Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Posted (edited)
  On 10/18/2023 at 2:35 AM, MC Fresh Breath said:

According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, it would cost $20 billion to end homelessness in the United States.

Expand  

Not exactly.  That figure was released in 2012 and was the estimated cost per year to expand the voucher program...and was a low-ball number even then.

  Quote

Current estimates of the costs of building affordable housing in major metropolitan areas range from around $150,000 per unit in Atlanta to a high of $550,000 per unit in Southern California. Constructing more than 3.5 million new units — Ward’s estimate for the affordable housing units needed to fill the voucher shortfall — could cost $1.3 trillion, Ward said. 

Expand  

Link

What's not taken into account in the article are the reasons why many of these people are homeless.  Namely drugs, alcohol, and/or mental illness, so you can add universal healthcare into the equation.

 

Edited by DixonHur
Forgot the link
  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 1
Posted
  On 10/17/2023 at 4:18 PM, Disco Strangler said:

Washington Post has a great calculator that will tell you where you rank statistically.  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2023/middle-class-income/

Expand  

 

  On 10/17/2023 at 3:52 PM, elfenix said:

Upper earners having no idea they're upper earners is always one of my favorites things on surly

Expand  

It’s amazing the % of upper class people who genuinely believe they are upper-middle or even middle class.  Similarly, it’s amazing how ignorant conservatives are on the current state of the economy; if you ask them to throw out numbers on unemployment, GDP growth, wage growth, or even current inflation, they’d be WAY off.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted (edited)
  On 10/17/2023 at 8:04 PM, Dnaguy said:
But this also points to just how ridiculous the ‘wealthy’ or ‘rich’ have become.
Im considered an upper earner. But between the need to save for retirement, housing prices, medical insurance costs, saving for college, etc. I still feel squeezed.
You don’t get off the hamster wheel until you die it seems.
Just looking at my parents, it’s crazy how it’s only now in their late 60’s when they have eyesight of their mortgage being paid off, now on Medicare, finally paying off the loans they took out for my brother education, and not buying a new care for the last 10 years (two paid off cars) that they are ‘feeling’ somewhat ‘ahead’.
They don’t go on vacations though outside of visiting grandkids.
That’s amazing for a large amount of the population…. But for two college educated people with two kids who went to college on scholarships and some GI bill relief, I can’t see it as anything but kind of disappointing in a way.
it's almost like a government whose primary civil objective over the past 70 years is to get people to buy ever larger homes on ever larger plots of land in neighborhoods ever further from city centers with a knock on effect of all but forcing people to buy cars makes even people who should feel well-off feel like poors.*
Spoiler
  Reveal hidden contents

 


Edited by elfenix
  • Fuck Around and Find Out 1
Posted
  On 10/18/2023 at 2:20 AM, MC Fresh Breath said:
Expand  

I realize Ukraine has essentially no economy and their financial situation is in shambles, but Israel has $200B in foreign reserves. Why are we always on the hook to give them free shit? And yes I know this is the wrong time to ask that blah blah blah. 

  • Rage+1 1
Posted
  On 10/18/2023 at 2:48 PM, Boss Hogg said:

I realize Ukraine has essentially no economy and their financial situation is in shambles, but Israel has $200B in foreign reserves. Why are we always on the hook to give them free shit? And yes I know this is the wrong time to ask that blah blah blah. 

Expand  

agreed

Posted
  On 10/18/2023 at 2:48 PM, Boss Hogg said:

I realize Ukraine has essentially no economy and their financial situation is in shambles, but Israel has $200B in foreign reserves. Why are we always on the hook to give them free shit? And yes I know this is the wrong time to ask that blah blah blah. 

Expand  

If you adjust it with inflation, we have given them around $310 BILLIONS since 1948 or so. They sure love the free money and we don’t get much in return…  

Posted
  On 10/18/2023 at 5:16 PM, Gengs1 said:

If you adjust it with inflation, we have given them around $310 BILLIONS since 1948 or so. They sure love the free money and we don’t get much in return…  

Expand  

Not much but the purchase of our machines of war. It’s a big business, lots of lobbyists. 

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted
  On 10/18/2023 at 5:16 PM, Gengs1 said:

If you adjust it with inflation, we have given them around $310 BILLIONS since 1948 or so. They sure love the free money and we don’t get much in return…  

Expand  

Higher oil prices contributing to the bottom lines of weird west Texas frac billionaires 

Posted

Largest investment ever in the nation’s electric grid. That sounds good. Infrastructure week again?

https://www.energy.gov/articles/biden-harris-administration-announces-35-billion-largest-ever-investment-americas-electric

As part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, a key pillar of Bidenomics, White House Infrastructure Implementation Coordinator Mitch Landrieu and Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm today announced $3.46 billion for 58 projects across 44 states to strengthen electric grid resilience and reliability across America. Funded by the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, these projects will leverage more than $8 billion in federal and private investments to deliver affordable, clean electricity to all Americans and ensure that communities across the nation have a reliable grid that is prepared for extreme weather worsened by the climate crisis.

 

  • Hook 'Em 4
Posted
  On 10/18/2023 at 12:42 AM, StassneyHorn said:

3rd quarter GDP release is Oct 26th.
Atlanta Fed is forecasting 5.4%.

https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow

What are you telling your children about Bidenomics?

Expand  

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RESPPLLOPNWW

  On 10/18/2023 at 2:20 AM, MC Fresh Breath said:
Expand  

 

Screenshot_20231019-232605.jpg

Posted

If you’re gonna live and die by polls (the same polls that were horribly wrong in 2022) that constantly show Trump competitive with minorities and winning young voters, you’re going to put yourself in an early grave

Just stop 

  • Hook 'Em 3
  • Like 1
Posted

And to add onto what JS1 said above (who btw is one I often look for to talk me off the ledge)... The poll and article offer zero context behind what really matters: electoral college. Like it or not the election will be determined by roughly 5 or 6 states (MI, PA, GA, AZ, NV) which based on recent elections have trended blue. They're not a sure thing by any means but they're positioned to come through again in 2024. 

But it's way too early. Polls are just clickbait headlines at this point. And according to many there was supposed to be a red wave last year and look how that turned out.  

 

  • Like 1
Posted (edited)

Polling this far out is not very useful for making any predictions.  We have a year of Trump trials to get through. 

It’s also hard to tell how much is pro-Trump vs anti-Biden.  

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
Posted (edited)
  On 10/21/2023 at 4:06 PM, Exposition said:

And to add onto what JS1 said above (who btw is one I often look for to talk me off the ledge)... The poll and article offer zero context behind what really matters: electoral college. Like it or not the election will be determined by roughly 5 or 6 states (MI, PA, GA, AZ, NV) which based on recent elections have trended blue. They're not a sure thing by any means but they're positioned to come through again in 2024. 

But it's way too early. Polls are just clickbait headlines at this point. And according to many there was supposed to be a red wave last year and look how that turned out.  

 

Expand  

Some polling leading up to November had Dems up single digits with young voters.  They won young voters by 40ish points  in November.  Polling. Is. Bad.

Let's see how November 2023 goes first - if Dems win back the Virginia House of Delegates and Dems hold the governorship of Kentucky + the special election results post-Dobbs + the abortion protection amendment in Ohio (last poll was passing with 58%), that would tell you more than some random poll. 

At the end of the day, no on-the-fence Dem or young voter is walking into the voting booth and going "well I don't like Biden much, so I better vote for Trump and fascism, abortion bans, making gay marriage illegal and more tax cuts for the wealthy."  They might be on the fence/undecided now, but they won't be in November 2024.

Edited by Js1
  • Hook 'Em 5
Posted
  On 10/21/2023 at 4:06 PM, Exposition said:

And to add onto what JS1 said above (who btw is one I often look for to talk me off the ledge)... The poll and article offer zero context behind what really matters: electoral college. Like it or not the election will be determined by roughly 5 or 6 states (MI, PA, GA, AZ, NV) which based on recent elections have trended blue. They're not a sure thing by any means but they're positioned to come through again in 2024. 

But it's way too early. Polls are just clickbait headlines at this point. And according to many there was supposed to be a red wave last year and look how that turned out.  

Expand  

I would also point out that Trump (or rather the GQP) is not doing himself any favors in some of those states, and as a whole, he's not campaigning in those states and doing the things needed to flip them back.  We saw how that worked with Hillary, and we saw Biden's team (and Biden) work hard to win those states).

Which makes me think Trump is not that serious about winning - he seems to be just doing his campaign rallies at friendly venues to raise cash and the flying in and then back home to Mar-a-Lago.  Shit, he's put more effort into Iowa than he did MI/PA/GA/AZ/NV combined, and he has Iowa in the bag.

Or he and his campaign staff are really just that fucking stupid and don't realize they should focus less on states he will automatically win and more on the battleground states.  Oh wait, he's going where the money is, so not stupid.

Posted
  On 10/21/2023 at 5:17 PM, atomheartbevo said:

I would also point out that Trump (or rather the GQP) is not doing himself any favors in some of those states, and as a whole, he's not campaigning in those states and doing the things needed to flip them back.  We saw how that worked with Hillary, and we saw Biden's team (and Biden) work hard to win those states).

Which makes me think Trump is not that serious about winning - he seems to be just doing his campaign rallies at friendly venues to raise cash and the flying in and then back home to Mar-a-Lago.  Shit, he's put more effort into Iowa than he did MI/PA/GA/AZ/NV combined, and he has Iowa in the bag.

Or he and his campaign staff are really just that fucking stupid and don't realize they should focus less on states he will automatically win and more on the battleground states.  Oh wait, he's going where the money is, so not stupid.

Expand  

Hopefully he’ll be in an ankle bracelet at one of his resorts when it comes time to do the key swing state combat.

Posted
  On 10/21/2023 at 5:44 PM, SubliminalHorn said:

Ok ok I took a step off. Js is good voice of reason. I just can’t with this fucking traitor motherfucker is STILL pulling 40something percent.

 

Expand  

The way I look at it is if he does win, it makes my decision about this country a whole hell of a lot easier. Adios mofos. 

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 1
  • Haha 2
  • Rage+1 1
Posted

It helps to scroll to the bottom of the article. 

  Quote

The survey is an online sample drawn from the Harris Poll and weighted to reflect known demographics. As a representative online sample, it does not report a probability confidence interval.

Expand  

Polls are small samples of the population and this survey was a sample of that sample. Conducted online. Because methodology.

  • Haha 2
  • Drool 2
Posted
  On 10/21/2023 at 7:08 PM, berlinerbaer said:

 

Conducted online. Because methodology.

Expand  

EVERY poll method skews one way or another.  Can't do landlines, that skews super old.  Online largely skews higher income.  

It is extraordinarily difficult to achieve a representative polling sample since the death of every house having a land line.

  • Hook 'Em 2
Posted
  On 10/21/2023 at 7:12 PM, TeeDubya said:

EVERY poll method skews one way or another.  Can't do landlines, that skews super old.  Online largely skews higher income.  

It is extraordinarily difficult to achieve a representative polling sample since the death of every house having a land line.

Expand  

Plenty of politicians as well as parties/organizations at the national level have plenty of data - we are swimming in more data to pin down voters than we have ever been in our history. If you have the money, you can buy a big chunk of the purchase history of a helluva lot of Americans/households, you can buy information on magazine and other subscriptions, plenty of states make it easy to see how people are voting based on voter registration or what elections they voted in, you can buy scraped social media profiles, and if you're willing to spend the money, you can get data that was pulled from....illegal or illicit sources (info from data breaches). 

There's a reason why 2016 was kind of a bellwether in terms of where things are headed - political organizations had more access to data and effectively used it with social media ad buys and astroturfing on a larger scale than they ever have before, and much of it was automated.  It wasn't the cheap-ass astroturfing campaign run by a contractor/sub-contractor of Rick Perry's Presidential campaign in 2012 paying bored housewives or Filipinos to post pro-Perry stuff on places like Free Republic or reddit or whatever. 

The polls we see being published by news orgs, websites, etc. with samples in the hundreds or thousands don't come close to presenting the kind of accurate picture that the politicians and parties have access to.

That's partly why it's so laughable when you see the Keystone Cops fucking with polling machines in Georgia or people threatening to rush polling stations in Arizona - these dumbasses don't realize that the days of manipulating votes like LBJ did are long gone - it's much cheaper and safer to use all of the data that's out there to do micro-targeted advertising aimed at specific communities and even people, to either get them riled up and voting, or convince them that their vote is not needed or won't matter.  

  • Like 1
Posted
  On 10/26/2023 at 2:13 AM, StassneyHorn said:

3rd quarter GDP numbers come out tomorrow.

Expand  

let me guess: no one wants to actually admit we're doing pretty well so they'll just have middling predictions which will get blown out of the water with the actual data. close? it'd be fun if they swung the other way and gave Joe a challenge. but then they would have to admit they were wrong. nope, just keep up the bullshit rhetoric. pride is a motherfucker

Posted
  On 10/15/2023 at 11:43 PM, Homercles said:
Going back a page, people don’t really seem to understand incremental tax rates on income…wish Biden’s tweet woulda mentioned that they’d only be taxed 25% on INCOME over a certain threshold.  
Drives me nuts when dumbass mouth breathers talk about ‘punishing extraordinary people’ by ‘taking’ their money.  No bitch, they need to get taxed at higher income above certain levels you will never see in your lifetime…getting you one dollar over the bracket doesn’t suddenly mean all your money is taxed at the higher rate. 

The average American definitely does not understand tax brackets. The amount of people who think getting a raise could be a net negative due to taxes is astounding.
  • Like 1
  • Rage+1 2
Posted
  On 10/26/2023 at 2:26 AM, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

let me guess: no one wants to actually admit we're doing pretty well so they'll just have middling predictions which will get blown out of the water with the actual data. close? it'd be fun if they swung the other way and gave Joe a challenge. but then they would have to admit they were wrong. nope, just keep up the bullshit rhetoric. pride is a motherfucker

Expand  

Markets don’t care about politics 

Forecast is 4.3%, but many are betting it comes in higher 

Posted

I have come to despise politicians pimping their “economic numbers”, mainly because we’re implicitly expected to magically translate that to an improvement in quality of life. 

Congrats politicians for not tanking the economy, I guess. Huzzah! 

  • Haha 1
Posted

To me, it appears that Biden is toeing the line between support of an ally and not-alienating the groups that sympathize with their adversary quite well, but then I log onto Twitter and you'd think he was donning an IDF uniform and personally murdering Palestinians. 

I know I am not an unbiased when it comes to this issue, so I genuinely ask: what the hell am I missing?

  • Like 1
Posted
  On 10/26/2023 at 1:55 PM, Chuckie Finster said:

To me, it appears that Biden is toeing the line between support of an ally and not-alienating the groups that sympathize with their adversary quite well, but then I log onto Twitter and you'd think he was donning an IDF uniform and personally murdering Palestinians. 

I know I am not an unbiased when it comes to this issue, so I genuinely ask: what the hell am I missing?

Expand  

You're actually trying to be unbiased and use critical thinking, as opposed to just letting your emotional biases run through you like chicken wings through a Ketchum. That makes you about, uh, in the 10% minority in this country.  And I'm being generous with the 10%. 

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Haha 2


×
×
  • Create New...