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Posted

I take Trump at his word that he wants to eliminate personal and corporate income tax and replace the revenue with tariffs. The IRS flips to the External Revenue Service. Trump folks point to the pre-1900s where the govt didn’t have income tax sources and spending was relatively low. Public services was almost non-existent except at the local level.

to them that was when America was Great.

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Posted
40 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

I take Trump at his word that he wants to eliminate personal and corporate income tax and replace the revenue with tariffs. The IRS flips to the External Revenue Service. Trump folks point to the pre-1900s where the govt didn’t have income tax sources and spending was relatively low. Public services was almost non-existent except at the local level.

to them that was when America was Great.

I was talking to someone about how the economy of the 1890s is vastly different than today's world.   When I brought this up, the other person was gobsmacked.  They truly didn't grasp that trade, technology, etc. was so different back then.  

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Posted
11 minutes ago, Macanudo said:

I was talking to someone about how the economy of the 1890s is vastly different than today's world.   When I brought this up, the other person was gobsmacked.  They truly didn't grasp that trade, technology, etc. was so different back then.  

Most people’s understanding of history goes back only within their lifetimes. It’s horrifying. 

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Posted
6 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

I take Trump at his word that he wants to eliminate personal and corporate income tax and replace the revenue with tariffs. The IRS flips to the External Revenue Service. Trump folks point to the pre-1900s where the govt didn’t have income tax sources and spending was relatively low. Public services was almost non-existent except at the local level.

to them that was when America was Great.

 

let the states decide !!!

Posted
10 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

Most people’s understanding of history goes back only within their lifetimes. It’s horrifying. 

I’m often shocked at my mom’s ignorance of the history she was alive to witness firsthand. 

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Posted
11 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

I don't care.  My chickens give me 2-3 per day.

Way to set yourself up for a home invasion robbery.  You might as well have bragged about the chair in your living room made of gold bars.

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Posted
2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Yeah, dude....there's 100% overlap.

71VvH7dluRL.jpg

Hey I saw this one in the wild this weekend. You'll be shocked to know it as a 55–65-year-old balding white dude wearing sunglass on an overcast day.

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Posted
12 minutes ago, Goredho said:

Who would have thought that in 2025, the phrase "Keep Fucking That Chicken" would become sound financial advice.

chicken-run.gif

Don't you kink shame me.

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Posted
31 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

I don't care.  My chickens give me 2-3 per day.

Any concerns over them catching bird flu and passing it on to you? How do you manage to keep them from being exposed to it from wild birds?

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Posted
3 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Any concerns over them catching bird flu and passing it on to you? How do you manage to keep them from being exposed to it from wild birds?

image.gif.6020ad87abe9d54549295e80cf72e5fd.gif

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Posted
3 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Any concerns over them catching bird flu and passing it on to you? How do you manage to keep them from being exposed to it from wild birds?

Responsible chickens mask up.

Mobile Game Mask GIF by Ping Creates

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Posted
10 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Any concerns over them catching bird flu and passing it on to you? How do you manage to keep them from being exposed to it from wild birds?

If they catch it they'll be dead in a day or so.  The eggs are good on the counter for over a month so I rarely eat any within a week after collecting. So, if that ever comes to pass I'll just pitch them.

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Posted
9 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

And, as a dietary weight loss drug you can buy is using your HSA funds. 

my financial planner, dietician, and coke dealer all said similar things. of course they're all the same person.

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Posted
1 hour ago, DDD Dad said:

I don't care.  My chickens give me 2-3 per day.

I got one the other day. Sure, I'll probably need a dozen more for an omelette,but free is free.

PXL_20250309_233546605_MP.thumb.jpg.a84dfffa6153b44af1ccdc29bcfd00dc.jpg

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Posted

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/donald-trumps-empty-promises

 

 

Quote

Right after Donald Trump was elected for the second time, he was the most popular he’d ever been. According to The Economist, “his net favorability was in positive territory for the first time ever.”

It was a strange moment: In January 2025, the guy who had been impeached twice, indicted four times, and convicted on 34 felony counts was as popular as he’d ever been and, unlike in 2016, he actually won the popular vote. Trump is famous for defying political gravity, but even for him, this was unprecedented. It was as if the American people had suffered from collective amnesia and forgotten January 6, the COVID pandemic, and the Black Lives Matter protests. Not only that, it was the first time in 20 years a Republican won the popular vote in the presidential elections. Once again, American voters were angry, once again American voters wanted change, once again American voters bafflingly considered Trump—who had been president once before—to be the outsider.

 

Quote

But there was another important data point, which may not be getting enough attention. A lot of voters were angry about a very specific thing: inflation. The idea that things were suddenly more expensive for no discernible reason was a hard pill for voters to swallow. A month before the election, Gallup reported that the economy “could be a significant factor to nine in 10 voters.” Voters were angry, but most weren’t angry about government spending—they were angry about the price of eggs. If you were to argue that Trump has a mandate, and he would argue that he does, it would be to make prices lower.

 

Quote

Trump promised many pie-in-the-sky things. For example, he said that if he won, the government or insurance companies would cover the cost of in vitro fertilization treatment—a proposal that would almost certainly never fly with his own party. After taking office, Trump is still promising some of these fantastical things. During his speech to a joint session of Congress earlier this month, he reiterated his call to eliminate taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security benefits—once again, costly ideas that would almost certainly never jell with the Republican Party he leads.

 

Spoiler

But Trump’s biggest, boldest campaign promise was downright impossible. It was a promise that Kamala Harris couldn’t make because there was no way to do it. Trump vowed to immediately reverse inflation and to immediately make things cheaper. In August he told a crowd in Montana: “Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods.” And in October, he told a group in Wisconsin: “Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again. We’ll do that.” Harris couldn’t promise that because, even with the most aggressive government intervention, there is no realistic way to do it.

But instead of bringing prices down on day one, or even month one, Trump is doing the exact opposite. He’s enacted a trade war and let Elon Musk take a chainsaw to the federal government, both of which have caused market uncertainty. Suddenly, the man who said he was going to make everything cheaper on day one can’t even rule out a recession on his watch, and has instead mused about a “period of transition.”

Trump has it in his head that the United States was somehow richer before income taxes, which is fueling his tariff obsession. A few days after being sworn in, he told reporters in the Oval Office: “We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913. That’s when we were a tariff country. And then they went to an income tax concept.” It makes sense that Trump, a real estate baron, would be nostalgic for the Gilded Age—after all, it was a time in American life marked by high concentration of wealth, vast income inequality, and widespread political corruption.

But the problem is that while Trump loves tariffs, no one else does. His back-and-forth on implementing them has spooked the markets, because the only thing the markets like less than tariffs is uncertainty.

Even after a week of poor market reactions to Trump’s will-he-won’t-he on tariff threats, he has continued to seesaw on the topic. On Sunday, during a friendly interview, Trump told Fox News that “the tariffs could go up as time goes by,” dismissed calls for more “predictability,” and refused to rule out a recession. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick further rationalized the volatility, telling NBC’s Meet the Press, “Will there be distortions? Of course. Foreign goods may get a little more expensive, but American goods are going to get cheaper.” Meanwhile, all markets want is stability, and this was probably not what they wanted to hear: US stocks saw a steep sell-off Monday morning.

It seems pretty clear that Trump is simply not laser-focused on the only promise anyone could legitimately view as his mandate: making things cheaper.

In November 2024, voters perceived the economy to be bad despite underlying fundamentals being good. They yet again voted for change. Trump promised cheaper groceries through tariffs, which ultimately make things more expensive. Since Trump took office seven weeks ago, the S&P has dropped 5%. And guess what? Groceries are not cheaper.

Trump has been able to defy political gravity many times. He’s come back from scandals that would have ended most political careers. But the question is, what happens when a president ends up doing the exact opposite of what he promised voters he’d do?

 

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Posted
1 minute ago, troph said:

Wouldn’t it be great if a recession depression and the outbreak of a regional nuclear war was all it took to break the fascist fever …? 

FIF more realistic benchmarks.

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Posted
1 hour ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

American goods are going to get cheaper

Jesus Christ, Howard, I was given to think you had a brain.

Of all the various justifications for tariffs, the notion that domestic goods get cheaper is absolutely not one of them.  Ever.

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Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

A lot of voters were angry about a very specific thing: inflation. The idea that things were suddenly more expensive for no discernible reason was a hard pill for voters to swallow.

We are so fucking stupid. God damn this sentence pisses me off. For no reason?  Really?

Edited by Biff Tannen
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Posted
1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

FIF more realistic benchmarks.

Good chance that’s just the WWI equivalent of this epoch, not the reset we need, but the half-assed one we deserve to get, good and hard. Sometime after all that, the real fun begins. 

Posted
1 hour ago, Biff Tannen said:

We are so fucking stupid. God damn this sentence pisses me off. For no reason?  Really?

right here with you. Americans are either dumb or willingly dumb, and I think nothing shows this more than inflation topic. You can a) not overreact to something that is faaar too complex for a soundbite to capture, or b) you can logically review the inflation of the US dollar versus ANY other western currency for a positive story or perspective.

BUT YOU GET NEITHER

and instead get fascism 😠

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Posted
24 minutes ago, UTHornFan014 said:

I tried to get my retired parents (both voted for the orange man) to rebalance their 401ks and get more shifted to money market funds right after he got inaugurated, but they didn't feel it was necessary. Now they are both freaking out... but still blaming Biden 🤦‍♂️ 

 

jfc.gif

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Posted
48 minutes ago, UTHornFan014 said:

I tried to get my retired parents (both voted for the orange man) to rebalance their 401ks and get more shifted to money market funds right after he got inaugurated, but they didn't feel it was necessary. Now they are both freaking out... but still blaming Biden 🤦‍♂️ 

 

Avatar checks out.

Posted

They are tanking the economy early and on purpose to:

1. Justify a bunch of austerity bullshit combined with stimulus for key voting blocs.

2. Normalize a shit economy before midterms so voters think of it as the new normal. 

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Posted (edited)
3 minutes ago, Bullneck said:

I honestly think a lot of Republicans aren't stupid, they're just on the take to their lobbyists.

Yeah, a good percentage of them are intelligent, but pure evil.

They're the ones getting rich while telling the poor and stupid what to say to feel smart.

Edited by TexArcher
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Posted
16 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

They are tanking the economy early and on purpose to:

1. Justify a bunch of austerity bullshit combined with stimulus for key voting blocs.

2. Normalize a shit economy before midterms so voters think of it as the new normal. 

Call me crazy but I actually think they thought the US economy / markets were so strong that only other countries would feel the negative effects of tariffs. I guess they forgot that there’s a ton of foreign money invested in the US (at least there used to be).

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Posted

First off.  I feel fucking bad, knowing that nearly everyone around me is losing big bucks in their investment and 401K accounts.  But betting against Trump is the easiest bet I have seen since I was not in the market in early january before covid.

I am betting on a couple things

1) yes men are never good leaders

2) yes men in a small family owned company are great scapegoats for the son who inherited the business

3) Do you bet on some of the least qualified confirmed cabinet heads to run the largest company in existence?

4) There is a completely non-factual fairy tale about the success of the Trump Economy before Covid.  Jobs did not increase from what the inherited.  And the per cost for each additional added US Employee in the employment numbers skyrocketed, because... the Taxes and Jobs cut act, only cut taxes... and kept employment about the same pre $4 trillion borrowing hicky.  

5) Mainly I am betting against this market because I remember the baseless (economically factual) exuberance last Trump go round.  Super fucking smart people that absolutely believed easily refutable "achievements." 

 

You can fix stupid.  But the cost is fucking up the economy insisting that some of the most basic economic principles do not exist. Because... When you can make $5 million every weekend off the American taxpayer at your country club.  You are sort of a genius... 

 

 

 

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