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politics	Because treaties ARE THE LAW! If the HIGHEST LAW OF THE LAND isn’t followed in regards to a specific group of people simply because of the group they belong to then the law is applied in an unequal manner. Private individuals ALREADY suffer discrimination because the government refused to follow its own law. How dense are you? Or are you just disingenuous? Put simply, if the government tomorrow said “ok, the first amendment doesn’t apply to white people” and then maintained that for over 100 years would not there be a need to reverse that and then do something to fix the disparities that would undoubtedly arise in that 100 years? I don’t even fully disagree that affirmative action isn’t the right course (for vastly different reasons I’m sure). But that’s not what this conversation or these emails is really about. I personally think all economically disadvantaged people need a leg up to get a fair shake. The bigger problem though is the fact that affirmative action doesn’t really have the discriminatory effect you think does.
politics	No, and in truth, this might address some "collateral damage" caused by implicit racism. It seems needlessly surreptitious and circuitous to target a group with positive policy with the same obfuscating tactics that were used to disadvantage them in the first place. It could also be seen as playing along with the narrative that the harmful policies weren't specifically racist in the first. If race is central to the problem at hand, we shouldn't be afraid of race being involved in the solutions. Indulging in a bit of hyperbole, it's a bit like saying "sure, cancer is bad, but cancer treatments are also harmful, so let's just take antioxidants; I heard they can help prevent cancer."
politics	Sorry for the attitude. But yeah, Reddit does not need nor deserve money from its users. It is ironic to say that and continue using the platform, I think, but it is undeniable that there is a lot of good conversation and access to timely news across the site. That said, Reddit itself facilitates none of that aside from the basic platform. All the content is user generated (or propagandist-generated, which Reddit has failed to act upon and, in some instances, appears to facilitate). I have my own qualms with the platform but the least people can do is not waste their own money on it. Even if Reddit weren't complicit in shit, that money could be going to candidates or charities. Or savings for if / when this trade war really starts to hit back.
politics	>I'm talking about his place on the political spectrum within his own country. When it came to slavery he was to the center, if not slightly left of center, because he at least made one or two weak gestures to oppose slavery in his state. He made token gestures that he knew would go nowhere, his, his constituency's, his state's, and his entire region's economies and livelihoods were completely based on slavery. They refused to sign the Constitution without a 25 year ban on the topic of slavery so they could ratchet it up even further and entrench themselves and their base. Their actions speak louder than their token words. >Jefferson was a free speech absolutist, for democracy and democratic ideals, opposed to dogmatic religion, and he believed that government could be used positively to improve people's lives such as with the Post Office. Almost all of the Founding Fathers were Deist if not outright Atheist. He was absolutely not a free speech absolutist he was the first person to argue for slander laws when people starting retaliating and turning the press towards him as he did to others. As with most things he was a monumental hypocrite. He did however argue that it was the states who reserved the right and not the Federal government. This is where I would argue his links to current Conservatism and Conservatism throughout our history are strongest, the state's rights vs federal rights argument. >He was a Liberal with some Progressive leanings. He was an agrarian aristocrat that did not practice any of what he preached and used and said anything to gain power and hold it. Especially including his public image, Jefferson in France and Jefferson at home aren't even remotely the same person everything about him was a calculated political/power move. >Also, did he actually back down from his support of international democratic revolutions? He wrote to Lafayette during the Haitian revolution to implore them to go and re-assert their authority because he feared the example a successful slave rebellion would be Although later on he started arming the rebels because he didn't want Napolean to have it when he came to power and started moving towards a French controlled Gulf of Mexico. As President Him and Monroe left Francisco de Miranda out to dry when he attempted an expedition to liberate Caracas, I'm sure I could find a few more if I go looking. The only other Revolution he really supported was the French one but he was a Francophile through and through so that's not really surprising at all. It could be argued he had a few progressive sentiments but on the whole not even close and absolutely not the furthest left of the founding fathers.
politics	Haha, goes straight to assuming my news sources. Yeah, I don't live on my pc either, i'm only on reddit on my phone. Your statement is ignorant, which is why I pointed it out. Keep calling him any name you want, that's one thing I love about this country is that we can say these things without being jailed. It's still stupid, though, and you've given zero evidence as to why he is a "fuhrer".
politics	They’re present issues currently happening. As I have said multiple times. Land rights and land use is a huge issue, not to mention large portions of the oil fields are actually on treaty lands that were stolen in violation of treaties or that the black hills and the gold taken from them are Lakota territory. If you cared about equality and fairness under the law, if you cared about the constitution you’d demand full restoration and adherence to the treaties. But you don’t, because you only care that some brown person might possibly get a leg up (ignoring for a moment that affirmative action is almost entirely absent in the working world and only really in effect in parts of academia).
politics	The question is how much race is the central problem at hand. Race clearly was a major issue for a long time and is still a big issue now, but in terms of company hiring practices and school acceptance rates, is race still a major factor in minorities not getting accepted or hired, as compared to poverty and other disadvantages that are the result of past racism? Is the current problem still that they just don't accept people because of their race or do they not accept people because they're poor, underfunded, and undereducated?
politics	Unconscious bias is still bias. You don't have to be actively thinking like a racist to succumb to racist stereotypes that are unfortunately embedded in our culture without even realizing it. Worse, underrepresentation is often a self-sustaining feedback loop. When minorities are explicitly barred from opportunities, the odds of them pursuing similar opportunities in the future may be diminished, even if the literal institutional policy in question is no longer in effect. This is why I think programs that proactively engage and encourage underrepresented demographics to pursue opportunities they might not otherwise consider are a great tool to have in our kit. And of course, I don't deny there are other socioeconomic factors to opportunity and success, and many of them have significant (but not complete) overlap with race, largely due to history. Addressing those more broadly will obviously also help affected minorities with the added benefit of helping others, as well, but we shouldn't be afraid of targeted solutions either.
politics	This is going way over your head. If a majority of assholes elects representatives to legislate their agenda, legality will undermine morality. Your point on force repeats but misses mine - laws are enforced, well, with force. You seem to want your opinion to overrule the asshole majority, which I was mocking. By what right would you claim dictatorship? It’s a self-defeating position. With all your “breaking it” to me, you fail to understand that I am demonstrating that shitty governments are the manifestation of shitty humanity. I’m not endorsing the paradigm, but pointing out the obvious to the oblivious. We agree on some pillars, but you’re too dim to recognize it.
politics	> doing something wrong to correct past wrongs is still wrong Why? This country was built on violence, something objectively "wrong", in resistance to past wrongs done to us by the King of England. It only makes sense that if we have denied the inalienable rights of a person, that we restore those rights and compensate him for his endurance. Similarly, if we have denied the inalienable rights of a person AND OF HIS COMMUNITY, that we restore those rights and compensate him and his community for their endurance. > preserve the notion that all people are equal This is a blatantly ridiculous statement. What is the case is that they're created equal in the eyes of God and Man. They're obviously not created equal in, lets say, the eyes of their parents or community. And they certainly don't turn out equally when a community which has been denied its inalienable rights in the past proves unable to support its members. >with some exceptions like affirmative action Ok, I know this is hard for you to grasp, but affirmative action is what we're talking about here. Members of a community that did not have its inalienable rights respected in the past (by the government and/or by the People), trying to recover some dignity.
politics	Who's this we? I didn't do anything. That being the issue. I am not going to be discriminated against for something I have not had anything to do with. I'll ignore the rest of your post since it amounts to, "You didn't say god at the end of your sentence, therefore you are wrong." When we both know full well what I mean, whether you want to attach god to that is your own prerogative.
politics	Huh? Well see, I don't know if you're being intentionally ignorant or if you really don't know any of our countries history. But basically, the filibuster was used one way for 240 years, and then Mitch McConnell came along and totally changed the way that parliamentary concept was used. He turned it into a weapon that allowed a tyranny of the minority. Literally crippling the function of the federal government all to appease his donors and his base. It was one of the most craven examples of party over country in the history of the nation. To counter that, the Dem majority had literally no option available to them but to alter the procedural rules around the filibuster. So yea, Mitch McConnell intentionally broke the United States Senate, and now he and his party are directly benefiting from the damage that he himself caused. You get the correct historical position now?
politics	If Thomas Paine counts probably him, Lafayette if he counts, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Franklin, Hamilton was easily the most progressive although definitely more center than left in his politics. I don't think the left / right distinction is as clear in these times but the conservative / progressive fits very well. TJ and the Democratic Republicans wanted to preserve the agrarian free society they saw as the American tradition. It's why he got along so well with John Adams and why the Federalists eventually imploded. John Adams was also a massive conservative although he was a Federalist. He looked down on anyone who didn't have a pedigree they could trace to the Nina, the Pinta, or the Santa Maria. Thomas Paine's life is incredibly interesting and pretty sad he spent his entire life fighting for his radical beliefs, the only reason he wasn't executed by Robespierre in France during the purge of the Girondins was because they didn't get to him before Robespierre was killed and the reaction kicked in. He was also hated upon his return for his attacks on organized religion and he died poor and alone. So much so that someone stole his bones and scattered them.
politics	The filibuster was always used one way. It was a tool to force a slim majority to deal with and compromise with the minority. The only thing that changed when McConnell was minority leader is that the majority party refused to deal with the minority party. This decision was made because the majority party grossly misread the trajectory of American politics and thought it was heading towards a permanent, filibuster proof majority. Obstructionism by the minority via filibuster is an old concept. The funny bit is you clearly don't know the history that well. It was Republicans under Bush2 that originally conceived of the maneuver that did away with filibusters and used the threat of it to get Democrats to stop blocking judicial appointments. They didn't execute it because Republicans wanted to preserve the filibuster in the event they ever ended up as the minority party. Basically this whole process is the consequence of Republican leadership playing hard ball a decade ago and Democratic leadership being colossally stupid 6 years ago.
politics	Sorry for the caps...I just, I don't know, the way you speak so confidently about shit that you are just unequivocally provably wrong about. That shit messes with me, it used to scare me to see people lie so effortlessly or be so incredibly sure of themselves when they have literally no grounding in fact or reality...but now I guess it more just angers the hell out of me. Being gaslit by the POTUS for the last 2+ years has worn my patience for intentional misinformation down to basically 0 lol. Please, you seem to have a somewhat full functioning mind, use the damn thing. Actually educate yourself to what is really going on in the world, and make sure that you are on the right side of all of this for when history judges us all. Basically if you aren't really rich, or a bigoted person, you have literally no reason to support the modern Republican party, or defend any of their actions. I guess the response to this will tell me if you fit into either of those two categories...
politics	Booker asked for the documents to be cleared. They were then cleared. He then released them, thus letting us read them and see that there was no reason they should've been confidential in the first place. [The National Archives and Records Administration should've been handling this from the get go just like they did every other Supreme Court Justice](https://www.vox.com/2018/9/4/17819062/bill-burck-kavanaugh-explained), not some random lawyer who has a billion conflicts of interest in the matter.
politics	Booker was hardly the only one talking about releasing the documents. Here's Sen Cornyn (a Republican, btw) freaking out about how irresponsible and outrageous Booker's desire to show the public these oh-so-confidential emails was. https://www.newsweek.com/cory-booker-releases-confidential-kavanaugh-emails-1109601 All this to say, the majority of Kavanaugh's past has not be released, the majority of the little that WAS released was done so while marked "committee confidential" by a guy who would not normally have the power to do so, rather than by the actual governmental body that's supposed to handle such things, and those documents were dumped on senators literally the night before hearings began. Every part of how these documents have been handled has been abnormal and counter to the Judicial Committee's ability to actually judge Kavanaugh's fitness for a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land.
politics	Booker made a big deal about releasing documents, and so did every single other senator on that committee. And I'm glad he made a point about the documents, because regardless of whether or not Booker was actually potentially subject to expulsion for releasing the documents, they never should have been made committee confidential in the first place. Nearly all of Kavanaugh's past workings should be discussed and seen by the Judicial Committee, not just a tiny percentage. It's ridiculous that they're in such a rush to confirm someone to a court that he'll serve on for the rest of his life, with basically no way to get him off of it, without even looking at all his opinions. You cite Obama's nominations for SCJ, but Kagan and Sotomayor's records were available to the senators before their hearings began (and of course, Garland didn't even get a hearing for a year).
politics	It's like you have't read the article in question or paid any attention to what Tardacus did. He went well out of his way, to do what he thought was illegal, and release documents to the public, that were already cleared for release. And no not all of Kagan's or Sotomayor's records were made available. Obama used Executive Privilege to withhold thousands of documents for each of them. This is standard practice.
politics	>"He went well out of his way, to do what he thought was illegal" I thought you were claiming this was all showboating and Booker already knew the documents were cleared when he spoke? >"And no not all of Kagan's or Sotomayor's records were made available." And I didn't say they were. (Although in point of fact, none of Kagan's records from working in the Clinton White House were withheld through executive privilege, and I don't believe there was anything that could've been, let alone actually was, withheld for Sotomayor.) Nor do I expect all of Kavanaugh's to be made available to senators. Some things really could be matters of national security. But c'mon, for Kagan they asked for and got: "everything she had written, everything she had received" https://www.npr.org/2018/07/31/634369343/democrats-push-for-more-records-on-supreme-court-nominee-brett-kavanaugh That is far, far more than anyone's seen from Kavanaugh. And why? Why are entire years of his record of opinions, thought process, and working documents just completely secret? That has not been the case for any other nominee, and no one should stand for it. The Judicial Committee should've just let the National Archives do their work of finding and vetting all the Kavanaugh documents, like they did for every other Supreme Court nominee. Putting someone on the Supreme Court without even looking at their full record is nonsensical.
politics	> You aren’t going to reach closer to equality by systematically treating certain groups differently, regardless of intentions. This is just laughable and naive. Do you know how much Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunities Programs have done for this country and the minorities who were just getting shit on as a fact of life? You think these programs have damaged equality in America? Have they failed to "reach closer to equality" thus far? Look at what happens the second they pretend we no longer need the Voting Rights Act because "minorities no longer need protection." You think other aspects of our society will just be safer after removing the equalizers simply because reasons? In a perfect world, we would not need programs that help people who are generally targeted by racism and prejudice. America is far from a perfect world and saying that we should stop giving opportunities to people who are the target of powerful prejudices is just incorrect. Is it perfect? No. Is it better? Absolutely.
politics	This is a dumb argument. It is well established that laws with general language that appear to apply to everyone actually target certain groups. This is like first year philosophy stuff. A common hypothetical is a law that prohibits anyone from sleeping under a bridge. It applies to everyone, it says so right in the law. Yet, the rich will be unaffected by the law and the poor will affected by law. You should read up on Majestic Equality. US courts have recognized this and refused to intervene but it is accepted that “good” laws can yield unequal and unfair distribution of compliance burdens.
politics	So these emails seem to be sent after an internal meeting where a discussion was had on how to elevate airline security after 9/11, and that, due to legal requirements, their solution to that would have to be race-neutral, meaning no racial profiling. What they mean by the "interim question", is what are they going to do in between the time this meeting was held and the time the solution is in place; in the interim. It looks like Kavanaugh is suggesting, based on al Qaeda tactics in the past, in the interim, they need to be racially profiling in order to secure airline travel.
politics	It did not really read to me as if he was 'suggesting' racial profiling, simply discussing the legality of doing so and whether or not such an extreme measure was warranted in the interests of national security. 9/11 sparked MANY internal discussions and led to things such as the Patriot Act, during which the balance of freedom versus security was a common theme. Looking at things within the context of what has happening at the time, simply discussing the merit of racial profiling as a temporary security measure while a race-neutral permanent solution was developed and implemented does not seem that unreasonable. There is a big difference between discussing whether or not something COULD be done within the boundaries of the law and actually advocating that something potentially illegal be implemented. As far as withholding the document, internal discussions on matters of national security are often classified or marked confidential, not necessarily due to the content of the discussion, but to obfuscate the process by which those discussions take place to avoid potential threats gaining insight into proposed counter-measures and the methods by which such decisions are made. A subtle but important element. Unless I misread these documents or unless there are more damning pages not yet released, this hardly looks like a 'bombshell' to me unless you ignore the context of what was going on in all levels of government immediately following 9/11.
politics	These other comments are cancer... To actually answer your question, the 'interim question' was what to do about protecting national security from the perceived threat from Middle Eastern terrorists in the short term (interim) while developing a policy that did not discriminate based on race. In other words, a fair and effective policy that was not discriminatory would take time to develop and implement, but there was concern that while that policy was being developed there was a potential security vulnerability. Kavanaugh stated that he favored a racially neutral response and was participating in the conversation about whether or not a temporary policy that might be discriminatory would be legal/effective as a stop-gap while a better permanent policy was developed. Nothing in these documents shows that he was advocating for the institution of discriminatory policy, but the simple fact that he was part of that conversation appears to be enough to convince people that he is evil.
politics	Did BLM or the KKK commit a terrorist act killing 5000+ civilians in a few hours? No? Ok, so fuck off. That was literally the dumbest analogy I've ever seen. You can tell the average age in this sub when they can't remember 9/11 and how terrible it was and how we didn't even know how to react. Not only were we profiling Muslims, we signed away our own rights to privacy with the patriot act. Everybody was scared shitless and here Kavanaughs saying he understands the need for profiling atm, but we need to work away from it. Christ, this whole smear campaign is cringy and ignorant as hell.
politics	So is this like a coordinated thing? Y’all are just all gonna find a way to say “it’s cool to be racist because 9/11”? And I wonder why I thought that was scary and started thinking about other places you could say “it’s cool to be racist because _____”. Almost like there was some form of precedent. Is it only terrorist attacks that make it okay to racially profile folks? Just wanna be clear where the line is.
politics	This couldn't be more true. I've been getting into heated debates with my family and some co-workers who are right leaning or claim to be independents and it always comes down to methods with them. It's like, well if you view things that way then I guess the Allies in WW2 and the Nazi's were the same because at the end of the day they were all just using guns and tanks. It's why you get these people who view antifa and the neo-nazi's they protest against in the same light.
politics	Certified Psychiatric Rehabilitation Practitioner here. I have seen hundreds of people be irrational, paranoid and angry until they took Clozaril or some other drug. It's totally true that it is hard to tell what will work and what won't but there are even DNA tests now that help with dosing, and with fewer side effects in newer drugs it's easier to "shop" for the right one/mix. And I wonder what large swath of depression, anxiety, mood disorder, addiction, schizophrenia, or paraphilia/phobia you think is bullshit.
politics	How is it that every single voter in this entire country didn't realize this from the very beginning? I knew it. Lots of people knew it. Hell, Putin knew it! What the fuck is wrong with the Evangelicals? What the fuck is wrong with Republicans in the congress? How can they stand by and facilitate a situation like this? Serious question. &#x200B; The fascists need to be voted out of power and kept out, permanently. Every life on this planet is on the line.
politics	I hate playing devil's advocate in this case, but simply observations based on news reports and general recordings is not going to yield a reliable and credible diagnosis. We could get 27 psychs to declare anything on anyone if we looked hard enough. &#x200B; Now, if he were evaluate in person by a team of three and all three said that he was dangerously unfit, then yes, that would be intensely alarming because they would have been able to really dig in and properly gauge his reactions and condition. At that point, we'd have some serious traction on a more well defined case for usage of 25a.
politics	I'm not pointing out that both sides do it to imply that it should be accepted. I'm trying to point at that both sides do it and both sides don't do it. It's not a uniquely conservative problem. I think that is important to consider, so as not to fall into the trap of assuming that someone is doing it just because they are expressing a viewpoint that is more conservative or liberal than yours.
politics	I do and don't. As things are, legally, right now they haven't done anything directly wrong (that we are aware of and that can be proven in court). They are operating to the extent that the law allows them. Lets pretend that democrats get the hail Mary and SWEEP all elections in november and now have full control of house and majority in senate. If they go after Fox then and there, it will be seen as political retribution and there will be an even worse uprising from the right than the tea party. Also, the laws that protect free speech and journalism are super important. The same laws protecting Fox right now are the same ones protecting CNN, NBC, CBS, WaPo, NYT, and the others. Notably, they allow all of them to break major stories without fear of reprisal form the government (Watch: The Post , it's great. Main plot is Streep's character learning to be her own woman, but the sub plot is about the WH trying to take down print news to stop the pentagon papers from being published) Right now, FNC's biggest thing is that they are legally being very grey as to what's news and what's commentary. The best way to fight that is to change the laws regarding how news and news stations operate. I don't mean to advocate for adding punishments. I mean to advocate for requiring ALL news sources to fully and clearly separate news and commentary/editorial. There should be no mistake in anyone's mind that O'Reily was commentary, not news. There should never be a question as to who is a real anchor/reporter and who is a pundit. Do that and you will do a lot to stop this downward spiral of misinformation because while Fox is the most guilty of it, other stations still do it to a lesser degree. Also, when news sources like breitbart and townhall are allowed to sling propaganda and call it news, we slowly loose the ability to understand what is real and what is lies or spin. &#x200B; [Here's some Jon Stewart taking down two pundits so hard that CNN had to cancel their show](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE&t=110s)
politics	Don't worry, they will be, telling everyone everything is fine and falling off the cliff is actually a feeling of exhilaration from how much winning Trump's presidency is doing. In all honesty though I think even Fox News is realising. Fox & Friends recently had their legal expert on and he pretty blatantly told them about an instance of Republican corruption within the Trump administration with Chris Collins committing insider trading to call his son re an Australian biotech company during his visit to the White House. The C-SPAN camera picked up the phone call, so there's clear evidence. Fox & Friends tried to play it off as not that big of a deal (despite the legal expert saying otherwise) but this contradicts Trump's tweet on the situation a few days ago, wherein he said authorities were investigating Chris Collins in an "Obama-era investigation", implication being it was partisan and pre-Trump. The crime occurred on June 22, 2017.
politics	Hi there, MS in pseudoscience guy. I assure I am in fact right, and nothing you said was even close to a refutation of my position. Notice how every response to my post shares that common theme? Denial and the complete absence of facts to back it up? Modern psychiatric ideas on personality disorders are no different from Freud's bullshit or Jung's fantasies in terms of their validity. Sorry you devoted your life to psuedoscientific bullshit, it's not surprising to me that you would have some difficulty accepting that. Homeopaths feel the same way when they are questioned. All the best!
politics	Well, my family (and I'm sure lots of other Trump voters) all thought Trump was not fit for office, my dad even said "he's a buffoon who shouldn't be in charge of anything". But he still voted for him. They voted for him because they got convinced by the rest of the republicans and conservatives on the news that said things like "he will have lots of smart and experienced people around him to make decisions and run things" and "it's just an act, he's not serious, don't take him literally". And they believed that Hillary as president was the worst possible thing that could ever happen to the country, again, thanks to the Republican party drilling that into voters brains.
politics	> I mean to advocate for requiring ALL news sources to fully and clearly separate news and commentary/editorial. There should be no mistake in anyone's mind that O'Reily was commentary, not news. There should never be a question as to who is a real anchor/reporter and who is a pundit. This means nothing without a move toward civic responsibility from people who currently get their news from conspiracy theories on facebook and whichever talking head is yeehawing concentration camps the hardest. [PBS Newshour](https://www.youtube.com/user/PBSNewsHour) is already the most unbiased, newsiest news show in the country and they don't watch it because it doesn't have a fun death cult attached to it. The country is imploding because we're now two generations into the television turning 30-something percent of the country into rabid idiots and one generation into computers and them becoming rabid idiots with communities. No institutional change is going to bring those people back into the fold because we've spent the past century looting the rest of the world so that we could grow fat and stare without consequence into the abyss. Now it's staring back at us.
politics	> What the fuck is wrong with the Evangelicals? They are taught/brainwashed to have blind faith since they were born. >What the fuck is wrong with Republicans in the congress? Money. Same thing that is wrong with Democrats in congress. >How can they stand by and facilitate a situation like this? Because "their guy" is in power. Same thing that Democrats would do if "their guy" was in power. The evidence that the Democrats would do the same thing if "their guy" was in power is that there is no talk from the Democrats about removing/revoking the extra powers Congress have given the president since the 9/11 attacks. They don't want to remove the powers because they know "their guy" will be in office eventually.
politics	>The country is imploding because we're now two generations into the television turning 30-something percent of the country into rabid idiots and one generation into computers and them becoming rabid idiots with communities. That's conjecture. Plain and simple. The same was said about radio. Before that, the same was said about books and how kids spend all their time reading sensationalist stories and will never learn to face the real world (this was said in the late 1800's). &#x200B; I'm not saying the internet is the greatest thing since sliced bread nor am I saying that it is infallible. You've taken my position and twisted it to make your own counter argument that was only tangentially related to the topic. &#x200B; Next, just because YOU think milennials and generation z are complete losses and should be written off doesn't make them go away. They have a value and presence in society that is unique to their ages and approaches to issues. Those two generations currently make up about 151 MILLION people. That's about 40% of the US population. The rest is split between X's, Boomers, Silent, and Greatest. So regardless of how little you think of them and how much you hate them, you're going to have to accept that they're here and they have a different way of doing things. &#x200B; Our approach to how law works has to be updated. If you go and read through some of the old US Code, it's arcane. I'm not saying complex, I'm saying arcane. Title 17USC had to have a massive update in 2000 with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because the laws never listed software or digital materials as copyright-able, nor did it say that downloading copies of movies/music/etc via digital systems was illegal. That's why it was the golden age of online piracy. The DMCA updated the laws to deal with a new form of law breaking that the government had never conceived of before. It found a problem and dealt with it. But, they could have taken your approach and just threw up their hands in angers and harrumphed and rabbled and did nothing. Luckily they changed and acted. &#x200B; Stop throwing innocent people under the bus because YOU are choosing to be too short sighted to consider new and innovative ways to combat the rampant and blatant misuse of our mass communication systems.
politics	“Assessed” my ass. From article, they assessed based on “his public statements”. As an actual qualified Psychiatrist myself, I can say an assessment is not done via remote reading or listening to a person’s words. It is extremely suspect and ethically ambiguous at best for this “professional” to come out with this and at this exact moment. Trump’s willful behavior and personality traits do not an illness make, regardless. This is important as an illness would imply responsibility and ownership do not fall on Trump. Yet, behavior and personality do. Trump acts this way volitionally; let’s not obfuscate his responsibility for his actions.
politics	I'm not talking about a generational gap so much as a sourcing gap. Some people have a healthy intake of news- not news I agree with ideologically but news that is well-sourced, critically sound, and varied in its perspectives. That's why I come to this subreddit, it aggregates a lot of quality sources that add up to the common truth and that challenge my own biases. The people I'm describing aren't necessarily old or young or virtuous or deviant or belonging to any other group as a whole, they're just lazy. They jump on poorly sourced news, a handful of perspectives, heavy ideological biases on both sides of the aisle, and don't make any effort to take a critical look at the world or challenge their beliefs. We built a society that insulates these people and enables them. We underfund and make pariahs of the systems that combat them. I'm not being a luddite, professionally right now I provide the internet to many of these people and I'm a cyberneticist before I'm a socialist, but the consumption habits of media and social trends formed through technology are things that do have very real-world consequences. We're suffering the end result of people who only ever fed their base impulses as the society that rewards them for doing so.
politics	I live in the bay and I agree the housing situation here is absurd. I love california, and plan to get a huge California tattoo (lol) but I agree housing costs here are unethical and should be dealt with by the law. We need rent control. It should be illegal to pay rent in California to foreign companies. After 2008, we were colonized. I'm being succinct, not dramatic here. Thousands and thousands of people work everyday to pay more than half their salary to enrich China. I don't have beef with Chinese people but that situation is not ok. My work should enrich my local economy more than some CEO across an ocean.
politics	LOL if you think housing in CA is a free market. Progressives have banded together with NIMBYs to oppose density under the pretense of preventing gentrification. A shortage of new housing caused by obstructive planning policy is a real issue. This in turn raises housing prices more than a city like Seattle, which faces similar demand increase but a shallower price curve. It actually worsens gentrification effects. It also has huge effects on the ability to build usable mass transit.
politics	Nothing wrong with it, you're 100% right. The state hasn't done anything wrong in this regard, but also they need to make it cheaper/easier to build new housing. Homeowners allover have been riding the wave of their house prices increasing and fight against any new housing, and AirBnB has caused a lot of housing to be taken off the market in favor of rental. It's a supply and demand problem which needs to be solved with more housing, and better public transport. It's going to cause many people to groan, but this is the solution.
politics	Dude, your middle class citizens are moving from environmentally places to live like the Bay Area and flooding the high mountains and low deserts where there simply is not enough water to sustain the population because the rich liberals of California don’t want anything with an elevator in their coastal community. They use police forces to drive away the poor, using the Golden Gate Bridge as the the entrance to their gated community. The environmentalists who fight all development in San Francisco mean millions of people must now be warmed in winter and cooled in summer. The fuckups of California export their problems to the rest of the mountain west, and everyone resents the fuck out of you for making their hometown too expensive to live because they didn’t have a house in Cali to sell.
politics	Housing situation is not exclusively greedy landlords but large scale NIMBYism from the boomers (surprise!). Outright refusal to build affordable large height apartments in literally any corner of the state. In all of California there are a few high rise offices in LA, SF, OC and SD. Chicago or Seattle must have more than all of California. Rich Californians don't want poor people to get housing in their area since it pushes down their property value.
politics	Building high rises reduces competitive pressure of the people who would be living in those high rises with the people who live in existing housing. Not building new housing results in: 1) Those people choosing not to move there resulting in stagnating job growth 2) The people who do move there being the richest who can outbid others, resulting in displacement of existing people. They joined together because it is in their short-term self-interest. They don’t represent interests of people who are excluded from moving to the state who otherwise would help grow the economy.
politics	Those home owners don’t own the land down the street which was sold by another home owner who wants to allow someone to build taller housing on their land. You have a strange fascination with the use of the term capitalism. The existing system is an application of capitalism with regulation. It is not the definition of what capitalism is. All squares are shapes, not all shapes are squares. Norway and China operate in capitalistic economies by your definition because many aspects of their economies are privately owned.
politics	I hope you don't think I like this situation. This is just facts. It would bee great if the state would step in. But serious question. Do you think they will make it retro-active, AKA lowering rents? I don't think so. In other words, if the state doesn't do something soon, it is really going to be fucked up here. Second serious question. Have you heard Dems in CA make any noise on this front, because I m not, although I will admit, I am behind the orange curtain down here.
politics	Wait, are you saying China and Norway don’t operate under partial capitalistic societies because of course they do. Your understanding of what capitalism is needs some more in depth knowledge. Socialistic democracies still operate in a capitalistic system just more regulated. If you’re talking about only countries that don’t regulate their economies when you’re talking about capitalism then there are zero capitalist countries on earth. I’m really confused by your last statement.
politics	Affordable housing is low. Because everything is over priced thanks to foreign investors buying up houses for summer homes or to rent. Rents never same down during the recession. Home owner got to refinance or were foreclosed. The foreclosures were bought up by banks and sold to the lower bidders, who then turned them around and rented them at the current rate, not a lowered rate. The entire recession has fucked renters here.
politics	Rent control is NOT the answer, it’s pretty much universally agreed upon by economists that rent control exacerbates rising housing costs. We need to BUILD. It’s simple supply and demand. There is not enough supply to meet demand, so we need more supply. We see this rule happening in places like downtown LA, where they’re building quickly and there are thousands of units in the pipeline, so you see deals down there like two months free rent, amenities, and slower rent growth than other areas of the city. Unfortunately the low-rise or single family home feel of many parts of CA’s cities is so deeply ingrained and defended by NIMBYs that we can’t create the infrastructure to support the high density needs of the population. And if this rent control measure is put into place, developers are going to be even more wary of building, making the problem 10x worse as rent supply continues to fail to meet demand. So rents will just keep going up. I get it though, really. I understand why people want and love rent control, it’s an incredibly alluring deal on a personal level even if it’s bad for a city as a whole. I’ve lived in a rent control unit for 4 years, and I always joke that I’ll die in this apartment before I move bc I pay south central prices to live in one of the wealthiest areas of the city. But my area is also incredibly expensive BECAUSE so much of it is rent controlled—go 2 miles east and prices drop precipitously. Any unit that isn’t rent controlled is like $3000! Which is insane! And you also see very little housing construction, which makes those units even more expensive. It’s a self defeating circle that ultimately favors the few who are locked in and rarely move (like myself) and pushes everyone else away who isn’t wealthy.
politics	Again, why is supply low? You haven’t answered. Because developers are not allowed to build. If high rises were built some of the foreign investors would buy those condos instead of the existing houses. If they are buying up houses and leaving them empty, that’s a separate issue. I am 100% in favor of vacancy taxes like Vancouver and repealing Prop 13. Otherwise, a foreign landlord is functionally the same as a local one for someone looking to rent. Rents didn’t come down much because supply was still not meeting demand. If rents were not lowered enough, they’d stay empty which loses investor money. The number of people willing to invest is not infinite, but if you don’t satisfy demand prices go up.
politics	I’m not. I’m saying nimbysm is a part of capitalism. You’re arguing for totally unregulated construction codes which California has resoundingly rejected. So what’s YOUR point? You’re basically saying that anyone regulating anyone else’s land is anticapitalism or something but we already established through your rando sidetrack to China and Norway that regulation doesn’t make things not capitalism so really you’re trying to argue both sides of a situation now. Capitalism has regulation. Nimbysm is a part of that regulation as the people that own the land help craft regulations and laws on how things can and can’t be built in their neighborhood. That’s still capitalism which is what this entire stupid argument is about so unless you can refute that I’m not sure what you’re doing here.
politics	NIMBYism is a factor in the current housing market. It is not a capitalist concept. Squares are shapes and have 4 corners. Shapes don’t all have 4 corners. I’m not arguing for 100% free market in housing. I’m arguing against describing the regulatory aspects of the CA housing market as capitalist. A capitalist economy can include regulation, but regulation isn’t in the definition of capitalism. Seattle and Vancouver are examples of housing markets that aren’t 100% capitalist that have less dysfunction than CA. No one claims those cities have poor or unsafe housing. They don’t allow neighborhood groups to endlessly appeal and delay projects that 100% follow zoning, environmental, and safety laws. In many CA cities they are allowed to ask for reviews on factors that aren’t written into law. This reduces the number of housing units built and increases costs and uncertainty.
politics	Have you ever looked at a construction budget for multifamily housing in Southern California? Have you ever done the math and risk analysis on investment (time and effort and money to build) for these properties? It is not only unwise but nearly impossible for the builder to build housing with lower than market-rate rents. Land, labor and material costs are too high to support buildings that exclusively have affordable housing rental rates. They literally would not be able to pay back their lenders or contractors, let alone turn a profit that reflects the risk they’ve taken on throughout the construction process (which is the riskiest business plan in real estate). And I know you aren’t suggesting that developers build at a financial loss out of the kindness of their hearts. This is the reality, and enforcing a higher concentration of affordable housing in new construction will simply mean that the numbers won’t pan out for a developer and they’ll decide not to build. You build for middle and upper class people who can afford to pay the rents that support construction costs and a risk-adjusted return on investment, then lower and other middle class people move into their old housing. Rent will never go down unless there is some catastrophic event, the goal has to be slow rental growth and increase wages.
politics	And how do you plan to do that? Reduce or cap construction worker wages? Have the state tell land or property owners that they cannot sell their property above a certain price? Tell materials sellers that they cannot sell their materials above a certain price? Tell banks that they’re not allowed to make a spread off of their loans? What is the state going to do to change the fact that $2000 studios and $2500 1 bed rental rates are the only price that supports the costs of construction?
politics	I'm glad building works in LA, but you literally cannot build on the peninsula anymore. We are already mostly built on dangerous land fill. Most of San Francisco is built on literal garbage, so we can't even add more floors to the existing buildings because the foundation can't handle it. I have pondered the possibility of barge apartment complexes, basically gigantic houseboats. The bay area absolutely needs rent control. We cannot create more supply.
politics	This is a good solution for places that physically can build more. Much of the bay area, and the San Francisco peninsula in particular, literally cannot build at greater density. Much of the peninsula is land fill. Someone dared to build a high rise condo where they shouldn't have, thinking exactly as you are, and it's tilting dangerously. It's already tilted enough that the city can't decide how to safely demolish it.
politics	San Francisco is 1/3 the population density of Paris and half the density of Brooklyn. Neither of those cities are dominated by 40+ story buildings. What they do have is plenty of 4-6 story multi-family dwellings. SF is dominated by 2-3 story buildings and planning processes that make each new project difficult. Therefore developers only choose to build the most profitable high rises. Fix that problem and build lots of 4-6 stories.
politics	>I hope you don't think I like this situation. This is just facts. The way you framed it made it sound like you don't think CA's government bares responsibility for the problem. I think they do. "The market did it" just means the government hasn't been regulating the market like it should. >But serious question. Do you think they will make it retro-active, AKA lowering rents? I don't think so. In other words, if the state doesn't do something soon, it is really going to be fucked up here. I think they could make it retro-active, but they likely won't. Waiting for CA's government to act will mean it's too little, too late. It's unacceptable. What we really need is a powerful tenants' union. One that could go to bat for ideas like rent control and affordable housing, provide legal protection for tenants from slumlords and abusive contracts that violate tenants' rights, and counter the powerful landlord and real-estate lobby in the state government. >Second serious question. Have you heard Dems in CA make any noise on this front, because I m not, although I will admit, I am behind the orange curtain down here. Progressive Dems have been speaking out against rising rents and gentrification, but most Dems are content to ignore the issue. I think it's mostly a grass-roots thing at this point.
politics	Even if every building in the city was only 3 stories, increasing levels by 33 to 100% would not come close to fixing our economic problem. The buildings that are 3 stories are mostly short because they can't be built higher anyway. It's no small thing to add three stories to a building erected on a landfill. The marina shouldn't even have any one story buildings, and it's already an entire neighborhood with mostly 3 story buildings. We need rent control. Downvotes aren't going to change that. And just to be clear, I support building more housing anywhere it is safe. The peninsula has the somewhat unique problem of already being nearly maxed out.
politics	Every building isn’t 3 stories. Many are 2 or less, especially on the west side. The buildings that are 2-3 stories were mostly built before 1940 and construction techniques have long progressed. You cite problems with one 50 story building to shoot down 6-story buildings, while other tall buildings are doing fine. There are seismic safety standards in the building codes for a reason. Seismic standards are not the reason 6-story buildings are hard to get built in the Bay Area. Bad zoning laws and NIMBYs increasing costs and uncertainty are the reason. Rent control isn’t going to stop rich people from wanting to move to the area. It will just increase incentives for shady landlords to do underhanded things to screw renters and take money from people willing to pay lots more.
politics	There are a TON of low density and single family homes in SF. Of course tearing all that down would change the character of the city dramatically, that’s what there is. There’s also Oakland, Marin, and other surrounding areas that could physically support significantly higher density but don’t allow it from what I can tell. The Bay Area is right fucked though. Silicon Valley wants it to be Manhattan while at the same time everyone else is trying to prevent it from becoming Manhattan, which has in turn backfired and made average prices HIGHER than Manhattan now. Idk, it seems to me like the cities should start city planning like NYC did before WW1. Tearing down homes and building as dense as possible. But I think we all know that won’t happen so shit will just get worse.
politics	The tall buildings that are doing fine are on better ground. You're acting like every square foot of the peninsula is the same when it is certainly not. Just because a high-rise in soma is safe doesn't mean we can build 6 stories in the marina. That's just not true. If it was even somewhat safe, it would be done by now. (It is not true that most buildings in the city are 3 stories or less. That may be the case in Daly city, and the good news is that we can build more there.) If we had rent control and legal protections from paying rent to foreign companies, we would be able to address the present and long-term problem you mention of fabulously wealthy people refusing to build more. There is money to be made in creating abundant housing. Just less money than the current unethical situation. And I'm fine with that. Let them see a cut in their profits. They will still make profit. I don't buy for a second their belly aching, and I don't see why their interests should rule over the rest of the population. Edit for clarity: Even so, those new additions would not be able to be in the city proper. Which I am fine with. I just don't have a problem using rent control as a cudgel against greed.
politics	> The tall buildings that are doing fine are on better ground You mean the buildings right next to it? And all the tall buildings that survived the ‘89 quake built on landfill downtown where in there was water in the 1800s and at the exact spots where old ships have been dug up? > If it was even somewhat safe, it would be done by now. This is a blatantly ignorant assumption. You act like there are no barriers other than safety to the development process. > If we had rent control and legal protections from paying rent to foreign companies, we would be able to address the present and long-term problem you mention of fabulously wealthy people refusing to build more. There is money to be made in creating abundant housing. Why would fabulously wealthy investors build if they will lose money on rent? If there is money to be made in abundant housing why are they not building enough now? You seem to know the answers to these things. In what way would stricter rent control encourage more building than the little amount there is now?
politics	You don't want to listen, and funny enough you did not make any suggestions to address those problems yourself. I don't really have more time to donate to people who defend the rich over everybody else. They wouldn't lose money. They would still make money. But right now nothing is incentivizing them to change. I don't really see a point in arguing with you in circles. Have a nice, mad day.
politics	> funny enough you did not make any suggestions to address those problems yourself. Actually, I clearly stated the planning process and NIMBYs are the problem. Streamline the process to get 6-stories built and you get more housing. I 100% agree rich investors won’t lose money. They’re rational people who will choose to build even less than they do now, and focus on only the most profitable. Their money will flow to places like Portland, Seattle, Denver, etc. They’re losing nothing. The Bay Area economy loses because no one is willing to move there due to lack of housing. Either that or the rich people push existing people out. Either way, fewer people and fewer jobs. It’s not a zero sum game. Allowing developers to build more housing is a win-win. They will make money in SF instead of Seattle, and SF gets more housing supply. Instead they will make money elsewhere and SF loses.
politics	You can’t build a sustainable subway system without density. Cost per mile is too high if not enough people live within walking distance of stations. The best subway system in the US is NYC. Manhattan is 4x the density of SF and 8x of LA. Brooklyn and the Bronx are 2x denser than SF and 4x LA. Lack of new housing due to rent control stagnates growth and turns places into Detroit if industry decides to leave.
politics	This is the only way the GOP is able to justify their racist agenda. False claims like this and the oft-repeated garbage "Illegals are draining welfare" are demonstrably false and showcases their bias against minorities and people of color. The facts show that illegal immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than American Citizens and that they are unable to draw any form of traditional welfare. The GOP is the party of lies and racism and they need to go. Libertarians such as myself advocate for drastically increasing legal immigration, if not calling for open borders directly. Immigration is what Made America Great in the First Place. Sources: https://www.cato.org/blog/white-houses-misleading-error-ridden-narrative-immigrants-crime https://econofact.org/do-undocumented-immigrants-overuse-government-benefits
politics	>But the problem of Mexican illegal immigration and Irish illegal immigration are not even in the same ballpark You're right. Mexican illegal immigration is on the rapid decline while visa overstays currently make up the majority of new undocumented immigrants. > The CMS report, written by Robert Warren, a former director of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service’s statistics division, says 65 percent of net arrivals — those joining the undocumented population — from 2008 to 2015 were visa overstays And overall, they make up nearly half the undocumented population. > A Center for Migration Studies report estimates that 44 percent of those in living in the U.S. illegally in 2015 were visa overstays. https://www.factcheck.org/2018/06/illegal-immigration-statistics/
politics	enh it's more that they're fine with the brown people because they'll do the work white citizens wont do. Both sides at this point are fine with the exploitation of labor. Thats the big issue for the Dems' they pulled themselves so far to the neoliberal right triangulating that to even try to call them commies or socialists is pathetic. Everyone loves to hate the unions but they kept the balance for a good long while, then they got fat and lazy and became a trope. But business is gonna exploit, maximize profits and try to bend the rules to their advantage; its just the nature of the game. We just cant have the foxes guarding the henhouse and expect things to get better.
politics	Right because it’s Democrats who routinely fight against labor rights, collective bargaining, and minimum wage increases. You wouldn’t have to do both if you actually stopped businesses from exploiting undocumented workers. No ability to get a job means they don’t stay. Having a look the other way policy for decades and then turning around and acting like people just trying to have a better life are the real culprits is misplaced at best. It’s both immoral and bad policy. For a fraction of the price of building a wall and deporting millions you could get them to voluntarily leave by fining businesses through the roof for violations. Gee, I wonder why the pro-business at any cost party wants to blame the individual minorities and not the businesses who create and exploit the demand for undocumented workers???????? Get. Real.
politics	> Why not do both? And stop with the exploitation thing, it's liberals who constantly talk about how we need these brown people to do labor Americans won't do. It's like the go to Talking Point, liberals not wanting to give up our free slave labor. Absolute utter bullshit. The argument is not that we need brown people to do those jobs, the argument is that we need to pay Americans a decent living wage to do these jobs and that corporations should be held accountable for paying people slave wages. &#x200B;
politics	I don't really care if Elon smokes weed but he could have a fucking decency to come down from his ivory tower and enact a weed tolerant policy for all employees. Of course since he's also taking government money he might end up fucking himself pretty hard; the feds love pulling contracts from pot heads. But Elon has showed us that he is not a decent person. He is a thin skinned snowflake who baselessly accuses people of being pedos on twitter, and fires employees for smoking weed while he smokes weed.
politics	It might even be difficult to do so at Tesla, because of things like liability and insurance. I'm afraid that most companies will continue to enforce current marijuana restrictions until a reliable method is developed to determine if they are currently high. The problem with current testing methods is that it only tells you if you have used marijuana in the last few weeks, not necessarily if you are high right now. For an assembly line worker, or any other job, it is important you are not under the influence of drugs or alcohol, as you are working around machinery that could easily mangle or kill you if you lose your concentration.
politics	That sounds an awful lot like some hand wringing type of bullshit. Marijuana is moving into prescription drug territory in most places, and beyond that in CA. We already have all sorts of protocols for legal prescription drugs, and over the counter ones as well, that would disturb your ability to operate machinery, and we have managed to have workers be able to use those with out disrupting work hours. It is just demonizing weed because of heavily misguided federal policy.
politics	A policy that started as a means of making it legal to bust the head's of nixon's enemies. "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." &#x200B; \~ John Ehrlichman, Domestic policy chief for President Richard Nixon
politics	There are many prescription drugs that warn you not to take if you operate heavy machinery. If/when marijuana is actually prescribed by a doctor (which isn't how it's done right now with the medical community) I have no doubt it will include the same type of warning. That being said, if you use these prescription drugs and then operate heavy machinery without pre-clearance from your employer, you will likely be fired for violating company policy.
politics	It doesn’t do any good to phrase this as him being the one firing people. It’s a broad corporate policy that likely has to be in place in his industry. I think a lot people are ok with drug testing, when your job directly impacts the safety of others. His company likely has thousands of those types of employees. So what’s actually the problem here? It’s not flaming hypocrisy. It’s a policy that isn’t nuanced enough. But then again...if the people paying him say ALL staff needs to follow his policy, then his hands are tied. And these people don’t care if Musk smokes. They do care, however, if his employees as a whole do. This is how business works, unfortunately. Now...the respectful thing to do, then, would be for Musk to not break this rule in a public setting. That’s insensitive and bad optics. But it’s not the outrage people want it to be.
politics	I've always worked in nuclear power. I probably just have a high standard. A CEO of a company with a nuclear facility in the fleet who was seen smoking weed would lose their unescorted access forever. It's a permaban (with some exceptions like you jump through hoops for drug treatment ect) Ultimately, they couldn't set foot on site and would not be allowed certain decision making abilities. So, I typically think that if employees can't do it then neither can the leadership.
politics	I understand the frustration that drawing districts have, and gerrymandering does exist, but getting rid of districts isn't the solution because districts are meant to separate a state: Senate officials represent each district. The House on the other hand represents proportionally. The federal Congress is the same way. Each state is a district and the House is divided up proportionally. That said, the President does not represent the people. Never has. Never will. Therefore the President represents the majority of states to the outside world; it's up to a state how EC votes are divided and nobody wants to switch to proportional. Yes, we do need to rebalance the amount of EC votes since it hasn't been done in like 80 years, but making the president a popular vote elected official isn't the solution. He represents the direction the country as a whole is going. That means all 50 states; each with different laws, regulations, needs, and wants. All that said, it is my belief that the federal government is entirely too large. State governments need to make a resurgence so we rely less on hoping 49 other states think the same as we do.
politics	Well, in a weird way he is right, other than congress controls spending. The GOP wouldn't print enough money when we needed more money for the recovery, but they are fine with it now they are in power and can spend that money. A lot of times not borrowing when we need to is the bigger problem in America. It's not that we borrow money so much as how we spend the borrowed money. If you spend it wisely it will often pay for itself in time. Deficit spending or not, an investment return is not based off your debt to asset ratio and with the US net worth being over 250 trillion, we aren't dangerously in debt. The big problem with the debt is we keep borrowing money and getting poor returns. It's true that in the long term the debt will probably wind up not mattering much. The value of debt, money and commodities is all going to decline as labor and commodity extraction get automated over the decades. Money is based off labor and commodities more than anything and those are going to be made less important. Buying power itself declines and the rich people wind up losing the most because they are sitting on the most stuff, most of which can now be created for a fraction of the original price. Land will wind up being one of the few things we can't lower prices on.
politics	Well, "printing money" is what we did from 2008-2014*. The problem with Trump's idea is that it would lead to more inflation (much more than QE. QE mainly went to the already rich and "just" inflated the stock market), causing the Fed to raise interest rates faster (because they don't want profits of big corporations to go down even by a little), causing a lot more people and corporations to have trouble paying off their debts, which are much larger than they were in 2007. Causing the next financial crash to come sooner than it would otherwise. Not to mention all the emerging markets that have Dollar-denominated debt and are already having problems with current interest rates.
politics	>Man as someone who's looking to buy a house, I'd love it if it came sooner. There is no guarantee that housing prices will collapse. It is possible that a lot of rich people will decide that it is too risky for them to hold Dollars, so they will buy real estate instead. I am guessing that big equity firms like Blackstone will go on a buying spree because they are guaranteed to be bailed out by the government if something goes wrong anyway. Of course, the opposite can happen as well.
politics	As someone who tried to sell their house before the housing market started a recovery, THIS.... I had four buyers lined up, each within a week or (re-)listing.. and three of those failed to secure mortgages.. even after looking great on paper (pre-approval letters) prior to contracting with them. My mother and sister each sold their house during the same time.. each lost the first buyers as well for the same cause.
politics	That last housing bubble was 30 years in the making. Of course, it didn’t even really burst in a lot of places, and there is a lot of over-inflated property still out there. It’s possible that there could be a second wave of pretty much the same bubble bursting, but it won’t be anything like last time, I don’t think. More likely it’s still a good time to buy, especially if you’re not looking for an investment but rather somewhere to live.
politics	We never really fully recovered from the last one. The rich did, but the rest of us are still in a poorer position than before the 2008 crash. With the Republicans already raiding the federal piggy bank, the next crash will be devastating. With Trump at the helm, we might be primed for a Great Depression 2.0. On a personal note, I'm worried I'll lose my house this time, and my mom on Social Security and Medicare might not survive the inevitable Republican austerity measures.
politics	If I were you, I'd look into snapping up a foreclosed home now because interest rates are still fairly low. Foreclosures are still happening with some frequency (although not nearly to the same extent as they were in '08 to about '13). Depending on where you are, home buyers may not be over leveraged like they were back in the late aughts. In my city, many homes are being bought with cash over asking price. Meaning, if the home owners aren't over-leveraged (i.e. they have no home loan), there's no pressure for them to sell the house (or lose it to foreclosure) if there's a downturn in the economy. Now, your city may be different. There may be lots of people who have taken out massive loans for a house, gambling that the house will appreciate beyond what they bought it at, and they can sell to come out on top. If that's the case, yes, wait for the crash. You'll be able to get a foreclosure at rock-bottom prices.
politics	Your understanding of quantitative easing is not correct. It's not just printing money -- the government was buying, in addition to government bonds, substantial amounts of mortgage-backed securities to relieve privately held debt and increase liquidity in the system. During the Great Recession, there was a huge liquidity problem and inflation was dropping dangerously because of the lack of economic activity. Quantitative easing was enacted to try and release the stranglehold of toxic securities on economic activity. Its correlation with increasing stock market gains has to do with other sectors of the economy absolutely collapsing and no alternatives for capital to be invested. You can see this in the absolutely abysmal increase in inflation for the half decade that QE was in effect. The economy was not growing at any appreciable speed. You can argue all you want about why Wall Street was never prosecuted (they absolutely should have been), or why there was little financial intervention that directly benefited citizens (there should have been), but Ben Bernanke had the right idea with QE. I remember there being huge protests about the QE programs, but I would even argue that QE had a bigger impact on saving the economy than TARP (aside from the AIG-specific bailout).
politics	It does right now, because the Treasury/Congress choose to issue new debt in the amount identical to the deficit. But this is a self-imposed limit. The government could create $10 trillion and use it to pay off its debt, but not issue $10 trillion in new debt as it would right now. The question is if that is a smart idea. I say no, unless you also change a lot of other things, including how new money is created and doing something about huge private and corporate debt.
politics	\[eyeroll\] If you think that "printing money" is a problem of 2008 to 2014 then you're clearly just another ill-informed republican fool. First, massive deficit spending post-WWII started with Reagan way back in 1984. He managed to oversee the tripling of the national debt. Second, printing money is what the government is SUPPOSED to do. It's how you get dollars to spend. We're about 4000 years past the barter system so money is the reality of the economic world. Third, printing money only becomes a problem when the money supply doesn't match the economy. Too many dollars leads to inflation. Too few dollars leads to recession. Fourth, printing money does indeed lead to a reduced debt by reducing the value of the dollar through inflation. It is, in effect, a hidden tax on everybody who earns or spends dollars.
politics	>Your understanding of quantitative easing is not correct. It's not just printing money -- the government was buying, in addition to government bonds, substantial amounts of mortgage-backed securities to relieve privately held debt and increase liquidity in the system. Yes, that is what the Fed did with the money it created ("printed"). I wasn't arguing about what was done with the money, I was just stating that it was done. >but Ben Bernanke had the right idea with QE Nope. It was the wrong idea. On multiple levels. I am not saying that the banks shouldn't be saved, but how Bernanke did it wasn't the only option available. It was just the best option for him, his friends and his future employers. >but I would even argue that QE had a bigger impact on saving the economy than TARP (aside from the AIG-specific bailout). Undoubtedly.
politics	Oh, you’re in Europe?! Yeah, never mind. I lived in Europe for a while and looked in to buying a house. Yikes!! Real-estate markets are very different from pretty much all other markets, they’re all on their own cycles, they don’t really impact each-other much at all. Maybe that’s changing in Europe with how much easier it is for y’all to move around, I don’t know. But your situation is going to be completely different from ours. You might consider doing what I did, if you’re any good with tools. I built my own house on the weekends over the course of a year and a half. I was lucky in that I inherited some land, and I was lucky in that there is virtually zero building code out here in rural Texas. But the mark-up on housing is outrageous. Any way you can find to put a little sweat-equity in to the process can save you a bundle.
politics	>If you think that "printing money" is a problem of 2008 to 2014 Where did I even say that? >First, massive deficit spending post-WWII started with Reagan way back in 1984. He managed to oversee the tripling of the national debt. Indeed. >Second, printing money is what the government is SUPPOSED to do. It's how you get dollars to spend. We're about 4000 years past the barter system so money is the reality of the economic world. Indeed. >Third, printing money only becomes a problem when the money supply doesn't match the economy. Too many dollars leads to inflation. Too few dollars leads to recession. Indeed. >Fourth, printing money does indeed lead to a reduced debt by reducing the value of the dollar through inflation It depends on what you do with the money. Most of the QE money went into the stock market and inflated the value of stocks. Its effect on actual consumer prices was much lower than people expected. Because the money was mostly given to the already rich.
politics	It will be started by a mass default on student loans. It will enter personal debt which will crash the major credit cards, who will then start restrictions people's limits, which leads to less buying power, which leads to fewer jobs, more bankruptcies, and more foreclosures. Then you have even fewer jobs, rinse repeat. This next crash will be awful. Or it wont, nobody actually knows. I'm sure there are cheerier ways the next crash goes.
politics	Yep. Well, consider the fixing-up option. It’s not that hard. Well, I mean, it’s hard, but you don’t really need a ton of skills. Neighbors will lend you tools, give you way more advice than you want or need, and can frequently be put to work for beer. I know y’all like beer. Plus, you get to make things just how you like them and have something that you can take real pride in when you're done.
politics	I remember asking my mom about this when I was in 5th grade and reading about the “deficit” in my current events class (this would’ve been 1991). All these years later, I remember her explanation of inflation: the rarer something is, the more valuable it is. If we print lots and lots of money, it’s no longer as valuable as it used to be and now it will require more to purchase the same thing. I was in fifth grade. I understood this concept. Someone get the president a fifth grade teacher. Jesus Christ.
politics	When this all went down, I worked at a big US based white goods manufacture. Daily operations where/are funded out of carry trade - i.e., short term loans to provide ready cash to make payroll, buy steel, pay the electric bills, etc. Business is very seasonal, so there are times when cash flow out exceeds cashflow in. But the fundamentals of the company are sound. Multi Billion dollar revenue and they almost always made the street predictions on top line numbers. Our banks where principally out of the EU, but US banks basically shut all that down for a couple weeks / months (it's been a long time). If the Fed didn't start doing the QE, then a \lot\ of US brick and mortar companies would have shut down. \*I'm not going to excuse the lack of action on personal debt though, the Government really left people out to dry that one account. Thanks for nothing Tea Party hacks!
politics	Certain types of deficits can pay for themselves by creating enough productivity, but nothing Trump is doing is making that productivity climb enough and no way is he going to collect remotely close to enough to pay back the deficit. And gambling with the reliability of your credit by holding two shutdowns and threatening a third due at the end of the month will make the interest on the debt high enough to cancel out any gains.

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