***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[Wargames]

Yeah it appears the markets are still operating under the assumption that this is going to be a short, abbreviated recession, with no long term lasting effects. In reality, we are starting to see the fringe issues that were previously bubbling up kick in and cause long-term impacts that I don't think are being factored into the market at all or being overriden by a level of Fed intervention on a scale that we have never seen before.

It appears that people are operating under the assumption that once the economy re-opens, everyone is going to be spenders again despite all economic indicators showing that saving rates could climb as high as 11% which may be the highest rate in recorded history. People saving more money = less money being pumped back into the economy. Approximately 70% of our GDP relies on discretionary household spending so by all accounts this means we are in for a long, protracted recession. Additionally, certain segments of the economy rely completely discretionary spending (retail, hospitality, restaurants). These segments of the economy are taking on historic levels of debts just to survive. In the next couple of months you are going to see huge sections of the retail industry start to declare bankruptcy (you are/were already seeing it in retail with Pier 1, Modells, True Religion, Neiman Marcus). I'm fairly certain in the next 3 months we will see Macy's, AMC, JC Penny and many other follow suit. As these businesses die, unemployment goes up/stays up.

Most small businesses were already ****ed, but it appears that only 6% of small businesses actually received funding from the Paycheck Protection Program. Whether or not they needed it that is a different story, but I would guess they would. So you are going to see large swaths of small businesses die which is going to create additional unemployment.

Large entertainment venues (concerts, sports, festivals, theme parks) will likely open in an extremely reduced fashion. Those jobs are ****ed in the near future.

When you factor all that into account, that is going to lead to sustained unemployment, increased defaults on housing and vehicle payments which will lead to foreclosures/repossessions. We were already sitting on a $1.3T subprime auto-loan bubble, this is only going to exacerbate that. Same with a $1.5T student loan bubble that we have been sitting on.

Soon we will probably see a budgetary crises at a state level related to reduced revenues while expenses stay marginally the same. As the stock market drops, state pensions will be completely ****ed. Either those debts will need to be bailed out or let die. If those die, that's another large demographic that is ****ed in terms of discretionary spending. I think that's why we are already seeing states practically beg for additional federal funds.

Meanwhile in federal reserve lala land it appears that they have unleashed unlimited levels of QE and asset purchases. From what I can tell their balance sheet has increased by $6T over the last month or so largely due to additional investments in treasuries and MBS'. It appears that they will take another couple trillion dollars and use that to nationalize the Oil and Gas industry. If MBS' start to become systemically ****ed like they were in 2008 then a large portion of the fed balance sheet becomes complete ****. It appears that they are approaching a willingness to start taking on junk bonds as collateral for debt so if some of these businesses who should have died years ago finally die, then those assets are ****ed.

The short of all of this is it appears that the stock market is being propped up by unprecedented levels of intervention on a scale that we have never seen before. Once reality hits everything is ****ed.

Don't mean to sound like an alarmist and by no means, I am not a macro economist, but this is what I can tell is happened based on reading stuff from people who are much smarter than I am.

And even after this news the equity markets moved up.

Because before this happened there was blatant manipulation of the market to prop up "a strong economy" and now when we need to use those market tools to prop our economy up. They've been used. The only thing holding the market up now is rich people doing their damndest to make sure either trump gets re-elected (so they have time to rape and pillage everyone) or Biden gets stuck holding the bag (in which case they will rape and pillage to a smaller degree) so Dems share in their blame.

Rusty's suggestion to print money makes sense, inflation is almost a guarantee at this point. We should try to keep people alive and hope this is over before Christmas so at least that bump can keep things going.

The best thing that could happen is the Trump loses the election, Biden is elected, and he ends all federal hiring freezes and passes some FDR level infrastructure projects. The only way we get through this is the federal gov't has to take a larger role in hiring. a lot of businesses and even industries are not going to recover from this.

 

[stuntman mike]

dwalk31 what is your OPINION regarding what trump said about injecting disinfectant and using UV lights to combat covid-19?

 

[Rootin4EverybodyBlack]

And even after this news the equity markets moved up.

I’m not well versed in this stuff, but what do y’all think the housing market will look like after this? Lower prices, ton of foreclosures?

 

[mplsdunk]

I got a tanning bed and plenty of bleach cocktails.

Cough in my face!

I think I have some internal bleeding though or something from the bleach.

 

[junglejim]

-Let me say as a qualifier that I suggested it because I have zero faith in the GOP to handle this situation right. A 2 trillion dollar stimulus passed, and the GOP still raided the funds for small businesses to give out to their donors and large corps. To the point, we needed to pass another 500 billion.

I have been hearing that a 4 Trillion dollar stimulus, well spent, would be needed to get us out of this. It might take more because of GOP mismanagement, but the thing is the GOP will actively sabotage the economy if Biden gets in. Middle and lower-income people need a more robust bailout, and they need it now. So I am proposing it as a bailout, not a stimulus.

So hence the suggestion of the Fed sending out checks to people, as a go-around.

Sound fiscal policy is always preferred, but these are scary times. And in a better world, helicopter money would not be used until say we have a vaccine, it is widespread, businesses are open, but we are still in a recession, and it looks like we will be stuck in it for a while.

-First I were talking to regular folk I would not call it helicopter money. That phrasing primes people to not understand what the program is actually doing. Friedman was a low key troll, so no need to stick to the phrasing he made popular.

Now hand waving away a ton of issues like the Fed might not have the explicitly stated legal power to do it (I believe they do), I would tell the average person that helicopter money is not unlike what has already being done.

So yes, the Fed prints money, the Fed gives regular folk that money.

Sure say the Fed just The Federal government already sent out checks to people, and nothing terrible happened. Bush sent out checks to people in 2008, and nothing terrible happened. Bush sent out checks at the start of his presidency (and while that was a stupid move for other reasons), nothing bad happened. We finance all these payments through government debt. If someone has a hard time wrapping their head around the Federal Reserve just printing money and giving it to folk, then tell them we kind of do it now, but we only write a big IOU for it and act like everything wavy. We are just skipping the IOU part. Instead of financing direct payments through government issued debts, we do it with a permanent increase in the money stock. Alternatively, we can do it almost exactly like it is done now. Where the Treasury issues debt, the Fed buys it, and refunds all increase collected on the bonds back to the Treasury.

Plus, the Bank of England already helps fund the UK government through printing money. Ben Bernanke, who Bush appointed, says it should be on the table. Economists from all over the political have agreed that helicopter money can be used in an emergency. So this should qualify.

The primary pushback from people would be that it would cause runaway inflation. First, it won't; in a significant recession, you want to boost inflation because it is zero or negative (deflation).

Secondly, we want the economy to rebound as quickly as possible after a downturn. The longer you wait to try to stimulate the economy, the more structural damage that will be done. This should be a significant concern for people nearing retirement because of the more underlying damage to the macroeconomy; the worst future recessions will be. So what would be a blip usually, will ravage retirement savings?

And most importantly, I find that making people understand how grim the situation, warms them up to a more progressive policy.

God damn I thought you were joking at first but bernanke has apparently been a supporter of this in the past. This is good stuff

What tools does the Fed have left? Part 3: Helicopter money | Brookings

In the third of a series on the Fed’s remaining monetary tools, Ben Bernanke says "helicopter money" should be on the table as a last resort, and he proposes solutions to some issues implementation that would have to be resolved before it could be used.

www.brookings.edu

 

[dwalk31]

dwalk31 what is your OPINION regarding what trump said about injecting disinfectant and using UV lights to combat covid-19?

When I watched it live it sounded as if he was ignorant to the effectiveness re: disinfectants/UV and throwing out hypotheticals to the doctors on various possible methods of treatment.

The link posted today seems to show that he was talking about using it on the hands and asking sarcastic questions to reporters.

As he said yesterday, he isn't a doctor. And I think that people should rely on doctors for treatment methods. Not president Trump, or any other non-doctor.

 

[mplsdunk]

So he can just say whatever he wants as long as he follows it with “I’m not a doctor”?

 

[rexanglorum]

Yeah it appears the markets are still operating under the assumption that this is going to be a short, abbreviated recession, with no long term lasting effects. In reality, we are starting to see the fringe issues that were previously bubbling up kick in and cause long-term impacts that I don't think are being factored into the market at all or being overriden by a level of Fed intervention on a scale that we have never seen before.

It appears that people are operating under the assumption that once the economy re-opens, everyone is going to be spenders again despite all economic indicators showing that saving rates could climb as high as 11% which may be the highest rate in recorded history. People saving more money = less money being pumped back into the economy. Approximately 70% of our GDP relies on discretionary household spending so by all accounts this means we are in for a long, protracted recession. Additionally, certain segments of the economy rely completely discretionary spending (retail, hospitality, restaurants). These segments of the economy are taking on historic levels of debts just to survive. In the next couple of months you are going to see huge sections of the retail industry start to declare bankruptcy (you are/were already seeing it in retail with Pier 1, Modells, True Religion, Neiman Marcus). I'm fairly certain in the next 3 months we will see Macy's, AMC, JC Penny and many other follow suit. As these businesses die, unemployment goes up/stays up.

Most small businesses were already ****ed, but it appears that only 6% of small businesses actually received funding from the Paycheck Protection Program. Whether or not they needed it that is a different story, but I would guess they would. So you are going to see large swaths of small businesses die which is going to create additional unemployment.

Large entertainment venues (concerts, sports, festivals, theme parks) will likely open in an extremely reduced fashion. Those jobs are ****ed in the near future.

When you factor all that into account, that is going to lead to sustained unemployment, increased defaults on housing and vehicle payments which will lead to foreclosures/repossessions. We were already sitting on a $1.3T subprime auto-loan bubble, this is only going to exacerbate that. Same with a $1.5T student loan bubble that we have been sitting on.

Soon we will probably see a budgetary crises at a state level related to reduced revenues while expenses stay marginally the same. As the stock market drops, state pensions will be completely ****ed. Either those debts will need to be bailed out or let die. If those die, that's another large demographic that is ****ed in terms of discretionary spending. I think that's why we are already seeing states practically beg for additional federal funds.

Meanwhile in federal reserve lala land it appears that they have unleashed unlimited levels of QE and asset purchases. From what I can tell their balance sheet has increased by $6T over the last month or so largely due to additional investments in treasuries and MBS'. It appears that they will take another couple trillion dollars and use that to nationalize the Oil and Gas industry. If MBS' start to become systemically ****ed like they were in 2008 then a large portion of the fed balance sheet becomes complete ****. It appears that they are approaching a willingness to start taking on junk bonds as collateral for debt so if some of these businesses who should have died years ago finally die, then those assets are ****ed.

The short of all of this is it appears that the stock market is being propped up by unprecedented levels of intervention on a scale that we have never seen before. Once reality hits everything is ****ed.

Don't mean to sound like an alarmist and by no means, I am not a macro economist, but this is what I can tell is happened based on reading stuff from people who are much smarter than I am.

-Let me say as a qualifier that I suggested it because I have zero faith in the GOP to handle this situation right. A 2 trillion dollar stimulus passed, and the GOP still raided the funds for small businesses to give out to their donors and large corps. To the point, we needed to pass another 500 billion.

I have been hearing that a 4 Trillion dollar stimulus, well spent, would be needed to get us out of this. It might take more because of GOP mismanagement, but the thing is the GOP will actively sabotage the economy if Biden gets in. Middle and lower-income people need a more robust bailout, and they need it now. So I am proposing it as a bailout, not a stimulus.

So hence the suggestion of the Fed sending out checks to people, as a go-around.

Sound fiscal policy is always preferred, but these are scary times. And in a better world, helicopter money would not be used until say we have a vaccine, it is widespread, businesses are open, but we are still in a recession, and it looks like we will be stuck in it for a while.

-First I were talking to regular folk I would not call it helicopter money. That phrasing primes people to not understand what the program is actually doing. Friedman was a low key troll, so no need to stick to the phrasing he made popular.

Now hand waving away a ton of issues like the Fed might not have the explicitly stated legal power to do it (I believe they do), I would tell the average person that helicopter money is not unlike what has already being done.

So yes, the Fed prints money, the Fed gives regular folk that money.

Sure say the Fed just The Federal government already sent out checks to people, and nothing terrible happened. Bush sent out checks to people in 2008, and nothing terrible happened. Bush sent out checks at the start of his presidency (and while that was a stupid move for other reasons), nothing bad happened. We finance all these payments through government debt. If someone has a hard time wrapping their head around the Federal Reserve just printing money and giving it to folk, then tell them we kind of do it now, but we only write a big IOU for it and act like everything wavy. We are just skipping the IOU part. Instead of financing direct payments through government issued debts, we do it with a permanent increase in the money stock. Alternatively, we can do it almost exactly like it is done now. Where the Treasury issues debt, the Fed buys it, and refunds all increase collected on the bonds back to the Treasury.

Plus, the Bank of England already helps fund the UK government through printing money. Ben Bernanke, who Bush appointed, says it should be on the table. Economists from all over the political have agreed that helicopter money can be used in an emergency. So this should qualify.

The primary pushback from people would be that it would cause runaway inflation. First, it won't; in a significant recession, you want to boost inflation because it is zero or negative (deflation).

Secondly, we want the economy to rebound as quickly as possible after a downturn. The longer you wait to try to stimulate the economy, the more structural damage that will be done. This should be a significant concern for people nearing retirement because of the more underlying damage to the macroeconomy; the worst future recessions will be. So what would be a blip usually, will ravage retirement savings?

And most importantly, I find that making people understand how grim the situation, warms them up to a more progressive policy.

Great posts, kings.

A couple of thoughts on inflation:

- I love Krugman's phrase "septaphobia" which means the demonizing, by neoliberal economists and pundits, of the economics of the 1970's. This revisionist history, which began in the 1980's and hasn't let up since, posits that because there was 8%-14% inflation during the 1970's that the 1970's was bleak and that things stopped being bleak by the mid 80's when Volcker's austerity "broke" the inflation and gave us and low inflation ever since.

The problem with that narrative is that wages actually kept up with inflation so its effects on purchasing power for ordinary people's household was limited (Milton Friedman was correct that inflation and rising wages did push households into higher tax brackets but that's a problem with Congressional lassitude). More broadly, the 1970's was the last decade that workers and ordinary consumers had equal footing with corporate power so neoliberal/conservative economists have to highlight everything bad that happened in the 70's and gloss over everything bad that has happened and was caused by increased power of capital since 1981.

What really happened in the 1970's is that the real rate of return on bonds and mortgages declined or put another way, households and municipalities paid less money to Wall Street.

- In 2008-2009, even Greg Mankiw advocated for 6% core inflation on the grounds that it's a partial debt write off for households. When the situation became less dire, he backed off of that but its interesting seeing a fairly conservative economist, in a crisis, call for modest inflation increases to explicitly to do the thing that had hitherto been considered a bad aspect of inflation.

_-Inflation is easy to demonize because people conflate core inflation, the across the board price increases caused by monetary policy, with increases in the price of things that are very important such as healthcare, education, food and energy. It causes ordinary people to oppose fiscal and monetary stimulus because they think it will cause inflation which they understand as the cost of tuition and rent. Those things, however, are made more expensive because of public policy and/or world events and not monetary policy.

 

[cosmiccoffee9]

-Let me say as a qualifier that I suggested it because I have zero faith in the GOP to handle this situation right. A 2 trillion dollar stimulus passed, and the GOP still raided the funds for small businesses to give out to their donors and large corps. To the point, we needed to pass another 500 billion.

I have been hearing that a 4 Trillion dollar stimulus, well spent, would be needed to get us out of this. It might take more because of GOP mismanagement, but the thing is the GOP will actively sabotage the economy if Biden gets in. Middle and lower-income people need a more robust bailout, and they need it now. So I am proposing it as a bailout, not a stimulus.

So hence the suggestion of the Fed sending out checks to people, as a go-around.

Sound fiscal policy is always preferred, but these are scary times. And in a better world, helicopter money would not be used until say we have a vaccine, it is widespread, businesses are open, but we are still in a recession, and it looks like we will be stuck in it for a while.

-First I were talking to regular folk I would not call it helicopter money. That phrasing primes people to not understand what the program is actually doing. Friedman was a low key troll, so no need to stick to the phrasing he made popular.

Now hand waving away a ton of issues like the Fed might not have the explicitly stated legal power to do it (I believe they do), I would tell the average person that helicopter money is not unlike what has already being done.

So yes, the Fed prints money, the Fed gives regular folk that money.

Sure say the Fed just The Federal government already sent out checks to people, and nothing terrible happened. Bush sent out checks to people in 2008, and nothing terrible happened. Bush sent out checks at the start of his presidency (and while that was a stupid move for other reasons), nothing bad happened. We finance all these payments through government debt. If someone has a hard time wrapping their head around the Federal Reserve just printing money and giving it to folk, then tell them we kind of do it now, but we only write a big IOU for it and act like everything wavy. We are just skipping the IOU part. Instead of financing direct payments through government issued debts, we do it with a permanent increase in the money stock. Alternatively, we can do it almost exactly like it is done now. Where the Treasury issues debt, the Fed buys it, and refunds all increase collected on the bonds back to the Treasury.

Plus, the Bank of England already helps fund the UK government through printing money. Ben Bernanke, who Bush appointed, says it should be on the table. Economists from all over the political have agreed that helicopter money can be used in an emergency. So this should qualify.

The primary pushback from people would be that it would cause runaway inflation. First, it won't; in a significant recession, you want to boost inflation because it is zero or negative (deflation).

Secondly, we want the economy to rebound as quickly as possible after a downturn. The longer you wait to try to stimulate the economy, the more structural damage that will be done. This should be a significant concern for people nearing retirement because of the more underlying damage to the macroeconomy; the worst future recessions will be. So what would be a blip usually, will ravage retirement savings?

And most importantly, I find that making people understand how grim the situation, warms them up to a more progressive policy.

that was thorough, I should be able to make that not sound so scary.

they´re both on year 40ish of a nice Regular Citizen Career-Life and their savings took a super gut punch...wanted to have something better to say than ¨damn idk pops, maybe money copter come?¨

thanks for taking the time man.

 

[rexanglorum]

So he can just say whatever he wants as long as he follows it with “I’m not a doctor”?

 

[mplsdunk]

There is a simpsons version of everything.

 

[-Red-]

dwalk31 what is your OPINION regarding what trump said about injecting disinfectant and using UV lights to combat covid-19?

“He lacks the experience to know that these actions would kill people, not cure them, since he’s not a medical professional. He also lacks the experience to know not to use the incredibly powerful message platform of his office to comment on such matters of which he is entirely ignorant, possibly putting lives at risk, since he’s not a politician.

“I imagine people like all of this since this is exactly why they elected him for—because he’s medically and politically clueless.”

 

[mplsdunk]

kind of related but not really, I went to a chiropractor the other day to get my DOT physical. You need one every two years if you have a Cdl. I just went to this dude because it was by my house.

anyways I get in there and he doesn’t give me a physical, I pay him get my card and he then starts pushing fake pills on me. I told him I don’t want any and he starts screaming anti vaxer propaganda at me. It was wild in there. Never got in an altercation with a “doctor” until then.

this all reminds me of that. I swear the internet makes everyone dumber, all that fake “woke” stuff is getting old. Cut the joe rogan off.

 

[junglejim]

If anyone is interested in some light reading, this was a really good read. Its long as ****, but I think it did a really good job point out current macro issues. Most of it is graphs so that makes it an easier read.

Cliff notes: many currencies will be ****ed after this and invest in Gold and Bitcoin.

 

[stuntman mike]

When I watched it live it sounded as if he was ignorant to the effectiveness re: disinfectants/UV and throwing out hypotheticals to the doctors on various possible methods of treatment.

The link posted today seems to show that he was talking about using it on the hands and asking sarcastic questions to reporters.

As he said yesterday, he isn't a doctor. And I think that people should rely on doctors for treatment methods. Not president Trump, or any other non-doctor.

thank you for the reply. i would have to agree with your initial impression and it looks to me like refuting with the claim of sarcasm is just really, really poor damage control. he can state that he isn't a doctor but to go along with that, he shouldn't offer medical claims bolstered by his statements of being super smart or whatever inaccurate superlatives he likes to casually toss around. personally, i'd go so far as to say that his behavior is recklessly negligent and should not be tolerated/forgiven/ignored. really, it's just another small piece of an absolutely horrible job he's done in response to this pandemic.

 

[RustyShackleford]

kind of related but not really, I went to a chiropractor the other day to get my DOT physical. You need one every two years if you have a Cdl. I just went to this dude because it was by my house.

anyways I get in there and he doesn’t give me a physical, I pay him get my card and he then starts pushing fake pills on me. I told him I don’t want any and he starts screaming anti vaxer propaganda at me. It was wild in there. Never got in an altercation with a “doctor” until then.

this all reminds me of that. I swear the internet makes everyone dumber, all that fake “woke” stuff is getting old. Cut the joe rogan off.

Damn famb, whywesteppin tryna afford to reseed the lawn at his mcmansion, and you won't even cop some colloidal silver supplements to help the cause

Guess there really isn't any class solidarity

 

[rexanglorum]

kind of related but not really, I went to a chiropractor the other day to get my DOT physical. You need one every two years if you have a Cdl. I just went to this dude because it was by my house.

anyways I get in there and he doesn’t give me a physical, I pay him get my card and he then starts pushing fake pills on me. I told him I don’t want any and he starts screaming anti vaxer propaganda at me. It was wild in there. Never got in an altercation with a “doctor” until then.

this all reminds me of that. I swear the internet makes everyone dumber, all that fake “woke” stuff is getting old. Cut the joe rogan off.

A distressing number of doctors (both real MDs and non certified alike) are rightwing cranks.

My favorite podcast has reviewed a lot of Christian cinema. One big pattern they notice was the ideal job for an evangelical Christian man is firefighter or doctor, with the wife working in the same place in a subordinate role so receptionist or nurse, respectively.

I thought about why conservatives, especially evangelicals, consider doctor the ideal profession. I figured two things. One it’s the ideal job for the petite bourgeoisie to replicate itself. The petite bourgeoisie don’t have the capital to live as rentiers (people who live off of their returns) and be able to split their capital among their children and those children live as rentiers. Instead, you use your wealth to pay your kids’ tuition up through graduate and professional school. Then the kids get good paying jobs and with no student debt to pay back, they use money that otherwise would go into MBA/JD/MD repayment and instead buy up assets, especially smaller rental units. They then go on to post on r/personalfinance and lecture people, with far fewer resources, about the importance of “priorities” and sound “money management.”

Less religious and culturally conservative types will work in law or finance or journalism of management consulting but for those jobs you usually have to live in big, liberal cities. That’s why once great cities have become giant theme parks for rich kids from Ohio and Orange County. The true believers though, they want to make a big salary and live in bum **** nowhere and that’s where becoming a doctor comes in. You can make $300k and with no student debt, you can buy lots of cheap property and start making lots of rental income.

 

[aepps20]

junglejim , RustyShackleford and rexanglorum and jrose5 all made excellent points in here. To sum it up, da economy is roaring like a roaring Turtle and is kicking major, Major, MAJor, MAJOr, MAJOR BUTT CHEEKS (EMPHASIS ON THE BASS IN MY VOICE).

 

[mplsdunk]

Damn famb, whywesteppin tryna afford to reseed the lawn on his mcmansion, and you won't even cop some colloidal silver supplements to help the cause

Guess there really isn't any class solidarity

bruh he was trying to sell me some “multivitamin” in a plain white bottle for 50 bucks.

he said my heart was weak and I needed them. Mf tried to be slick and show me my blood pressure and say that was my pulse.

I **** you not, I didn’t think guys like this were real.

whywesteppin is my #coalbro4life but I’m not copping his snake oil (pause).

 

[rexanglorum]

Damn famb, whywesteppin tryna afford to reseed the lawn on his mcmansion, and you won't even cop some colloidal silver supplements to help the cause

Guess there really isn't any class solidarity

The history of all hitherto existing societies is based on class struggle. The class who sell colloidal silver and the class of pesky regulators who try to shut it down.

 

[obeahmyal7]

Great posts, kings.

A couple of thoughts on inflation:

rexanglorum

I agree with most of this. But I'm confused by two things.

States and municipalities were absolutely pummeled by interest rates during the 1970s. Not unlike the debt crises of the Global South, local governments devoted increasing portions of expenditures to interest payments, payments redistributed to lenders on Wall Street (or, more generally, to bankers in major financial centers around the country and to bond- and note holders).

So what do you mean when you say that "What really happened in the 1970's is that the real rate of return on bonds and mortgages declined or put another way, households and municipalities paid less money to Wall Street." It does not follow that the declining rate of return is the same thing as households and municipalities paying less money to Wall Street.

I'm convinced by the narrative power of treating the 1970s as the moment when everything bad happened, and the political work that narrative does for consolidating neoliberal power.

But do you really want to claim that "the 1970's was the last decade that workers and ordinary consumers had equal footing with corporate power"? Are you more or less operating on the same 'narrative turf,' just from the opposite end, to see the 1970s as the last moments of some golden age, this despite the fact that black workers hardly ever had equal footing with corporate power? Aren't you really talking about the last hurrah of a particular segment of American workers and consumers--i.e. white workers and white consumers?

 

[whywesteppin]

bruh he was trying to sell me some “multivitamin” in a plain white bottle for 50 bucks.

he said my heart was weak and I needed them. Mf tried to be slick and show me my blood pressure and say that was my pulse.

I **** you not, I didn’t think guys like this were real.

whywesteppin is my #coalbro4life but I’m not copping his snake oil (pause).

now, now, I think we just have a giant misunderstanding on our hands. you see, I was being what we in the business call "sarcastic". you see, I am no doctor, and I was asked a sarcastic question, so I gave a sarcastic answer.

second, I want to say that colloidal silver is junk. it is the cubic zirconia of supplements. what I actually have, if you will give me a second chance, is the real stuff, the diamonds of supplements. I have coaloidal silver to sell you. that's right, straight from the mines, 100% authentic coaloidal silver. even comes with a certificate. and because of your special membership in the #4coalsmen I will cut you a deal and throw in a bottle of Lysol AND free shipping. what you do say?

here are some real customer testimonials:

"I used to be a weakling, and lacked bladder control. Then I started taking coaloidal silver, and overnight I became a new man." - jrose5

"Libs used to step to me but ever since I got started on coaloidal silver, not only do the libbies run and hide, I got more bass in my voice." - aepps20

 

[willycheesesteak]

 

[RIP sleazyy]

 

[dwalk31]

thank you for the reply. i would have to agree with your initial impression and it looks to me like refuting with the claim of sarcasm is just really, really poor damage control. he can state that he isn't a doctor but to go along with that, he shouldn't offer medical claims bolstered by his statements of being super smart or whatever inaccurate superlatives he likes to casually toss around. personally, i'd go so far as to say that his behavior is recklessly negligent and should not be tolerated/forgiven/ignored. really, it's just another small piece of an absolutely horrible job he's done in response to this pandemic.

I understand your position.

Personally, I don't think many people rely on Trump for medical advice. But in this case, he didn't actually suggest people do anything--he asked a series of questions.

Hopefully no one interprets those questions (whether they were to the doctors or to the reporters) as meaning they should ingest disinfectants. If they would, I'm not sure it would matter much to their health who the president is as they are probably pretty far gone.

He has followed the advice of the medical professionals and extended the guidelines. And it seems that he continues to rely on them quite a bit in the actual decision-making process. That's why the caveat of him not being a doctor is relevant.