alvvayson

I agree. Very much like Reddit in the early days.

Also, the level of civility and intellect in the comments is relatively high.

That's the point. Your problem is that a lot of voters aren't affected by wage growth. So politicians don't feel the pressure to enact wage growth.

All those senior people will actually vote for the guy who keeps wage growth in check.

In the land of the blind, the one eye is king.

Sure, it could be better, but it isn't better anywhere else.

And it is $17 in 2030.

Here from Europe, let me recommend one thing we do well: we link our equivalent of social security to the average wage growth, not to inflation.

This ensures that all voters benefit from wage growth. And thus all voters demand the same thing from the politicians.

It's not their fault, but they definitely chose to prioritize supporting a genocide above pleasing their most fervent base.

They had polling data for months showing the impopularity of it and the low polling numbers. We all saw the polling data.

They broke what many considered to be an election promise in 2020 that Biden would be a one term. And they robbed their voters of an open primary, most likely because they knew a progressive populist would easily beat Harris. Harris has never appealed to a broad audience.

But even so, Harris got an enormous boost when she replaced Biden. All she had to do was distance herself from his unpopular positions. She should have criticized Biden on inflation and working class income stagnation. She should have let a Palestinian talk at the DNC. She should have met Arab Americans in Dearborn. And she should have voiced criticism on Netanyahu to get the hostages home and stop the killing. Heck, even Biden had more class when handling upset protestors.

But she dropped the ball on all those important issues.

It's political incompetence and a sell-out to corporate interests.

I'm sure that someone more savvy like Pete Buttigieg would have easily beaten Trump.

But still, it's not their fault. Everything Trump is doing is his fault.

Bingo.

The idea that CEO's will put morals over profits is hopelessly naive.

If you want companies to act morally, you need to implement legislation and be willing to enforce that legislation. And not small million dollar fines, serious fines like 10% of revenue and personal liability and even jail time for executives.

But the American public only cares about having the stock market go up. They don't care about their data.

Correct, so what China does is ship almost completed stuff to Vietnam, they do the final piece of manufacturing and export that.

It's not as easy as a transshipment, but for the longer term it works out.

Good point.

It is curious to see though. Putin owns Trump, but Xi Jinping owns Putin. And both of them have Iran as a key ally.

So I really wonder how this all will play out. Trump talks a lot, but his leash is short.

He will backtrack when new inflation figures hit. It might take 3-6 months, but China definitely has the stronger hand, by far.

Trump can avoid the inflation by allowing Chinese goods to come through countries like Vietnam or Mexico. This is basically the status quo.

It allows Trump to save face without huge inflation for US consumers.

That's what they're trying to do.

It makes most sense to switch the email+office users to Linux and reserve MacOs and Windows for users who really need to run specific applications.

More or less, yes.

Germany and France have been trying this for more than two decades.

But every time, there is pressure from the US government (the stick) and Microsoft arranges a short-term deal to make Windows cheaper than the cost of transitioning (the carrot).

But this time, the EU is serious about decoupling from the US, so I think it will actually happen.

We have long passed the point where lobbying and bribing were just doing your fiduciary duty.

And indeed, it seems we are back to feudalism and you have to pay tribute to the divine king and kiss his ring.