2024 ELECTION THREAD

So THIS is the real reason he has done very few rallies recently!

Fed Up Cities are MAKING TRUMP PAY IN ADVANCE

the city insisted Donald Trump pay $82,247.60 before he could hold
a campaign rally there. Cities are sick of deadbeat Donald Trump not paying

by StoppedRainingMen P

Team ‘Sort by Crowd Size’ having a tough go of it these days

Timestamp : 9:47

He spoke at 2 pm in front of 1k in an impromptu pop up event
Guess this sub section is full of tds circle j*rk with people that sre chronically online. The typical 1/2 fish that spend their pension on the old strip LOL. Sad lives man

You should check the timezones. It's still over an hour before it started, but you sure made it sound like it was 4+ hours before it started.

Are you saying that was the crowd size when vance spoke? Are you really this gullible?
Or are you coping with the thought of another trump presidency

Harris to propose “federal ban on corporate price-gouging” on groceries and “impose stiff penalties in the food industry,” campaign announces.

Communism starting to come to reality.

Cope harder

BENGHAZI!!!!!!!

So, you support corporate price-gouging. Nice.

I support free markets.

Money printing and inflation lead to higher prices.

Reap what you sow with expanded government spending.

Lol, is this the level on the left these days?

a) if you support our economy you support a welfare state

b) you have to have inflation and print money

Govt spending is fine as long as taxes are there to pay for it but trump gave the rich enormous tax cuts so ya

That's basically never happened

The inflation caused by the massive lockdown-related debts has ended, now there is a structural 3% linked to still having a deficit, and the economy still going well.

And the deficit is caused by a bipartisan lack of political will to reduce spending and/or increase taxation.

Republicans refuse to even suggest the idea that medicare/social security/defense expenses should be cut (and those 3 + interest on debt make up most of the outlays), while asking to reduce revenue further (tax cuts).

Democrats allow for tax increases in their plans (but only very moderately so, and mostly never to the bulk of taxpayers, so not too much extra revenue would be recovered by that) but have plans for vast increases of outlays that dwarf the extra-revenue they plan to get through higher taxes.

Both parties are rational wrt their voters preferences, any party who proposes to cut social security automatically loses elections.

Republicans have to push for tax cuts because that's what rightwing people want, and democrats have to push for ever-increasing public expenditure on "social issues" because that's what leftwing people want.

But this means that in the current state of affairs, deficit is an inevitability, unless for some reasons we get a goldilock economy back with close to 0 interest rates (so interest expenditures drop), for many years, while unemployment stays low and inflation stays on target (GL with that). In that scenario revenue can increase more than outlays do, interest exp. going down fixes the deficit, more or less.

In all other scenarios... there will be a lot of deficit. And that means that both parties and cult members of those parties blaming the other party for the deficit , do so in bad faith.

Blame should go to the vast majority of americans, that for a set of reasons, or another very different one, simply don't want to fix the deficit.

That said if Harris really wants to introduce price controls that's obscene, disastrous, but i think she can't do it without congress so let's all pray the senate flips republican.

Free markets sounds good on paper, but not always so good in practice.

I'm pretty sure it's been proven over and over that corporations will do really bad things unless checked.

You don't need a balanced budget actually, to keep things stable, but you need deficit as a % of GDP to be <= than nominal gdp growth structurally, over the cycle.

This means given you will need to do a ton of deficit in emergencies (recessions, economic suicide because of lockdowns, wars and so on), you actually might need a balanced budget or even a surplus in years without any emergency.

But the structure of the expenses is such that only a smallish portion is linked to how the economy is performing (unemployment payments basically), while revenues fluctuate more with the economy.

So in theory you would need taxes to increase in good times to build the buffer to do a ton of deficits later on. Or cut expenses when things are good.

But that's politically suicidal, because people can't understand why cutting is needed if things go well, and when things go bad they want government money, so it doesn't happen.

I hear all this stuff about deficits and uncontrolled spending, but I've been hearing this for the entirety of my adult life.

I mean, I don't disagree, and there's probably a tipping point but the lucioms of the world have been ringing this same alarm bell for at least 50 years.

If it's price-gouging, and so it's simply about corporations increases prices because they can as much as they can, why didn't they increase them so much 5 , 7. 10. 15 years before lol.

When inflation was low it wasn't because of price controls jfc. Everybody selling a good or service will always try to sell it at the highest price possible (actually at the price that maximizes it's profit ofc). And it works smoothly and it did work smoothly for decades. If they suddenly increase prices more than usual it isn't because they magically became evil, or "bad behaving" recently.

But the lack of any logic in your thoughts here makes it clear why you vote left.

Parties, on these topics, very clearly reflect people will and not viceversa. The causal relationship is very clearly from the people to the parties policies.

And we know that because for a while there were politicians in both parties trying to keep the deficit under control, because there was a sizeble minority of voters with those preferences (typically moderates in both parties, + some real rightwing people).

Now real rightwing people dropped the idea completly , and moderates are shrinking in numbers, so the "tax conservatives" caucus is basically non existant.

Ya, the question is when is the tipping point.

I guess some feel it's sooner rather than later. And if we all agree there is a tipping point, whenever that may be, it might be in the country's best interest to take actions to either delay that tipping point or change course to avoid it.

not arizona ice tea, not In n Out, not a number of companies

I mean maybe the fact that the federal debt is higher that it was at his previously highest point changes the picture and maybe this would never have happened if the "luciom of the world" had been listened to at least a bit in the last 20 years?

See the clinton good stewardship in the graph? that's what happens when the "luciom of the world" get listened to. Bush was reasonable as well (and ofc the congresses under both).

Then the GFC happened, and Obama happened. At the time republicans had tax conservatives still, tea party and al. Then the Ryans got butchered inside the party by rightwing populist that disregard the debt, democrats radicalized in their socialism, and here we are now

#bOtHsIdEsBaD

There isn't necessarily any tipping point given the size of the USA. It doesn't necessarily end like for small countries that completly implode.

There is a gradual degradation of society. More money toward interest, lower quality services for the population, and at some point a crisis big enough (usually triggered by something else, but more damaging that it should be because of the fragility inherent on not having enough fiscal space) that allows politicians to increase taxes and/or reduce spending structurally.

They often don't do it enough anyway , so they only stabilize for a while then the problem happens again.

Why? because entitlements aren't stable. Guaranteeing pensions and healthcare to an ever-aging population means paying more every year to get the same. It requires ever-increasing taxation or deficit. That's the truth people don't want to admit.

You can't have the same medicare cutoff age that you had when life expectancy was 10 years lower ffs, unless you are willing to pay a lot more for it.

for deficit specifically, they clearly are.