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dragontamer ,

It got worse.

texasmonthly.com/…/elon-musk-vs-organic-farmers-b…

As it turns out, Elon Musk had a bunch of farms + horses from all the land he bought in the 2022-era. Elon Musk was actively trying to get rid of horses on his new property.

Its not that Elon Musk was going to “buy her a horse”. He had tons of spare horses and was looking to dump them onto someone else.

dragontamer ,

USA doesn’t control the source of the problem, which are random-ass civil wars that occur in Central America or South America.

What we do control are the legal limits of accepting immigrants. But remember that while the jobs market can likely accept more bodies, our housing market doesn’t have enough housing for a population boom.

Immigration law exists so that we can better plan jobs/housing/etc. etc. it’s a good thing in the abstract to control, no matter how sad the stories are of the people we turn away.

That being said: I’m overall supportive of more immigrants in this economy. Jobs are a major factor and it’s really 'Just Housing’s that’s a practical consideration. If we can get Congress + States to pass housing starts laws, then we can absolutely accept more immigrants in a way that’d benefit our country.

dragontamer , (edited )

For today, in 2024, is the ongoing Venezuelan collapse.

Communism is not your savior to the argument, not with respect to the legion of Venezuelan migrants traveling to the USA. We had nothing to do with Venezuela’s current set of issues., The random ass set of autocratic rule + socialist ideals of modern Venezuela have more to do with the troubles in that country than shit we did 50 years ago.

dragontamer ,

The “Northern Triangle” migrants of 2018 (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) had nothing to do with any US Policy. We had to deal with the major wave of immigrants anyway. sgp.fas.org/crs/row/IF11151.pdf

Today’s wave of migrants is the 2024 ongoing collapse of Venezuela. Which is everything to do with shitty Venezuelan politics, and again nothing to do with the USA.

I’m well aware of Banana Republics of decades ago. But its rather stupid to blame everything on the USA when the recent migrant wave has more to do with local issues like MS-13 (2018 era), or the handoff of Hugo Chávez to Nicolás Maduro (Venezuela).

dragontamer ,

USA had nothing to do with Nicolás Maduro disasterous takeover of their electricity system, leading to widespread brownouts of 2019. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Venezuelan_blackouts

Get your head out of the USA’s asshole. The world is bigger than just us. There’s like, local politics and local issues at play here that absolutely have bigger effects on the current migration than any shit the CIA did decades ago.

dragontamer ,

What fruit company existed in Venezuela that’s related to today’s (largely) Venezuelan migrant population?

Hint: you’re talking about the wrong portion of the world if we’re focusing on today’s migrant crisis. Venezuela was oil and has a completely different set of circumstances than you might believe.

2018 was Northern Triangle that at least is somewhat related to fruit company (albeit a hundred years later, but whatever. If you want to ignore modern history so much so bet it, at least you’re somewhat correct for the Northern Triangle migrants). But 2024 is Venezuelan migrants under a completely separate issue.

dragontamer ,

And bullshit from Central American nationalists who have dumbass conspiracy theories about CIA boogiemen aren’t exactly a good source of information either. I know that Venezuela wants to blame everyone else for their problems, but their arguments don’t even pass the barest of muster.

We all know what the USA was focused on in the last 30 years. The bulk of US effort was in Afghanistan, Iraq/Syria, with more recent focus on Ukraine, China, and now Israel.

Blaming the USA for random ass shit that happens in I dunno, Venezuela’s shitty socialist takeover of their energy grid (leading into large-scale blackouts) and trying to tie US Policy to that is… well… a conspiracy theory. Sure, nationalists from beyond our southern border can believe whatever the fuck they want, but I’ll call them out on the bullshit. Venezuela fucked their own country over, and we’re doing those migrants a favor by letting them in.

I’m happy for us to do our duty to take in those who qualify for sanctuary, or otherwise need such assistance. But USA has other concerns that we still need to balance against that (such as our housing shortage, that’d be complicated with more migrants). I think we can make it work in any case but its not going to be easy (or politically easy at that to even decide on a path forward).

In any case, letting in a bunch of US haters would be against my policy anyway. There’s too many people in line as it is, so if they don’t want to accept the USA’s side of the story, they can just stay out of our country.

dragontamer ,

I mean, the biggest thing indirectly being caused by the USA is maybe climate change, which has caused waves of famine, drought, hurricanes… and further disasters like Volcanic Erruptions wrecked the Northern Triangle in the 2010s. This all culminated in a temporary migrant wave under the Trump administration.

But that is not Biden’s issue today. Biden’s issue is largely one of Venezuelan in origin because of all that other crap happening totally elsewhere for completely different reasons.

I know people want to pretend that the USA had some major role to play in all of this, but its just bullshit. We had some major events about 100 years to 50 years ago. But we all know where the bulk of modern USA has been (and that’s in the Middle East, at least since 2000s).

dragontamer ,

I mean you can point to like… maybe all of US policy towards Venezuela post 1998 in this same light.

And completely ignore Hugo Chavez? Why? Hugo Chavez actually was in charge of Venezuela for the bulk of the period you’re talking about.

I know that Lemmy is filled with Marxists who want to have as favorable of a viewpoint of Communism as possible. But… uhhhh… Hugo Chavez and his successor haven’t exactly made Venezuela into a utopia.

What I do know, is decades of Hugo Chavez (and now Maduro) rule has led into Venezuela’s current predicaments. And that’s directly led, as in these are the people who actually controlled the country and built it up for what it is over the last nearly 30 years.

USA has foreign policy influence for sure, but the bulk of Venezuela’s problems are Venezuala’s alone to deal with. We aren’t responsible for the vast majority of decisions over there.

But whatever. If those migrant waves are coming to USA looking for hopes, dreams and opportunity, I’m on their side. There’s benefits to accepting the dreamers who make such a long trip. We have housing issues to deal with (and other population issues), but we can probably afford letting some of them in.

dragontamer ,

The reforms, which included nationalizing key components of the nation’s economy as part of an agenda of socialist uplift, made Chávez a hero to millions of people and the enemy of Venezuela’s oligarchs.

Lulz. You mean led to the large scale blackouts of an energy rich / oil rich nation. Amirite?

That’s a laughably inaccurate document you’ve got there. Clearly socialist / Marxist propaganda. But lets say, hypothetically, that you took away the electrical networks from the people who knew how to run them… directly leading to widespread power outages within a year, leading to a loss of industry and migrant waves to escape the country.

And you want to blame the USA for this? While also rewarding those who made such dumbass moves in their country?

dragontamer ,

Not as much as the 7 million emigrants who left Venezuela for other countries.

I keep coming back to the power outages of recent years in Venezuela because they’re indicative of everything that’s going wrong. Venezuela doesn’t have enough technicians who even know how to fix the energy grid, because the vast majority of them left for other countries. Yes, some of them are migrants who are entering USA, but also countries like Panama or Mexico.

When your country suffers from huge emigrant waves, especially emigrants who were statistically the smartest and most well-educated of the country… bad shit begins to happen.

dragontamer ,

Among many other things, electricity stopped working in any reliable fashion, leading to major issues internally.

Electricity stopped working because of decades of corruption of the Chavez / Maduro Regime, which forcibly took over the electrical grid and installed corrupt officials. No matter how much money Chavez pumped into the energy grid, it was all wasted in corruption.

The people who knew how to run the grid were then replaced by Maduro (albeit yeah, they were corrupt but… they at least knew how to run the system), and then shit really started to crazy because no one knew how to run the grid anymore and rolling blackouts became regular.

Lather rinse repeat for every other element of society. Remember that Venezuela is an oil state with plenty of energy reserves. They have plenty of chemical energy, its literally just the lack of brain that’s collapsing their society right now.

Ironically, electricity was more reliable when the USA’s AES Corporation owned the Electricidad de Caracas. So ummmm… maybe we should have pushed for more US intervention on this particular issue.

From a USA perspective: the migrants include the energy specialists who used to run Venezuela’s energy. But are now frustrated at this situation to the point that they’re leaving the country. Its to our benefit to capture those talented individuals and integrate them into our society. So Venezuela’s loss can serve as our gain if we play our cards right.

dragontamer ,

LOL. Do you actually think the US experience with privately run electrical grids are well run?

With all due respect, that’s 7+ million migrants who are leaving Venezuela who very much disagrees with your opinion on that subject.

Yes. Our electrical grid is better than Venezuela. And if you really want to choose this hill to die on, be my guest. But this is really weird for you to get a hard on to the marxist/socialist utopia that is Venezuela. Methinks you’ll have a better job talking about other locations of the world and taking your L here before you get too wrapped up in the peculiarities of this debate.

Your grasp of the dynamics that impacted Venezuela are driven entirely by simplistic propaganda. I’m not taking on the task of educating you while you fight with nonsense at every turn. I’ve led a horses ass to water. If the ass shits in it, that’s just what asses do.

That’s fine. My goal here is to demonstrate that Venezuela’s system is so shit its causing a massive migration wave to come to the USA.

We need to be aware of the migrant population’s situation and understand their story. Each migrant wave is different. In the next 4+ years, whenever the next migrant wave comes, it will be a new story from a new country. If you want to get caught up in the peculiarities of Marxist Leninist theories of these failed countries, be my guest. Or… not get caught up. Whatever you want, its fine.

We got migrants to worry about. So all that’s off topic anyway. But I’m generally willing to bet against the country that all these migrants are leaving from.

dragontamer ,

Or maybe, to understand Venezuela, you should look up the history of Venezuela.

That’s all I’m trying to say. Venezuela is the #1 determining factor of what happens in Venezuela. This is absolutely outside of the USA’s control, no matter how much random nationalists from South America complain.

If we really wanted to mess with a country with collapsing infrastructure, large-scale emigration, and a massive oil reserve like Venezuela… we probably could do so and also do so at a good profit. But honestly? We don’t. Our attention and resources are diverted elsewhere (like… at the massive migration wave hitting our border). I’d probably support more interventions because its the only way the migrant waves will stop.

Fortunately, Mexico is on our side on this issue. USA + Mexico can work together to build a more controlled border at Mexico’s southern border to better control migrants / filter them out. I’m not against accepting more migrants btw, but the shear number of them arriving is far beyond the resources we’ve allocated to the border and Congress isn’t allowing us to allocate more judges. Mexico is also getting pissed at these migrant waves coming through their country.

dragontamer , (edited )

Sanctions are ongoing

Venezuela is literally nationalizing US investments, effectively stealing from the USA. Sanctions that punish them for taking our resources is fair. Yeah, Venezuela’s Maduro regime wants to piss off the local Superpower. Lets see how that plays out. We don’t have to trade with them. Sanctions aren’t meddling, its just “we’re gonna stop trading with you”. If you don’t like that, then don’t piss us off. If you want to have US trade again, then try to make amends. But Hugo Chavez and Maduro have been actively trying to piss off the USA for the last 3 decades, because they’re fucking brilliant at foreign policy, amirite?

Operation Gideon

Silvercorp isn’t the CIA. If it were the CIA, you’d know it. USA has god damn supercarriers by the way, we wouldn’t need to use paramilitary action to fuck over Venezuela if we really wanted to.

Do you see Ukraine? Afghanistan? Iraq? Syria? Libya? That’s what USA-based meddling is. You’d know when we meddle, I promise. All the meddling that Hispanics complain about are largely conspiracy theories. And you know what? I don’t really blame them per se, their world is collapsing and they need someone to lash out against. And USA is the biggest target for that.

Whatever. Keep the assholes out, but welcome the migrants who are happy enough to call USA their home.

You’re gonna have to explain to me why Argentina needs this conspiracy-based “secret meddling” but isn’t important enough for the “real meddling” that we do.

dragontamer ,

Consumers need to change their behavior before companies change their prices.

Q1 2024 saw massive declines in Starbucks and other fast food retailers. So I already knew about this trend. After waiting it out, companies are finally counteracting and offering discounts/deals.

This delay in consumer behavior and prices is strange to watch but easy to understand. Higher prices never stop my current purchase, they only make me think harder about my next purchase.

Just speaking from personal psychology here. If I’m already at McDonalds or whatever and prices are higher than I expect… I delay my next trip to McDonalds but I finish my order today.

Similarly, I don’t really look at advertisements. So deals or whatever don’t entice me, because I don’t know about them.

Only after I visit do I see the price drops or discounts and deals, and then it only really affects my next visit. Because I already have decided on a Big Mac so I don’t care that the nuggets are 20% off. When I feel like nuggets later that’s when I’ll think about the deal.

dragontamer ,

What, like Martha Stewart?

White pepo go to jail all the time, even elderly, grandmotherly types.

dragontamer ,

Huge.

dragontamer ,

One way or the other, it will be historic. This is much faster than I expected the Jury to deliberate.

dragontamer ,

Within a day (and likely within 30 minutes at that…), we will know the Jury’s verdict. Might as well wait for it.

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    •
    dragontamer ,

    Derivatives always were measured over infinitely small intervals. Basic calculus. And inflation always was the derivative of prices.

    Prices are prices. If you want to complain about prices, then complain about prices. But we all know we aren’t going to do anything about prices. Furthermore: falling prices are utterly terrible for economies, so no one wants to force deflation.

    Inflation followed by disinflation (ie: holding prices steady after a runup) is our best chance of keeping the economy moving forward. Seriously. Literally no one is asking for lower prices. Its too dangerous.

    dragontamer ,

    Deflation always leads to job loss.

    The US policy is biased towards saving jobs, not really towards being the cheapest stuff. And IMO, I agree with this. In many senses, job preservation is far more important.

    dragontamer ,

    Soccer moms say ‘I want to keep my job’.

    Which is interpreted to be ‘We must avoid deflation’ by the Fed. Because these two statements are one and the same.

    Between the choice of widespread unemployment vs fixing inflation, the policymakers came up with the current strategy. Lower inflation (aka: first derivative of price chances), which should hold jobs steadier than other options.

    The Fed has a very blunt instrument for economic policy. It’s either lose jobs but fix inflation (aka higher rates), or more jobs but inflation gets out of hand (aka lower rates).

    That’s just how the world works. Those are the only two choices the Fed has.

    dragontamer , (edited )

    I have a fuckton of Democrats and Liberals crying about the unemployment rate. Do you want me to start posting them or do you actually have a memory that lasts longer than 1 year?

    yachts

    Its not yachts. We’re talking about people’s jobs and livlihoods here. Its a terrible price to pay if we get this wrong, so in many cases people err on the side of inflation.

    Its better to get inflation (which is annoying but something we all can ultimately survive) than to have deflation + job losses.

    dragontamer ,

    Do you not know how the Federal Funds Rate works?

    dragontamer ,

    I’m not talking about GDP.

    I’m talking about fucking Deflation. The gremlin that caused the Great Depression so no one wants to fuck with Deflation anymore.

    The fuck are you in about randomly bringing up GDP when I’m talking about a completely different subject? Are you on some kind of derailment kick right now?

    dragontamer , (edited )

    No.

    People say I’m going to fire all of these meatpackers because COVID-19 closed down the Hotel all this meat is going to and bam, -30% + deflation starts to kick in and our politicians start to panick, because those politicians are smarter than you and know where that was going.

    Politicians overcorrected and caused inflation from overaddressing our COVID-19 issue. But I’d rather live with inflation than the massive job loss numbers that was facing us in 2020.

    Now today, we have a bunch of dumbasses who can’t even remember the economic calamity we avoided just 4 years ago complaining about inflation that happened fucking years ago.

    vox.com/…/meat-packing-plant-supply-chain-animals…

    theguardian.com/…/millions-of-us-farm-animals-to-…

    This shit just happened and people are like “Why the fuck did meat prices go up?”. How short-term are yall’s memory? And then we used economics to print a fuck-ton more money to encourage more people to eat meat (to minimize the boom/bust… borrowing from the future so that we’d eat more meat during the COVID19 era), and people wonder where the hell all this inflation came from.

    Its pretty fucking straightforward yo. We saved the jobs, we tried to mitigate the culling of hogs / cows. Then we had a boom/bust period that ultimately concluded with 2022-era inflation, and then we tried to deal with that. COVID19 was a very difficult time for policymakers, economics. But we lived through it, but still are dealing with the “ripples” of that change.

    Was it perfect? Hell no. Now that we know today’s statistics, we can say that we printed too much money and left interest% rates too low. But overall, we did the right thing, and it’d require a crystal ball showing 2024 data to know whether we printed too much (or too little) money back in 2020. I’m happy we chose to err on the side of inflation and save as many jobs as possible, and if we had a time-machine I’d go back to 2020 and overall support the same actions (though maybe a bit less money-printing so that we don’t have quite as much inflation).

    dragontamer ,

    Deflation didnt cause the great depression.

    bls.gov/…/one-hundred-years-of-price-change-the-c…

    https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/14bcf52c-6d3a-4334-a24b-ec8e83c57a00.png

    https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/96d3bdaf-a0eb-4ad7-9533-2de543cac6b7.png

    Sure buddy. Its not like people had statistics in the 1929. Oh wait…

    The deflationary period began in 1927. Long, long before Black Friday. Deflation then grew out-of-control over the next few years, leading to 30%+ unemployment numbers (because as we all know, deflation causes unemployment).

    After the 1930s, this country pretty much swore off deflation ever again. We have done our best to avoid deflation, for good reasons as the graph above should make obvious.

    dragontamer ,

    As opposed to you? Who has come into the topic to talk about CPI and Inflation while proudly displaying ignorance to simple monetary matters?

    If you want to talk about health, you bring in doctors or other health specialists. If you want to talk about the economy and how to best build a country and a system of money, you need to bring in bankers and economists.

    If you don’t care about money, then leave the topic. Don’t shit on people while being ignorant, at least take a step forward and learn the basics.

    dragontamer ,

    Dude, COVID19 dropped prices across the board. How cheap were Hotels? Meat? Do you remember the $2 gas prices?

    That grey line? That was deflation happening for one month and then every politician in the country stepping on the “inflation button” at the same time. It didn’t matter if you were Republican or Democrat, literally everyone got together in a couple of days and said “Yeah, lets print $1.5 Trillion bucks”.

    https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/e8a22d95-da68-4cbe-9bf5-05e3b4b426bf.png

    THIS is what caused the inflation. M2 (aka: the amount of money in the USA).

    And every politician hit the “Make more M2 / Make more money button” because holy shit COVID19 is fucking our economy, we’re about to fall into deflationary spiral somebody please save us mode.

    Job losses caused inflation, because politicians got together and did something about it. And they did it so quickly that most people seem to have forgotten it despite it only being 4 years ago and you’re fucking up the order of history. COVID19 shut things down, and then came the inflationary stimulus / law changes

    dragontamer ,

    You sound like a COVID19 denialist. Except instead of denying basic health science, you’re denying basic economics. I’m not sure if you really want that look for yourself.

    But yeah, who cares about Fauci or whatever health care specialists think. They’re all paid off by the liberals. No wait, I’m on a liberal forum now. I’m supposed to hate bankers and economists now and deny basic economics. Yeah…

    Who cares about Powell or basic economic predictive factors like M2, montetary policy, CPI or inflation. Those guys don’t know anything anyway, despite saving our jobs and preventing one of the worst economic disasters of our country in the last hundred years. They’re all dumbass rich elites from the coast. (No wait, that’s a conservative talking point, right?). Erm… they’re all rich bankers. Right, rich people. Not elites, its conservatives who hate elities, its liberals who hate rich people.

    But in all cases, proudly displaying ignorance is the best move. Amirite? Who needs an education or studying anyway? Its all bullshit.

    dragontamer ,

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcFGzz839ZU

    Cry more to AOC, who was part of this inflation problem crying about jobs and holding back Powell from raising the FFR to combat inflation.

    Oh right, you’re a dumbass who don’t realize you’re shitting on your own side right now. AOC cried about everyone’s jobsss and unemployment that’s completely fucking non-existent right now. We undershot the employment rate, its clear we had to go higher and steeper with these interest rate hikes.

    And you’re here sitting like an idiot, unable to comprehend basic history, fucking up your side of the discussion.

    But sure, pretend that I’m the one who is a problem despite taking my time to talk about what’s going on. You’re welcome by the way, now please, sit down and think about your discussion points and where the politics have been laid out over the past couple of years.

    Powell here was right and honestly… Powell was on the side that protected jobs too much. We all had to go higher on the FFR and push % even higher given what we know about the situation today.

    dragontamer ,

    Lovely.

    There’s two directions. You can raise rates, or you can lower them. Raising rates causes job losses but culls back inflation. Lowering rates increases the number of jobs but causes inflation to go up.

    Its a fucking number… Because its a number, there’s only two directions to go. Up or down. Or zero if you want to split into a 3rd option for some reason. But not much aside from “raise”, “hold” or “lower” rates.

    Now comes the political debate. Should we have been raising rates last year? Or should we have been lowering rates last year? And survey says… Oh right, liberals were asking to lower rates (ie: making inflation worse). Ding ding ding!! It pays to be a dumbass, because its the only way you can keep your petty little brain straight, isn’t it? You don’t like facing reality of your side’s opinions, do you?

    Its not just conservative dumbasses who are unable to foresee basic problems with their politics, but also far left liberals who demonstrate ignorance. Thank you for making an example of yourself.

    dragontamer ,

    theguardian.com/…/millions-of-farm-animals-culled…

    US government vets said to be ready to assist with culls, or ‘depopulation’ of pigs, chickens and cattle because of coronavirus meat plant closures

    You’re a dumbass. Americans stopped eating on a mass-scale due to COVID19, leading to a historical culling of pigs and cows, leading to a boom/bust of our food supply culminating in today’s inflation.

    I support the politicians (and yes, bankers) who did hard work to counteract this problem (especially as they acted swiftly, and across party lines). And I shit on people like you who wish to just shit on the hard work of our leaders on this subject. Especially because you’re clearly too stupid to figure out basic history on this subject.

    What we did years ago is something to be proud of. But it has a cost, the calculations weren’t perfect and we’re dealing with more inflation than expected in the year 2022. And as the graph at the beginning of the topic points out, the inflation was almost entirely during 2022, and has been hampered by now.

    We still need to get used to these newer, higher, prices. But its better than the alternative (Without decisive action back then, we’d have even even larger-scale closures of food supply across the country. Which would have led to an even worse bust-boom bullwhip effect in our country)

    dragontamer ,

    You know damn well that its the Liberals crying about jobs that prevented us from raising rates and better addressing inflation.

    dragontamer ,

    I’d be interested in seeing a price comparison of some specific items over the course of the last four years.

    That’s called the CPI and its what the topic is about. I highly suggest you read the CPI releases. You might learn something. www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm

    I mean, I’m reading the chart and it’s saying prices are up 21% since '21 but I am not personally seeing that. I’m curious as to why that may be. The 22% for ‘food away from home’ though, I can absolutely confirm in my experience.

    CPI splits Urban vs Rural, and into economic zones like East, West, and… even by State.

    www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t04.htm

    If you want some help browsing these statistics, feel free to ping me.

    dragontamer ,

    While that’s true, my niece in 7th grade just did her first “Rise over Run” section.

    Sure, Calculus / Derivatives is 12th grade math. But the basics of “rise over run” is 7th, or even 6th or 5th grade.

    dragontamer , (edited )

    The inflation rate is the relative change over a defined time-period. It is not a derivate.

    Have you taken Calculus? This is one of the most basic of Calculus subjects. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_derivative

    Time derivatives are a key concept in physics. For example, for a changing position x its time derivative dx/dt is its velocity, and its second derivative with respect to time, d^2^x/dt^2^ is its acceleration. Even higher derivatives are sometimes also used: the third derivative of position with respect to time is known as the jerk. See motion graphs and derivatives.

    I know not everyone takes Calculus. But this is quite elementary if you’ve taken the subject. There should be no confusion here.

    Inflation is the change of price over the change of time. Or alternatively, Inflation describes the first derivative of price. What people care about however is the overall price, which unfortunately policy-makers can’t really control that well. We only have controls over the change-of-prices (ie: the derivative), not the actual direct price controls.

    EDIT: My note about “infinitely small intervals” is the basic limit definition of the Derivative. tutorial.math.lamar.edu/…/defnofderivative.aspx

    dragontamer ,

    doesnt stop my can of sparkling water from doubling in price in the last few years just because you want to limit “inflation” changes to ‘12 months’

    You’re going the wrong direction yo to his original words. I don’t even know what you’re complaining about anymore. The original poster was trying to stretch time out to multiple years. My joke was that shorter-time frames is what is more accurate because that’s what mathematics / calculus has traditionally done.

    I’ve said my piece, and I stand by it. I’ll repeat it here.

    Prices are prices. If you want to complain about prices, then complain about prices. But we all know we aren’t going to do anything about prices. Furthermore: falling prices are utterly terrible for economies, so no one wants to force deflation.

    I’ve done many inflation topics over the last 5 years. I’m surprised at how utterly shit people around here on this topic are. I’d expected more of lemmy users to know the basics of this subject. But I do appreciate you trying to catch me on a technicality, however arbitrary it was… you’ve demonstrated that you’re at least at the Calculus level to me.

    dragontamer ,

    Liberals are asking for all kinds of inflationary pressures. Student loan forgiveness, higher minimum wages, job protections. And most dramatically, AOC asking for lower rates when talking to Powell last year.

    It’s actually rather difficult for me to think of a singular Democrat policy that’d have deflationary effects… Well… There’s always raising taxes which I’d strongly support. Especially right now when inflation is at the forefront of a lot of people’s minds. It’d cause a slowdown in spending and likely drop prices.

    dragontamer ,

    Lemme know if this is what you want: www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t02.htm

    dragontamer ,

    This is relatively recent in the great scheme of things.

    I’d prefer it if we went back before warrior-cop mentality. Cops aren’t soldiers. In fact, any cop that tries to be a soldier becomes worse at doing cop-jobs (and vice versa. Soldiers aren’t cops, we shouldn’t be putting soldiers on the frontlines of “Win the hearts and minds” of foreigners like we did in Afghanistan).

    dragontamer ,

    They waited for SWAT anyway before doing anything in this situation.

    The main problem is that SWAT took too long after arriving before they did anything. But tiny ass underfunded minimally paid local cops did the best they could until SWAT arrived. I posit that cops are not supposed to go in vs threats that are armed to the level of assault rifles and body armor. The shooter in Uvalde qualified, its more firepower than cops are honestly equipped to deal with and that’s perfectly fine.

    I mean, cops getting outgunned by “somebody”. The real issue is the proliferation of high-power AR15 rifles in our society. But I don’t want cops marching around with full sized loaded rifles on a day-to-day basis. Nor do I want to pay for (or pay the psychological costs associated with) the training to use those weapons.

    dragontamer ,

    I appreciate you sharing your experience. And yes, I’m well aware that knives (and batons even), can beat a gun in short ranges. The famous Filipino Eskrima fighters of the early 1900s (the culture my parents came from) taught that lesson. And legend holds that pistols like the M1911 were specifically designed for those close-quarters combat situations (too many US soldiers dying to the Filipino eskrima stick fighters that US paid R&D to figure out a solution back then).

    But the hallway of a school can stretch many dozens of meters, far longer than the distance you can close with a knife, and even stretching the effective firing range of a pistol and knife.

    And given even the presence of a door: the knowledge that the AR15 on the other side could likely penetrate the door makes breaching operations difficult. And the presence of hostages / kids in the classroom prevents many weapons / breaching techniques from being used.

    dragontamer ,

    No they don’t and Cops shouldn’t have those tools.

    I’d be far more comfortable if in these cases of national emergency, the National Guard showed up with actual heavy weapon experience and training. SWAT is a decent compromise (a few units of specialized / highly trained cops). But we should not make the “typical” cop go down the journey towards warrior / soldier.

    dragontamer ,
    1. I don’t expect typical Police cops to be familiar with room breaching exercises. I want cops who are criminal law majors and other specialists in legal matters (knowing when to arrest someone, when it is legal and proper to escalate, etc. etc). I don’t want soldier cops or warrior cops.
    2. Under the assumption of untrained cops, they did fine. They cornered the assailant into a single room and then called in the SWAT team. The SWAT team is who took too long to deal with a cornered assailant.

    I am firmly against treating cops like soldiers. And I get it, you were a soldier. I have huge respect for what you’ve done and what soldiers represent. But I also don’t want soldiers patrolling the streets. The job of a cop is very different. I certainly don’t want cops running exercises or focusing on these exceptionally rare events as part of their regular training either. I’m fully against it.

    dragontamer ,

    The police already cornered the guy by 11:40am. The question was the final breaching operation, which was left to the SWAT team.

    and not all cities have a swat team.

    Uvalde brought in the SWAT team in this instance. The end. They had access to SWAT.

    If “typical” cops aren’t expected to risk their safety, then I expect them to take a “typical” paycut.

    These Uvalde dudes are being paid like $50k/year or some shit. They’d make more as truck drivers than as Police Officers.

    they need brains.

    You’re not getting brains with these wages. Anyone smarter would have left for far better jobs with far lower stress.

    dragontamer ,

    A chief tactic is knowing cover vs concealment, especially when you have a high powered rifle that can shoot through bodyarmor, doors, and walls.

    Now if you’re saying that you support giving the Police regular access to not only higher-powered weapons, but also tactical training so that they start shooting through walls and doors to get what they want done, then… I dunno man. Its an escalation I’m uncomfortable with.

    I don’t want Police to be thinking they’re some hero who can breach doors, shoot into positions or suppressive fire (etc. etc.). I’m fine with them having a pistol-level of force, but Police deciding that shooting through a wall was a good idea is exactly what killed Breonna Taylor (one of the unarmed black people that BLM went ballistic about just a few years ago).

    We need to consider the tactical training and mindset of cops when we give them these weapons, mindset and training. IMO, the mistake was that military-style thinking. Cops aren’t military, but a bunch of (less-trained) dumbasses on a $50k/year salary is what killed Breonna Taylor IMO. Especially as they escalated far beyond what normal cop behavior should be.

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