sarcasm, bringing up Trump, global warming and everything else that people have brought up here.

 

[Sarkus]

You can't just say the consumer doesn't pay the national debt payment. They do, indirectly though the debasement of the dollar.

But the debasement of the dollar is something that happens behind the scenes. Simplistically the consumer cares about wages/stocks being higher than their inflation. That's it. Do they care if it's 8% inflation v 12% wage-growth, or 3% v 7%? Not really. In both they're seeing c.4% growth in relative buying ability.
Debt is just not a concern in this scenario.

Debasement of the dollar is only an issue when comparing national economies. So imports, exports, investments, etc.
And since, barring the odd blip, countries tend to run up debts at similar rates, all economies debase their currencies similarly (most Western countries are c.100% debt to GDP, with china and India c.90%, Germany and outlier at c.60%).
I'm not saying debt is not an issue at all. It is. Extremely high debt restricts growth, impacts strength of the currency on global markets, and if we assume that debts will eventually need to be paid off, then we're just passing it off to the next generations.

The US debt is at the higher end, so some care must be taken to control it, ideally to hold or decrease the debt-gdp ratio, but beneath that the US economy is one of, if not the best performing at the moment.
Trump, I fear, would only undermine the foundations of that. His mass-deportation policy would do far more harm than good, for example.

Of course, one can argue that Trump would no more implement what he's talked about than he got Mexico to pay for the wall last time. But if you don't gauge a candidate on what they say they'll do, you may as well just toss a coin.



Anyhoo - in other news, the latest Iowa poll has Harris up by 3-4% in that state!! This would be a shocking outcome for Trump if accurate and a huge swing towards Harris there.

I predict that polling that has this a tight race will be shown to have significantly overplayed support for Trump, and Harris will win relatively easily.

(Fingers crossed )

 

[parmalee]

Even now you've misrepresented the situation. One, you allow for no humor and take everything literally. You can get the concept, if you wanted to, that a poor country is an equal country...they are all equally poor. It's a joke, it's largely true, it's not too serious...get it?

I'm not misrepresenting shit--you're just an idiot. Here's the post:

The government, by itself, produces very little so if you reduce the size of the economy everyone is worse off. There is no free lunch in other words. The economies with less "inequality" of results are generally the poor economies. It's equal but everyone is poor.

Wow. You really know how to frame a "joke".

I haven't intended to represent Trump as some uber business success story. Personally, he is inept and a clown. The basic approach that he and most other Republicans, now and particularly in the past, was to reduce taxes and at least in theory be for a limited government.

That's all that I was implying there as opposed to Biden and Harris.

I just watched that Matt Walsh video and almost randomly posted the link in case anyone else here wanted to watch it. It's funny although not "hilarious" as in a laugh a minute. I do agree with what he is trying to make light of. If that upsets you, OK. I think there is more true there than problems with it. We have gotten, IMO, too sensitive about everything.

Yep. Racism is often reflexive.

 

[Zero Point Native]

The one and only time I ever voted was back in the 2008 election when Obama first ran, and that was just for fun - only because he was black and no other reason. Anyway, it's been so long since I voted that I can't even remember how the process works. I was wondering if it was possible to show up at the voting booth, sign in and walk into the booth, and then walk out without casting a vote. I thought that would be pretty funny. Also, I was thinking about showing up at the polls wearing a Kamala shirt and a MAGA hat at the same time and see what reactions I would get. I figured I would like to add some entertainment to the election farce fiasco.

 

[parmalee]

Not at all. The time I see their content is when I am trying to look up an unusually absurd claim i.e. "the Sandy Hook victims were crisis actors" or "the liberals are turning the frogs gay." Invariably it's a far right source.

Lately I've been getting into Tim Pool and the PDB Podcast (or Valuetainment, whatever it's called). Patrick Bet-David's a hoot, but Vinnie is the real prize! His face gets sooooo red and his veins all are all popping out when he's losing his shit, which is often.

Unfortunately, I can't find my favorite clip of Tim Pool talking about he used to "dominate" the dating apps, and he mimes swiping on his phone and goes, "Oh yeahhhh." I tried searching for it but it seems like there's dozens and dozens of clips of him talking about dating apps.

 

[Janus58]

The one and only time I ever voted was back in the 2008 election when Obama first ran, and that was just for fun - only because he was black and no other reason. Anyway, it's been so long since I voted that I can't even remember how the process works. I was wondering if it was possible to show up at the voting booth, sign in and walk into the booth, and then walk out without casting a vote. I thought that would be pretty funny. Also, I was thinking about showing up at the polls wearing a Kamala shirt and a MAGA hat at the same time and see what reactions I would get. I figured I would like to add some entertainment to the election farce fiasco.

If you show up at the polls wearing any political slogans what-so-ever, you'll be asked to remove them or leave, as this is considered electioneering, which is not allowed at polling places.

 

[Zero Point Native]

If you show up at the polls wearing any political slogans what-so-ever, you'll be asked to remove them or leave, as this is considered electioneering, which is not allowed at polling places.

Oh really? Eh, oh well.

 

[Seattle]

But the debasement of the dollar is something that happens behind the scenes. Simplistically the consumer cares about wages/stocks being higher than their inflation. That's it. Do they care if it's 8% inflation v 12% wage-growth, or 3% v 7%? Not really. In both they're seeing c.4% growth in relative buying ability.
Debt is just not a concern in this scenario.

Debasement of the dollar is only an issue when comparing national economies. So imports, exports, investments, etc.

That's just not accurate (at all). Sure, debasement of the dollar is something that happens behind the scenes. If a consumer doesn't care about it, it's only because it's a hidden cost that they don't see effecting them (which apparently is applying to you and Billvonn). If you own the Hope Diamond and it's worth ($100 million for example) and suddenly 1,000 more similar diamonds are mined and brought to market, the Hope Diamond will no longer fetch $100 million. It has been debased as "currency".

Your comment about it only being an issue when comparing national economies is just inaccurate. You may be thinking in terms of exchange rates. It doesn't matter if the dollar/pound rate changes if I'm not importing or exporting to the UK. That's not what we are talking about here.

You went off topic a little with the bit about a consumer not caring if inflation is 8% or 3% if wages are 4% higher. Some will and some won't. Some are more aware of economics. Some are retired and their income won't adjust to high inflation. Many people will see smaller income increases than the actual inflation. That's kind of neither here nor there though since we were talking about debasement of the dollar.

You are off base as well when you say all that matters is "their inflation". It's all "their inflation". CPI is talking about goods inflation and doesn't account for monetary inflation. Just because it's not accounted for in "their 2.4%" number doesn't mean it doesn't effect them.

It does and it's a bigger factor than that 2.4% number. If goods are 2.4% more expensive, we get that. If the dollar is debased by 5% (for example) that's a cost to everyone of 7.4%. The goods cost more and the dollar is worth less because more have been "printed".

It's subtle only because it's slow theft. Politicians like it because they can continue to spend and pretend to pay for it by just printing more money. It's not without a cost when you do it with diamonds and it's not without a cost when you do it with dollars.

 

[billvon]

You do know that all I really said in this long conversation that got everyone so bothered was that inflation is underreported and that's because monetary inflation isn't included in the CPI figures that everyone likes to quote as to why this "Biden" economy is so good.

It is one reason, yes. It is now lower than our average has been. The average inflation rate over the past 110 years is 3.30% - so 2.4% is significantly below that.

You mention several other things that are issues, like the debt. I agree; our debt is a problem. But given that debt is a problem, a lower-than-average inflation rate is still better than a higher-than-average inflation rate, and is an indication of an economy doing well.

You can't just say the consumer doesn't pay the national debt payment. They do, indirectly though the debasement of the dollar.

Yes. They also save money. As the dollar is debased (i.e. inflation reduces its real value) the loans they have become easier to pay off. Since 77% of American households have debt, this helps most people.

It is, of course, a balancing act, and the amount of debt we have now is not sustainable.

 

[parmalee]

I don't need to "cite" anything. There is no subjectivity to what I'm saying. Anyone educated regarding any of these subjects or even just moderately informed needs a "cite". I don't think you need one. Parmalee needs much more than I am going to give him just like Tiassa, they don't want to know or understand. It's willful ignorance on their part and they are so far from mainstream thought that there's no need to much much effort into discussions with them.

Practically everything you post is subjective and one-sided, and you're constantly moving the goal posts. You mention CPI and then in the very next post you say you were actually talking about Core CPI. When discussing capital, the discussion suddenly becomes specifically about intellectual capital. You unambiguously state that "we" are discussing inflation, and then all of a sudden you're talking monetary debasement. You don't even make the effort to keep up with your own talking points.

 

[parmalee]

Parmalee needs much more than I am going to give him just like Tiassa, they don't want to know or understand.

Right. In so far as economics is concerned, if I really want to understand something I'm certainly not gonna look towards you for answers. Which is unfortunate, because I suspect that you do actually know something on the subject, but you have a habit of posting a lot of nonsense and not even bothering to keep up with whatever it is that you are saying.

If I wanna know something about bitcoin then maybe I'll consider your posts, although I found Sarkus's posts on the subject to be much more clearly stated. You should maybe work on that. (Also, as you may recall, I defended your posting in that thread. I just saw it as two people discussing something enthusiastically, no one was "endorsing" or pushing anything.)