US Political Discussion: Biden/Harris Edition (Rules in OP)

[Mathemagician]

I promise I'm not singling you out in this thread.

But, I'm about the same age as you, have been in my industry even longer, and there's a few situations where I would.

1) the new responsibilities are more interesting than my old ones, so I'm making the same money, but am enjoying what I do more.
2) the new responsibilities may not get me paid more in my current job, but allow me to add experience to my resume that will allow me to move into a new job somewhere else either making more money, or doing work that I find more interesting
3) way less likely, but I have reason to believe that the additional responsibilities will translate into more pay or better opportunities down the road at my current employer.

I'm something like 18 years into my career in my industry, and I've generally tried to take as much responsibility as people will give me, with the expectation that over time the money will follow. For the most part it has.

Can confirm I’ve done all of those and it’s worked out well. But I still had to move cities and eventually employers to get any of my hours that I put in to improve rewarded.

I’m not advocating for not working hard. I’m just saying people need to out themselves first and actively seek out ways to cash in their time and energy.

When it comes to compensation one’s current employer is often like a lazy partner, they feel like they already got you so they don’t need to try anymore.

 

[TedintheShed]

The assault on the capitol, trying to use organised and planned violence to change the result of an election, is a component of fascist regimes. It failed, but so did the aborted putsch in 1923.

Your hyperbole called and it invoked Godwin's Law.

Ridiculous.

 

[Andromalia]

Any call center I've worked in has had this problem. Because promotion always meant being promoted away from what you're good at. So you end up with a bunch of "managers" who are great at being phone agents, but bad at management, and all the shitty agents stay on the phone. Overall quality always just trends down, combated only by new streams of "talent" because of high turnover.

Well, here's the equation:

-Promote the good phone agents and endup in the situation you describe

-Promote the people who will be good at management. Problems arise when the people who work better than them see those promoted over them. Especially in this field as very few people do phone support as a vocation.
Seeing they'll be passed over for promotion, your good agents either leave or stop putting effort into the job.

-Don't promote anyone and hire external people to fill management position. Endsup the same as above: people see the opportunity for promotion is gone and will act accordingly.

It's easier to deal with in companies who offer fulfilling and interesting jobs, as you can help employees progress and become more efficient without having to deal with the fact that your employees are only working for promotion.

I did phone jobs in my carreer but only because they were steps to something else. I don't thin you'd find a lot of people for phone jobs if you stated that it's a lifelong sentence.

In the end, only shitty people remain, because it's a shitty job to begin with.

Your hyperbole called and it invoked Godwin's Law.
Ridiculous.

"Oh, no, that person referenced the nazis when asked about fascism references"
/facepalm

 

[vilk]

Lmfao

How come GOP are fascists but Dems aren't?

Well, both GOP and Nazis attempted to overthrow fairly elected leaders with a coup.

Godwin's Law! Godwin's Law!!!

 

[Riff the Road Dog]

Godwin's law itself can be applied mistakenly or abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, when fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparison made by the argument is appropriate.
(-Wikipedia)

 

[bostjan]

I mean, I never voted for Trump, but I'd be careful about drawing an equivalency between the Jan 6th people and the rest of Trump's support base. There are some who both look up to Trump and looked down on the Jan 6th people.

That doesn't mean that those people didn't support a man who supported the Jan 6th riots, but it doesn't mean that anyone complaining about high gas prices right now is the same as a 1930's Nazi.

Personally, I think the prices of refined diesel and gasoline are so high because the industry is all kinds of fucked. I see it in all sort of manufacturing right now. People don't want to work in factories. So gas prices are high because refineries are short staffed and because truck drivers aren't trucking. Refineries are short staffed because it's a sort of shitty job and it doesn't pay nearly enough to attract workers. Truckers aren't trucking because corporations are expecting them to pay for their own trucks and maintenance and pay them by the mile instead of by the hour, when they spend all day waiting at a shipyard making no money whilst the supply chain is fucked.

In either case, Biden could be to blame for not taking action to unfuck it, but he didn't fuck it up in the first place. I don't even blame Trump, but I think it's the same root cause that led to Trump that also got us to where we are in the state of the industry right now.

 

[StevenC]

I mean, I never voted for Trump, but I'd be careful about drawing an equivalency between the Jan 6th people and the rest of Trump's support base. There are some who both look up to Trump and looked down on the Jan 6th people.

That doesn't mean that those people didn't support a man who supported the Jan 6th riots, but it doesn't mean that anyone complaining about high gas prices right now is the same as a 1930's Nazi.

Personally, I think the prices of refined diesel and gasoline are so high because the industry is all kinds of fucked. I see it in all sort of manufacturing right now. People don't want to work in factories. So gas prices are high because refineries are short staffed and because truck drivers aren't trucking. Refineries are short staffed because it's a sort of shitty job and it doesn't pay nearly enough to attract workers. Truckers aren't trucking because corporations are expecting them to pay for their own trucks and maintenance and pay them by the mile instead of by the hour, when they spend all day waiting at a shipyard making no money whilst the supply chain is fucked.

In either case, Biden could be to blame for not taking action to unfuck it, but he didn't fuck it up in the first place. I don't even blame Trump, but I think it's the same root cause that led to Trump that also got us to where we are in the state of the industry right now.

If, this month, you make a post in a politics thread saying "I don't vote, voting is immoral, fuck the Democrats, I might vote Trump" because of oil prices after 4 years of Trump, Jan 6th, and the current SCOTUS, then at very least you're a massively unempathetic dickhead.

If you then start using fallacies to avoid being affiliated with autocrats, fascists and tyrants, then you're building a good case for being sympathetic towards that cause.

 

[Drew]

You can learn something. You can even take a shortcut to getting "competent" are doing something if you can apprentice with someone who's done it. In 99% of cases, most people will still be entirely unprepared and overwhelmed when they get out into the field and try to do 'it' when it doesn't go like the book told them it would. Figuring that out only comes from experience.

There's a lot of the "learn to code" narrative and the various permutations of it for other industries that miss that.

100% - I recognize that people have different learning styles, and even for the most part I'd say I learn pretty well in a self-study environment - give me a book on something, and I'll retain a lot.

But I don't feel like you've really internalized something until you've gone out and gotten your hands dirty. I can learn a ton about a subject from a good book, but I won't trust that knowledge until I've actually gone and done it.

 

[Drew]

Not to mention that the first few years you code, you write trash. And they pay you trash. Its not until you actually start writing useful lines that anyone gives a flying fuck about you as a coder. IT infrastructure doesn't work like that though. Regardless of how skilled you are, you're going to get paid trash until one of the guys who's been at it for 30 years decides to retire. They'll give you a 5-10% raise, and save themselves 50-100K a year. Doesn't matter than you've been doing your job and half of that person's job for the last 5 years. People don't want to give up those positions because getting one making the same thing you make where you're at is nearly impossible. So there are tons of cats making 150-250k who will eventually cede their jobs over to someone who will be making 70-80k to do more work.

Though, don't underestimate those 5-10% raises over time. 5% a year for ten years comes out at over a 60% increase in salary, 10% a year over 10 years is more like 160%. Nearly double, to nearly triple - it does begin to add up fast.

 

[bostjan]

If, this month, you make a post in a politics thread saying "I don't vote, voting is immoral, fuck the Democrats, I might vote Trump" because of oil prices after 4 years of Trump, Jan 6th, and the current SCOTUS, then at very least you're a massively unempathetic dickhead.

If you then start using fallacies to avoid being affiliated with autocrats, fascists and tyrants, then you're building a good case for being sympathetic towards that cause.

Agreed. I even had a red flag to throw over the "voting is immoral" statement but refrained from opening the portal to whatever strange dimension that came from.

However, rather than drawing the comparison between the most extremist faction of a group of roughly 30% of people over the age of 18 (thus eligible to vote) who voted for Trump in 2020, or make veiled hints of such, and then lining up to high five each other, I'm suggesting that there might be a better approach to go after the logical fallacies themselves, even if we don't expect a response that is any better than "well whatabout..."

At the end of the day, democracy only really works if ideas are open for productive debate. If one side of an argument no longer wants to engage in honest debate, then, the other side of the debate stooping to the same level only serves the function of pointing out why democracy is dumb and I don't really like where that could end up going.

 

[Drew]

I mean, I never voted for Trump, but I'd be careful about drawing an equivalency between the Jan 6th people and the rest of Trump's support base. There are some who both look up to Trump and looked down on the Jan 6th people.

That doesn't mean that those people didn't support a man who supported the Jan 6th riots, but it doesn't mean that anyone complaining about high gas prices right now is the same as a 1930's Nazi.

Personally, I think the prices of refined diesel and gasoline are so high because the industry is all kinds of fucked. I see it in all sort of manufacturing right now. People don't want to work in factories. So gas prices are high because refineries are short staffed and because truck drivers aren't trucking. Refineries are short staffed because it's a sort of shitty job and it doesn't pay nearly enough to attract workers. Truckers aren't trucking because corporations are expecting them to pay for their own trucks and maintenance and pay them by the mile instead of by the hour, when they spend all day waiting at a shipyard making no money whilst the supply chain is fucked.

In either case, Biden could be to blame for not taking action to unfuck it, but he didn't fuck it up in the first place. I don't even blame Trump, but I think it's the same root cause that led to Trump that also got us to where we are in the state of the industry right now.

Some of the attempts to bring them down haven't really been all that helpful, either.

At the most fundamental level, gas prices are high because demand for gas exceeds supply of gas, by rather a lot. There are direct reasons for this that we can't control - war in Ukraine and Russian embargoes mean that we lost about 15% of the world's oil supply, so with demand unchanged and supply suddenly falling, oil prices moved up aggressively. You point to some gasoline production factors too, and there are absolutely bottlenecks there - crack spreads have basically doubled since the middle of April and while they're starting to come down a little, there's still a ways to fall. But, for now, demand for refined petroleum products exceed our ability to refine them.

But, some of the policy responses... When gas prices first started spiking, a lot of governors started talking about temporarily waiving gas taxes to help lower costs to consumers. Every economist, liberal or conservative, immediately chimed in saying that was stupid because high prices were starting to curtail demand, and if you artificially lowered the price without taking steps to increase supply as well, then demand would pick back up and prices would return to equiliberum right where they were with taxes in place.

So, a number of governors went ahead and temporarily waived gas taxes... and inside a week prices had risen right back to where they were as demand picked up. Shock. Awe.

 

[Drew]

Your hyperbole called and it invoked Godwin's Law.

Ridiculous.

I don't want to, well, state the obvious here...

...but the "Stop the Steal" riot on January 6th ended with Trump supporters storming the Capital and trying to seize Vice President Pence so he couldn't certify the election results formally naming President Biden as the winner of the 2020 election.

I'm not sure how one would build the argument that this wasn't an attempt to overthrow a democratically-elected government, though I suppose to be fair lots of other anti-democratic groups who weren't Nazis have also used this playbook. No matter who you want to compare them to, though, it's not a good look for Team Trump, and the Republicans who voted to acquit him when he was impeached for it were perfectly honest about the fact the only reason they were doing so was he'd lost and his term ended in a matter of days, so - they claimed - it didn't matter since he was gone anyway.

 

[bostjan]

Some of the attempts to bring them down haven't really been all that helpful, either.

At the most fundamental level, gas prices are high because demand for gas exceeds supply of gas, by rather a lot. There are direct reasons for this that we can't control - war in Ukraine and Russian embargoes mean that we lost about 15% of the world's oil supply, so with demand unchanged and supply suddenly falling, oil prices moved up aggressively. You point to some gasoline production factors too, and there are absolutely bottlenecks there - crack spreads have basically doubled since the middle of April and while they're starting to come down a little, there's still a ways to fall. But, for now, demand for refined petroleum products exceed our ability to refine them.

But, some of the policy responses... When gas prices first started spiking, a lot of governors started talking about temporarily waiving gas taxes to help lower costs to consumers. Every economist, liberal or conservative, immediately chimed in saying that was stupid because high prices were starting to curtail demand, and if you artificially lowered the price without taking steps to increase supply as well, then demand would pick back up and prices would return to equiliberum right where they were with taxes in place.

So, a number of governors went ahead and temporarily waived gas taxes... and inside a week prices had risen right back to where they were as demand picked up. Shock. Awe.

Very well said.

During the pandemic, the supply of nearly every physical thing dropped to unprecedented lows. Maybe I'm wrong, but I see that huge drop in supply and the effort to recover from that drop in supply seems to have largely stalled. Many are pointing to the fact that the US workforce dropped by about 3 million workers coincident with the start of the pandemic, and, despite easing restrictions, hasn't budged in the direction of recovery yet. I've seen the numbers, and I've lived it as an anecdote.

Where I work, we had a bunch of people leave since the start of the pandemic. A few decided to retire early, but a majority of them took jobs elsewhere due to openings from other people either retiring early or quitting to just not work anymore. This is in an area where there is quite a mix of rich and poor people, but I never thought of the working class as the rich people. At any rate, even before the pandemic, businesses here were struggling with employee retention, snap your fingers and magically take away 3% of the workforce and a lot of businesses could no longer remain productive. And the lower the desirability of the job, the more difficult it has become to fill the position. My town had it's McDonald's close down before the pandemic. The next town over now has its McDonald's closing due to the fact that they can't staff it. You'd think that'd ease the tension on the staffing issues, but I don't think it's really going to have much effect right off, because most employers here stopped caring about McDonald's on a resume a decade ago. Also, it's no secret that other shitty fast food restaurants are having issues staying open as well. Maybe a laid-off McDonald's employee will be able to get hired immediately at Taco Bell or Dominos, but why bother? Taco Bell is only open 5 days a week now because no one wants to work there and between the high gas prices and lack of availability of good cars and good car mechanics, delivery is also a precarious career. You could come work at one of our factories, but a bunch of those closed before the pandemic, and besides, all of them want previous factory experience, or else you are only hired as a temporary employee who's exempt from earning benefits and so forth, so it's really not worth it.

I think the only way to solve the supply shortages is to first solve the labour shortages, which will either take years to self-correct, or will have to be expedited somehow by government involvement at a time during which the government is at its worst and just spent too much money on the pandemic response. So, maybe we are in for an exciting ride in the US economy where things randomly flip upside down or become puzzlingly scarce. I don't think it'll be like the Great Depression, but I don't see why we should expect our quality of life in the 2020's to be too great in comparison with the past 4-5 decades.

 

[Drew]

It's a challenge, @bostjan. Labor IS starting to recover - the participation rate fell sharply during the pandemic almost overnight. It's recovered, oh, 2/3 of its losses since it's pre-pandemic peak...but the economy was running about as close as it has in recent memory to theoretical full employment right before the pandemic, and the participation rate is actually pretty close to where it was 2015-16 or so, in a more "normal" economy.

Of course, the economy is unquestionably running hot right now, and participation SHOULD be rising above "normal" levels due to labor demand and the accompanying negotiating power that gives. And the JOLTS survey points to, at last I saw, 11 million job openings. Plenty of anecdotal evidence here suggests some of those jobs are probably not GOING to be filled, due to unrealistic salaries or other offer-sized demands... but even when you account for the fact that pre-pandemic the JOLTS survey was in the 6-7mm range and we're really only looking at an increase of 4-5mm jobs, well, we have about 5.9mm workers meeting the definition of unemployed, namely not working, available to work, and actively seeking work. We could hire every last american in the country somewhere, and maybe just fill the "excess" open positions over the normal level in a fairly strong labor market, which itself is elevated.

I've been paying more attention to the participation rate than the headline jobs report number for a while now, and while the participation rate actually dipped in April, this is around the styart of the summer hiring season and with demand where it's been a lot of usual "seasonal" jobs became full time just to make sure someone was on the books come spring at the end of last year, so I think we might be seeing some noise there. Normally a big new jobs number is considered a bad thing with a low employment rate since it points to too-high labor demand and the possibility of the economy overheating, and that's certainly a concern with inflation where it is now... but I think we're sort of in an upside-down environment at the moment where big jobs gains may not actually be a bad thing, since those workers have to be coming from somewhere.... I'll be really curious to see what the next BLS employment report looks like, and if last month's drop in participation ends up being an anomaly.

EDIT - also, re: the Participation Rate, another factor to keep in mind here is that it's been declining for a while due to secular trends (the end of the baby boomer generation, and a lot of the boomers still in the workforce took advantage of a strong market recovery after March 2020 and their being disproportionately at risk from Covid to retire), and the stabilization/increase in participation after 2015 may itself have been an anomaly. If so, then if you extrapolate the trendline from maybe 2002 through 2015, then we're probably above where the participation rate "should" be already, and we may just have an honest-to-god post-Boomer labor shortage... which make's Trump's attempts to clamp down on immigration, both illegal AND legal, that much more dumbfounding; we need workers.

 

[Thaeon]

Though, don't underestimate those 5-10% raises over time. 5% a year for ten years comes out at over a 60% increase in salary, 10% a year over 10 years is more like 160%. Nearly double, to nearly triple - it does begin to add up fast.

Oh no, they’re great when they happen. But they aren’t all THAT much when adjusted for inflation. At my last job, my annual raise was 1%. 1 Per. Cent. They last one I told them to keep it. It’s a slap in the face. The highest raise that business gave to anyone while I was there was 2%.

 

[Drew]

Oh no, they’re great when they happen. But they aren’t all THAT much when adjusted for inflation. At my last job, my annual raise was 1%. 1 Per. Cent. They last one I told them to keep it. It’s a slap in the face. The highest raise that business gave to anyone while I was there was 2%.

yeah, and unfortunately that's far more common. I've been fortunate that, in part because I took what was a too-junior role because it seemed like the right firm and because it allowed me to move from the asset servicing to asset management side of the business, I have been seeing raises at awfully close to a 10% annual rate, but one I've worked my ass off here and a few of those years in particular were pretty miserable, and two that was NOT been my experience most places. Sure, a 3% raise isn't bad when inflation is 1.5%, but over time if that's what you're getting the compounding impact isn't nearly as great - 3% a year for 10 years and your salary will have grown by about a 3rd (compounding yielding about a 3% increase over 10 years); 5% a year for 10 years, and that becomes two thirds as much again as your stating salary (compounding yielding about a 12% additional increase over 10 years). At that point you're not making your money by getting annual COLA adjustments, you're making your money by either getting promoted with an accompanying salary adjustment, or job hopping.

Anyway, we're going a bit far afield.

 

[Thorsday7]

Former Vice President Biden and his most unlikeable VP Harris are doing an amazing job.

I've got to hand it to the major Corporations, too. The policies they are helping form, are quite breathtaking, really.

What I mean to say is: I dislike everybody in power, and, we're not going to see a change by perpetuating the two party system in America.

With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and leaving the singular issue of late term abortion up to the respective State(s), this hints at a direction of more sovereign State powers... I wish States would secede from this union. The prospect of not having to pay Federal Income Tax has me swollen. Nearly fully engorged.

Why is Russia trying to take back Ukraine such a big deal? Ukraine wanted to be sovereign. It's symbolic of freedom, and what true American couldn't get behind that?

 

[TedintheShed]

I don't want to, well, state the obvious here...

...but the "Stop the Steal" riot on January 6th ended with Trump supporters storming the Capital and trying to seize Vice President Pence so he couldn't certify the election results formally naming President Biden as the winner of the 2020 election.

I'm not sure how one would build the argument that this wasn't an attempt to overthrow a democratically-elected government, though I suppose to be fair lots of other anti-democratic groups who weren't Nazis have also used this playbook. No matter who you want to compare them to, though, it's not a good look for Team Trump, and the Republicans who voted to acquit him when he was impeached for it were perfectly honest about the fact the only reason they were doing so was he'd lost and his term ended in a matter of days, so - they claimed - it didn't matter since he was gone anyway.

It's laughable that you think this was an attempt to overthrow the government. It wasn't organized.
They were not at all armed, let alone well armed. At worst yiu could call it a riot. At best a demonstration. Either way, it was good to see the politicians afraid of the people for a change.

Was it a good look for Trump? Well, "look" implies perspective, which them implies subjectivity. But no matter how one thinks it looks, to throw around words like "coup" and "over throw" is ridiculous, no matter which perspective you may invoke.

 

[Mathemagician]

The fact that a secret service agent felt the need to draw their weapon and fire on an American citizen in order to get the armed and murderous mob to realize that they needed to back down explains all there is.

 

[Adieu]

It's laughable that you think this was an attempt to overthrow the government. It wasn't organized.
They were not at all armed, let alone well armed. At worst yiu could call it a riot. At best a demonstration. Either way, it was good to see the politicians afraid of the people for a change.

Was it a good look for Trump? Well, "look" implies perspective, which them implies subjectivity. But no matter how one thinks it looks, to throw around words like "coup" and "over throw" is ridiculous, no matter which perspective you may invoke.

Yup, totally doesn't look like conspiracy to commit anything suspicious