@djc @walruslifestyle@octodon.social @clacke i think boosters overstate its current significance. yes, stronger wage growth at the bottom in percentage terms, and therefore some compression of "wage inequality". but in dollar terms, stronger wage growth at the bottom doesn't translate to more actual income growth at the bottom. and the upspiraling asset economy is an inequality and predation machine.
@djc @walruslifestyle@octodon.social @clacke high earners see nominal growth of the portfolios by the nominal dollars they save. smaller growth in their overall income translates to high percentage growth relative to the subset of monthly inflation-affected expenses. lower-income people see higher wages eaten completely by expenditures, buying surprisingly little more than lower wages did before. /fin
@coffeepine@beige.party The thing is, Biden hasn't been running line-go-up policies per se. Antitrust is more muscular than in decades, that's not line go up. Stronger union support than any President maybe ever (a low bar, unfortunately, but still). Onshoring, pro-employment industrial policy, and employment running hot. Biden's economic policy has been the best in my lifetime. The lines going up is largely despite that, though of course it also helps to keep his affluent base largely in line.
"In 1903, 49 Jews were murdered in Kishinev. An…international outcry ensued…govts of France, the U.K. and even Germany directed vigorous protests at Russia… the international press dealt with the pogrom extensively. By 1919, much larger pogroms took place: Some 50,000 Jews were murdered in Ukraine. Thousands were tortured and raped. But this time the matter didn't draw special attention…The difference? [After] millions…are killed…human life no longer counts." #OfriIlani https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-21/ty-article-opinion/.highlight/the-mass-killing-in-gaza-will-poison-israeli-souls-forever/0000018e-611f-dcb2-afee-631fd6600000
@walruslifestyle@octodon.social @clacke i agree that the economy is in many ways just a strong economy for rich people.
but it remains true that Biden’s economic policy actions and direction represent a 180 degree turn from Obama’s in ways that genuinely help nonrich people and might blunt great wealth if continued.
it’s just a drop in the bucket so far. but if extended (like the early, pre-Manchin versions of BBB was groping towards), it’d be, in the words of a statesman, a BFD. https://zirk.us/@interfluidity/112151886110566112
from #MarkZandi
this is the worst way to gauge a strong economy. when “homes are up”, people who don’t own a home are poorer, will shell out more to buy or rent shelter.
when “stocks are up” — trade at higher valuations — the public will be squezed for profits to ratify nosebleed share prices.
these prices are “wealth” to individual assetholders, but they are often the opposite of wealth in a substantive sense of wellness to society as a whole.
Your rewards are expiring.
from #ZacharyCarter, via #TimSahay https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/03/biden-economy-voters-polling-numbers-covid-recovery.html
Text: From his first day in the Oval Office, Biden has embraced nearly every progressive criticism of Barack Obama's approach to the economy, and translated those critiques into policy. Obama scoffed at labor unions; Biden walked a picket line and appointed the most pro-worker National Labor Relations Board in decades. Obama's Education Department screwed over student debtors; Biden has canceled $138 billion in student debt. Obama defended big business; Biden has been an antitrust warrior. Obama was a free trader, while Biden subsidizes domestic manufacturing. Obama offered to cut Social Security; Biden just torched Republicans during his State of the Union for planning the same thing.
“The problem with social media platforms is not just that they seek to hook us on their products, it’s also that they offer themselves as the answer to profound human desires, which they are ultimately unable to satisfy. We are promised well-being and even joy, but are instead enlisted into a form of life that yields burnout, unhappiness, loneliness, and cynicism.” @lmsacasas https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/desire-dopamine-and-the-internet
“if corrupt acts help me, then obviously at least this kind of corruption serves the cause of meritocracy.”
"As with Boeing in the late 1990s, Apple is financializing; it now spends twice as much on stock buybacks as it does on R&D, and that’s because it faces no meaningful competition that forces it to innovate. For sure, Apple has fantastic development capacity, as illustrated by the Vision Pro, but it increasingly degrades the quality of its own flagship product - the iPhone - for the purpose of maintaining its market power." @matthewstoller https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/why-the-apple-antitrust-suit-matters
via the same @matthewstoller piece, from the DoJ complaint (I think), a good explanation of the kind of thinking that leaves Apple Mail languishing in sucktitude despite the trivial amount of investment it would take to maintain it as a great mail client.
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/why-the-apple-antitrust-suit-matters
Text: For example, Apple's vice president of iPhone marketing explained in February 2020: "In looking at it with hindsight, | think going forward we need to set a stake in the ground for what features we think are ‘good enough’ for the consumer. | would argue were [sic] already doing *more* than what would have been good enough.” After identifying old features that “would have been good enough today if we hadn't introduced [updated features] already,” she explained, "anything new and especially expensive needs to be rigorously challenged before it's allowed into the consumer phone.”
if you are interested in tech things, and don’t follow @llimllib’s remarkably useful and interesting and concise notes, you are missing out. an amazing resource. https://notes.billmill.org/
“The problem with the requirement for each year to be more profitable than the last is that once you reach the peak, once it's not possible to actually improve your product any more, you still have to change something. Since you can't change it to make it better, you therefore will change it to make it worse.” @andrewrk https://andrewkelley.me/post/why-we-cant-have-nice-software.html ht @llimllib
// i’m reluctant to drive any car manufactured later than 2015, since they’ve all been made worse, at least from a privacy perspective
“For many decades, American Jews have built our political identity on a contradiction: Pursue equal citizenship here; defend group supremacy there. Now here and there are converging. In the years to come, we will have to choose.” @PeterBeinart https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/22/opinion/israel-american-jews-zionism.html
“Bruce Schneier has a name for this practice: ‘feudal security.’ That's when you cede control over your device to a Big Tech warlord whose ‘walled garden’ becomes a fortress that defends you against external threats… The keyword here is external threats. When Apple itself threatens your privacy, the fortress becomes a prison.” @pluralistic https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/22/reality-distortion-field/#three-trillion-here-three-trillion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money ht @chasedmartin
@inkican i guess nothing in theory! but in practice i’m more comfortable self-deprecating than self-promoting, and worry that i’ll be annoying, or come off as superficial or mercenary.
is it too gross a kind of self-promotion to boost when people link to your shit?
I really enjoyed this mini memoir of @rbreich's friendship and dialog with the inimitable JK Galbraith. https://robertreich.substack.com/p/my-mentor-ken-galbraith
sometimes i pace my apartment searching for my glasses because they're so closely bound to my face i can't see where they are.
when it disputes your priors, you dismiss it as a corrupt shitlib rag.
when it reinforces your priors, you take it as evidence, "even the liberal xxx admits that..."