Yeah, didn't people used to make like $10/week as the median wage at the turn of the 20th century? I agree that we have big problems now, but I feel like this analysis is deeply flawed without the inclusion of wage data.

Wage data, population growth, overall consumption, credit (and guarantees against it) are all drivers of inflation.

Look at student loans vs the cost of college:

1958: Federal program to encourage science and engineering. 1976: Remove restrictions on bankruptcy dismissal of this debt. 2005: Same rules for private loans.

Today college has a (as someone here so eloquently put it) a cruise ship ascetic, and has far more "administration" than "eduction" in terms of raw staff.

Tv went from an expensive box (fixed cost) to cable (monthly fee) to on demand programing (several monthly fees, and with ad's).

A phone used to be a single item in your house with a monthly fee. It was an item so durable that you could beat a robber with it and still call the police (see old att, black rotary phone). Now its an item per person in a household, that you can easily loose, might break if you drop it, and costs any where from 200 to 1500 dollars.

None of this is inflation in the traditional sense, but it does impact the velocity of all money in the system, and puts pressure on individual spending in a way that isnt even accounted for in this chart.

I wont even get started on housing, but I will leave this chart behind and ask those who care to point to the housing crisis on it: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

Actually, a past that never existed. It's pretty typically for authoritarian regimes to create idealized versions of the past as they attempt to rewrite history to better fit with their talking points and agendas.

Then don't be in the thread.

It's a direct violation of the fourth amendment. The worst thing you can do is just accept it, as that normalizes it. This is an end-around to avoid going through judicial channels to obtain information about private citizens, full stop. I'd love to hear about such brazen examples in the past, as right now, we have Kash Patel openly admitting to this activity either out of ignorance or hubris, either of which is terrible.

You’re complaining about the buffet while the titanic is going down.

What could he possibly be blackmailed for at this point? There are zero consequences to anything he says or does.

That evidence is already available. Nothing has changed.

Having proof on video of trump sexually assaulting a minor would still be significant, I think. Such footage probably exists and would make great leverage.

The Epstein files identify a pretty horrific incident involving Trump and a 14 year old girl, but it doesn't seem to have changed much so far. I suppose a video would be more compelling, but of course there'd be denials saying it was AI, etc.

I think that's their go to for damage control. I specifically remember in 2019 when Epstein was arrested, the MSM was running parallel stories talking about the rise of deep fakes. They were already setting the stage in case the kompromat was released. A few months ago with "Obama getting arrested" posted on Trump's account, I think this is a strategic reference to deep fakes. They'll say "that's not trump blowing Clinton, it's a deep fake like I posted of Obama, silly!"

There are written allegations, kind of a stretch to call it evidence. Blackmail is much more damning than a handwritten account.

Fair.

She was targeted because James Comey wanted to leverage her fame for his own career advancement. Not justifying what she did, but it’s no coincidence that she got roped.

I may simply be ignorant of the details of this case, but I never heard James Comey's name until ~October of 2016.

That's on you then.

Well, she was also targetted because of all the crimes

The framers of the constitution acknowledged the flaws and vulnerabilities of democracy and cited education as a prevention mechanism for an ill informed population voting against their own best interest. It’s no coincidence that public education has been under constant assault from the right since Reagan.

Why do we? You say this as if the country is a single organism and in lock step with the current administration. I have never voted for a republican in my life and never will, but now, somehow, all 350 million Americans just fit into one big bucket?

Because at this point all the people in all the other countries do not care who you voted for, especially not after he caused an insurrection and a Democratic Party administration didn't do anything to prosecute that. At this point all the people outside the US just want to know what you're going to be doing about this insanity.

Didn’t vote for him. Doing whatever we can to get out of the situation. The United States is not a single organism. It’d be like blaming the French for Victor Orban because both countries are in Europe. Sorry for being born somewhere and sorry for the bad weather lately.

A lot of the United States historical influence and soft power comes from it being a nation of rules and laws. The credibility of the country provided a perception that it was a stable place to store value (investment in treasuries, greenbacks, etc). When the government is facilitating insider trading out in the open (repeatedly), we’re losing a lot more than money due to fraud.