Nightwingdragon @ Nightwingdragon @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Let it be known, now and forevermore, that floo is not an enemy of SatansMaggotyCumFart. Spread the news far and wide.

Do with this information as you wish.

Did you just interrupt him while he was making a mistake?!?!?

To be fair to them, they're in the superminority right now so all they'd be able to do is feelgood grandstanding.

What pisses me off is that only 5-6 of them could actually have been bothered to try. All 43 of them should have been showing up there in unison and demanding entry. At least show a united front, for the love of God. But they can't even be bothered to do the bare minimum grandstanding, let alone actual action.

I'm sure that Ron DeSantis will take the opinions of the half a dozen or so Democrat lawmakers out of 43 in Florida's state government that could be bothered to show up very seriously, and it will be a top priority of the DeSantis and Trump administrations to address those concerns along with the other numerous legal and Constitutional issues surrounding the compound.

Until the crisis is over. Then they go right back to supporting Trump.

And after this ordeal is over, I'm sure that just like all of the other families that have been through this, they'll see the error of their way anlololololoololololol, sorry, i couldn't even finish saying that with a straight face.

Of course they'll go right back to supporting Trump, just like all the others. Trump could fuck their wives and they'd sit there watching like a cuck with a MAGA hat on.

Centrists as in centrists. People who are center-right aren't going to join a party that intends to go far left.

If Musk launched a party with large enough base support of clueless morons to destabilize both Rep and Dem parties, that would create space for the creation of a liberal/left party,

Actually, a new party that successfully pulls from both parties would most likely be centrist at best.

That's context we don't actually have.

It's possible that Democrats are simply clueless as you suggest, but we don't know how many people supported this not because they intend to join Musk's third party, but because they also know that it'll split the GOP vote and make Democrat victories easier.

I'm actually very much in favor of Musk starting a political party that effectively splits the Republican vote and makes Democrat victories that much easier. Go Musk!

So you're only going to read the first half? :P

I’ve been lurking on r/Conservative

There's problem #1. Don't lurk on conservative. Excessive exposure to conservative has been shown to make you statistically dumber just from the exposure.

to try and figure out why they back Trump so hard, call it research.

Because it gives bigots a convenient excuse to be bigoted.

They say that prices have gone down in stores; I have not seen that, things have remained the same or gotten more expensive in my experience. Gas prices have remained…the same, I haven’t noticed a difference.

Because they gaslight and outright lie to you.

I’ve noticed that companies that perform services are now using Tarrifs to quote insane prices wether or not they were actually affected by it.

This was always going to happen. Tariffs give companies plenty of excuses to price gouge, and the GOP are perfectly OK with that.

I know the main reason is immigrants, the absolutely terrible things we’re doing to them gets thier rocks off.

Ding Ding Ding.

But if they’re so adamant about prices going down and the economy doing well they’d have to be experiencing that themselves? They wouldn’t be saying that so confidently to each other in an echo chamber unless it was happening.

It's called keeping up the ruse. There's a saying. "Say something enough times to enough people, and eventually they will start to believe it." . Say it first, say it most, say it loudest, and shout any dissenters down. Unfortunately, this is a tactic that works very, very effectively, especially over the mid to long term, and it's a tactic that Trump has mastered very effectively.

There's also the fact that they're pretty much forced to say it regardless of their feelings.

Speaking out against Trump has led to credible death threats against multiple politicians, judges, etc. Speaking out against Trump as an elected politician is also a great way to get yourself primaried, as evidenced by the number of former Republican politicians who have spoken out against Trump and then suddenly decided not to run for re-election. Thom Tillis is the latest, but far from the first example of this. And there are plenty of sycophants willing to get in line to be the next to suck Trump's dick, just waiting for a Republican to speak out so they can be the ones to issue the primary challenge and get Trump's (personal and financial) backing.

Confidently speaking the Trump mantra is a job requirement now. No, that's not an exaggeration. These people have to repeat it, even to each other, if they want to keep their jobs.

So where the fuck are prices going down at?

They're not. Remember those egg prices from a few months ago? When everybody thought that was the ceiling? That's about to become the floor.

And remember, prices do not go down. Prices only go up. When the economic pressures that cause prices to rise disappears, prices don't go back down. The new higher price just becomes the new floor. And the reason for this has been ingrained in corporate America for at least as long as I've been alive, probably far longer: Corporations charge a price that the market will bear. It doesn't have to bear that price willingly. If people buy XYZ at a grossly inflated price because they need XYZ (life saving medication, for example), then that means the market will bear XYZ at that price, and that price becomes the new floor. The fact that the market bears that price under heavy duress is completely irrelevant.

I guess my question is what is actually happening? I want a news source thats going to be honest and not exaggerate for rage bait. Because I now don’t trust either sides news.

Yeah, good luck with that. I've actually been lucky enough to talk to a couple of the more prolific Youtube ones, and they've confirmed something that most people figured out anyway: The hyperbole, over-exaggeration, and rage-bait is pretty much the only way to get noticed at all in today's media environment. It's either that, or not get heard at all. American readers love their tabloid journalism. And for what it's worth, I agree with you: The more clickbait I see in a headline, the less likely I am to trust it or the reporter using it.

There's numerous forces in play here. First is that the Trump administration and our court system has essentially decided that Freedom of the Press is no longer a thing. We've seen news reporters make the pilgrimage to Mar A Lago in order to appease Trump. We just saw CBS cough up tens of millions to Trump and forcing one of their own reporters to apologize for reporting factually correct information that Trump didn't like. Most major media companies have opted to be much more Trump-friendly in their reporting rather than deal with retribution in the form of frivolous lawsuits, punitive EOs, legislative retribution, etc., and even a lot of independent media has toned down reporting because they literally cannot financially afford to be the next target of the Trump Hate Machine.

Another thing that has come into play: Some time back, Mitch McConnell started the GOP mantra that still exists to this day. No matter what the Democrats are in favor of, the GOP must be against it at all costs. Up to the point where he has torpedoed his own bills because they got Democrat support. This has ultimately led to both sides digging in their heels and taking the "Whatever they are for, you must be against" to ludicrous extremes.

It has led to the extreme political polarization of America. The other side is 100% wrong on all things, forever and for always. "Reaching across the aisle" is now seen as a betrayal to the party. Bipartisanism is all but a racial slur. Even admitting that the other side might have a point worthy of discussion is enough to get you labelled as a R/DINO. Compromise and negotiation are seen as capitulation and weakness. Virtually all significant votes are party-line and can be predicted well in advance, almost down to the vote.

People, on both sides, generally don't look for objective political discussion on the Internet. People generally don't like being challenged, even if they don't want to admit it. What they're looking for are echo chambers that will repeatedly tell them what they want to hear, how right they are, and how evil the other side is for daring to disagree with you. Conservative openly admits it in their side bar: They are not a "safe space". They are not objective. They are not interested in hearing points of view that are not their own. They know all of the criticism, and their response is "Yeah, we know. And we like it this way. Now get out."

But the left does the same thing. It holds true on Reddit's /politics sub, and it holds just as true here. Post anything that favors the right. Anything. Could be an article, opinion, whatever. Even just a reply to someone else. Be neutral, objective, factual, and cite your sources. Watch as you get downvoted to oblivion and openly mocked and ridiculed. Watch as the words "Fuck off" get voted to the top. Watch as replies that are largely copium with absolutely no basis in facts or reality get upvoted and treated as biblical prophecy because people like hearing it. Feels over reals goes both ways. Because people aren't looking for information. What they want are echo chambers. And people in echo chambers typically don't take kindly to someone new coming in and hurting their fee-fees with all of those things like objective facts and reality and stuff. As far as they're concerned, you can fuck all the way off with that.

Why are they saying "abrupt"? Trump was explicitly campaigning on this, and the GOP in general have been climate deniers for years.

I want to point out that this is not unique to the U.S. - farming in Europe and the U.K. suffers from the same problem.

Actually, it's a worldwide issue that has existed pretty much since the beginning of society. Today it's undocumented labor. Back then it was just outright slavery. Pretty much every economic system throughout civilization's history has relied on slave labor to maintain its food supply and infrastructure. There has never been a period of human history where people were paying for goods and services based on the workers who created those goods actually getting paid a fair wage, particularly not in agriculture, construction, or infrastructure.

I wonder what the effect of raising wages for farm labourers would be?

Check my post history. I gave a couple of examples in another thread on the same subject. In a nutshell, if undocumented immigrants were getting paid a living wage + benefits and that cost was passed onto the consumer, it would likely cause the price of food to double, if not more. The wage gap between undocumented workers and even low-paid union workers working above board is fucking enormous, and society at large does not have a grasp of how much impact that has on food prices, and for that matter, goods and services in general. We live in a society where we have become accustomed to high quality goods and services that we think are created by people making a fair wage, without realizing just how much of that work actually is being done by people making barely a fraction of what they deserve. You'd be amazed at how many people think that the fair cost of labor is already baked into the price.

In another example, I discussed the fact that this is common in construction as well. If just one or two undocumented workers were replaced with union construction workers at a competitive wage, it would probably add anywhere from $30-$50,000 in extra labor costs to the cost of a house. A house worth $150,000 today would probably start at $200k+ if it weren't for undocumented labor.

You'd end up with a whole bunch of people making what we would think would be a "living wage" until you realize that the cost of everything has gone up and you're right back to being barely able to afford the basics. You started off making $400 a week and having $500 worth of expenses. Then your pay was raised to $500 a week, but that caused the price of goods and services to rise so now you've got $700 worth of expenses. So you demand a raise and now make $700, but this causes the price of goods and services to go up to $1000. So you......well, you get the idea. You don't actually end up making any financial headway. All you do is essentially devalue the buying power of the money you do have while wondering why your financial situation never changes even when your pay does go up.

And then when people stop spending money on tourism and electronics and luxury goods because they can only afford the basics now, that's when you start seeing job losses. And more people unable to afford things, which causes more job losses. And the ripple effects just keep going on, and on, and on, and on.....

And the reason for this unending loop is because our entire economy is built on the idea of cheap, exploited labor. Take cheap, exploited labor out of the mix and the entire system becomes unsustainable and quickly collapses. Why do you think we so heavily rely on shit from China and third world countries that wipe their asses with safety standards and pay their workers less than what a homeless man would make begging on a street corner, if they pay them at all. Because if we tried to make that stuff here while paying our workers a competitive wage, 95% of that stuff would be completely unaffordable to all but the wealthy. There's a reason why, like I said, every President before Trump has done exactly nothing to address the problem outside of paying it some political lip service when they're campaigning. Because they know that if you fuck with it, the entire thing comes crashing down.

I'll say the same thing I said in the other thread.

There's a reason why past Presidents have avoided this subject like it was the fucking plague.

An unspoken truth about our society that nobody likes to acknowledge or admit is that the exploitation of cheap labor (particularly in agriculture and construction) is literally the cornerstone of our society that everything else is built on. Before we were exploiting undocumented workers, we had literal slavery. There has never been a point in US history where agricultural workers were getting anything close to fair pay for the work they do, nor have citizens ever had to pay the prices they'd have to pay if workers were getting paid fairly.

You can't claim to crack down on immigration, and then make huge carve-outs for farmers, hotel workers, etc., because that's where the majority of them work. Trump is finding this out the hard way. He has to look tough on immigration to please his base, but even he acknowledges that it would devastate our entire agricultural system.

If you leave these industries alone, you are essentially and willfully turning a blind eye to the numerous legal and ethical violations these farmers commit on the daily, including sub-minimum pay, no benefits, hazardous working conditions, etc. You also appear to be weak on immigration to the general public, who see the policy as an open invitation for even more illegal migration.

If you were to try to force these industries to use legal labor under fair working conditions, the price of the goods and services they provide would be unacceptable to a general public who does not understand the true costs of labor and have never had to pay what the true cost of food would be if workers were paid fairly, and may not be able to pay it even if they were willing to accept it.

This is not a problem that is unique to Trump, though I'm sure he'll find new and innovative ways to make the whole situation exponentially worse. This is a problem that has existed throughout US history, and there's a reason why past Presidents have done little more to address the subject than pay some lip service that they never actually act on. Try to do so and you quickly figure out that the entire cornerstone of our society and economy literally relies on people turning a blind eye to this exact issue, and attempting to fix the problem -- no matter what you think the 'solution' to the problem even is or what side of the issue you're on -- just risks causing ripple effects that bring the entire economy crashing down like a crack addict trying to play Jenga.

US-born citizens do not want these jobs.

They don't want these jobs at a price farmers are willing or able to pay.

Of course US citizens don't want these jobs. They'd make more money as a Wal Mart greeter. I wouldn't want them either at that price. Offer $30 an hour, fair working conditions, and benefits to people and you'd have a lot more people willing to stand out in the sun and pick crops all day.

The problem is that people would refuse to pay the price for that fruit that the farmers would have to charge. That's where the issue is. Start offering people $30 an hour and watch how fast those jobs get filled........until people see the new price of groceries. Then they'll drive down to Mexico and start dragging the workers back to the US themselves.

I'm not underestimating it at all. I'm saying that my point would still fully stand even after the corporate greed and wealth extraction was taken into consideration. People severely underestimate the impact that this has on prices.

That's socialism in a nutshell.

Regardless of your opinion on socialism overall, the GOP would cheer Marjorie Taylor Greene leading an LGBTQ parade in honor of black gay atheists across the entire state of Alabama before they allowed that to happen.

You are correct, but those issues have no bearing on the fact that those people still would have no idea what their food would cost if they were paid a fair wage, and would likely not be willing to accept it even if you could mathematically prove that it was correct.

The gap between what most undocumented immigrants get paid vs. what a US citizen or permanent resident would get paid for the exact same work (assuming everything was above board) is absolutely gigantic. Especially in the agriculture and construction industries. Even if you took 100% of the rest of the corporate greed out, the price increases associated with paying them a fair wage would still send prices far higher than most people would be willing or even able to pay.

Look at it this way.

A quick google search shows that the average construction worker gets paid $25 an hour. Factor in benefits and you're figuring $35 effective. Let's say that, among the rest of the crew, A construction company hires 2 undocumented workers to do the low-level stuff for $10 an hour to cut a few corners and keep within budget. (A not-uncommon practice in the industry, to say the least. I'm sure some hire many more than that.)

A house takes about 6 months to build. So those two workers would work 40 hours/week for 26 weeks, for a total of 1040 hours, or 2080 hours between the two of them. The company pays them $20,800 under the table.

Had that construction company hired two union employees to do the same work, those workers would have been paid $72,800 in pay and benefits. That's over $50,000 difference. Those costs would be tacked on to the cost of the house. A house that normally would sell for $150k would now be priced over $200k. That's not corporate greed. That's just math, and the true cost of what it would take to pay them a fair wage. If the owners were planning on renting out the property, this would probably result in the resulting rent for the property being about $500 a month higher, and even if the property were broken out into several apartments, you'd probably be still talking about tacking on a couple of hundred a month per apartment.

Whether it's morally right is irrelevant. The price increases even after you factor out the things you correctly mention also have an impact would still likely be significantly higher than most people would be willing to accept and would likely cause severe negative impacts in the economy.

Wait, just hear me out, if we wait for the concentration camps to fill up with immigrants and political prisoners, they can provide the same labor FOR FREE while also providing a nice sum for the private prison firms that, in turn, grease the prison-to-profit machine!

All this with the added bonus that some of the labor will already be skilled. It’s brilliant!!

I actually thought of this myself, non-sarcastically. Maybe this is some kind of attempt to push out the undocumented and replace them with prison labor, especially since the Constitution still allows for prisoners to be used as slaves. And given this country's history, a part of me was surprised that prisoners being used as farm labor wasn't already the norm. My guess is that it would simply be too much of a logistical nightmare to monitor the workers to prevent them from escaping, and if you've gotta pay the guards to watch the prisoners, that kinda defeats the point. At that point, might as well just pay regular workers instead of dealing with all the BS and risks associated with using convicted criminals. Using criminals involuntarily would also run the risk of one of them contaminating the food supply (which, according to some prison documentaries, is not uncommon in prison kitchens to the point where staff members won't eat food if it even if it came in contact with the prison kitchen due to the risk of contamination). A prisoner contaminating the food out of revenge or just for their own amusement wouldn't mean that C-Block won't get dessert today. It affects the food supply of millions of people.

That said, I'm sure Trump will try this. And then food costs will go up anyway because the overhead costs and the costs and risks associated with watching over the prisoners will exceed what the farmers were paying the undocumented workers, and Trump will still somehow tout it as a win.