The best possible proof that the majority is always correct, that most people really understand what they are talking about, is this wonderful perfect world in which we live :<)
What triggered it was all that advice that I had been given about moving on and dating again contrasted to what I just read on the National Widower’s Organization which validated my impulse to take care of myself first and move very slowly, if at all, towards a new romantic relationship. I found that it applies to almost everything though. That is because effectively the observation is really a logical tautology. If we live in a democracy where the majority rules and if things are really screwed up, then the ruling majority was wrong, mostly now about guns, babies, and climate but also mental health, globalization, the role of work in the social order, child rearing, and more.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Yeah, and I know that reality is complicated by the contradictions implicit in the (little “r”) republican solution to governing. Since we fear the tyranny of the popular majority, then we trust elites to be “the ruling majority” by following their lead which effectively makes our republic a dollar democracy at best. Thanks to technology, then money can amplify even the worst of thoughts.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
In any case, here’s hoping that (capital “R”) Republicans have at last stretched their Bizarro reality beyond its practical limits. Ironic that dead school kids may beat their dead babies. I am hesitantly more optimistic now than at any time since September 2008, but we all know how well that turned out.
sorry to learn that we are done discussing Social Security, though from what i have learned by discussing it is that you are right.
we were, of course, supposed to have democracy of checks and balances and rights of minorities (voting minorities, not racial minorities, or, you know, those other minorities like criminals and poor people.
having. apparently failed at that, we are now rushing to rule by strong men who can save us from those mirorities. the rich of course are not a minority.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Yep. It does not appear to me that our side will ever learn well enough to work its way out of this mess. OTOH, it does appear possible that the other side will make such stupid mistakes that their party may not recover from their screw ups for a longer time than just one major election cycle. Our politics casts the idea of failing forwards in an entirely new light.
I fell forwards when I was young. Now that I am old I fall backwards.
I do not think the US will recover from this. There is a rottenness now, or made visible now, that may have always been there but I did not really see it. perhaps the survivors of the depression and the War against truly evil were working hard so that i would not have to see it.
“I don’t have any problem with going to Europe, but I prefer the United States, and I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States,” Thomas said in an interview for a 2020 documentary about his life titled, “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words.”
“I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it,” Thomas continued, adding, “I come from regular stock, and I prefer that — I prefer being around that.” …
Just read three articles on the Thomas vacations. Two gaps in all of them. First was none spoke about of any case specific business Harlan had with the Supreme Court or other federal courts that could have gotten there. I would have thought editors would pound on reporters to include specifics like that. Not sure how many cases the court issues rulings on, but even a decade of them isn’t an insurmountable obstacle here. Second, none of them mentioned income tax obligations.
The International Monetary Fund says a painful slowdown, which could include a recession, has become a bigger risk for the global economy.
The world economy faces the increasing risk of a painful slowdown amid worries about the global banking system and concerns that rising interest rates could force banks to curtail lending, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday.
The warning follows weeks of turmoil in the global banking sector, which included two bank failures in the United States and UBS’s takeover of Credit Suisse, brokered by the Swiss government. Fears that bank runs would ripple through the financial system have abated in recent weeks, but concerns that additional bank failures and tightening lending standards could slow economic output around the world remain.
In its latest World Economic Outlook report, the I.M.F. made a slight reduction to its growth forecast for 2023, lowering it to 2.8 percent, from 2.9 percent in January. Growth for the year is expected to be much slower than the I.M.F. predicted a year ago, when it projected output of 3.4 percent. …
As recession fears persist, the troubles in major industries have hurt tax revenues, turning the state’s $100 billion surplus into a deficit.
California has often been at the country’s economic forefront. Now, as fears of a national recession continue to nag, the state is hoping not to lead the way there.
While the California economy maintains its powerhouse status, outranking even those of most countries, the state’s most-powerful sectors — including tech companies and supply chain logistics — have struggled to keep their footing, pummeled by high interest rates, investor skittishness, labor strife and other turmoil.
Even the weather hasn’t cooperated. Severe flooding throughout much of the winter, caused by atmospheric rivers, has left farming communities in the Central Valley devastated, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in crop losses.
Thousands of Californians have been laid off in the last few months, the cost of living is increasingly astronomical, and Gov. Gavin Newsom revealed in January that the state faced a $22.5 billion deficit in the 2023-24 fiscal year — a plummet from the $100 billion surplus a year ago. …
California’s tax structure … relies in large part on taxing the incomes of the wealthiest Californians, often translates into dips when Silicon Valley and Wall Street are uneasy, as they are now. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, one of the state’s most prominent corporations, said in January that it was cutting 12,000 workers worldwide, and Silicon Valley Bank, a key lender to tech start-ups, collapsed last month, sending the federal government scrambling to limit the fallout.
This has coincided with a drop in venture capital funding as rising interest rates and recession fears have led investors to become more risk-averse. That money, which declined 36 percent globally from 2021 to 2022, according to the management consulting firm Bain & Company, is critical to Silicon Valley’s ability to create new jobs.
“The tech sector is the workhorse of the state’s economy, it’s the backbone,” said Sung Won Sohn, a finance and economics professor at Loyola Marymount University. “These are high earners who might not be able to carry the state as much as they did in the past.” …
Entertainment, another pillar of California’s economy, has also been in retreat as studios adjust to new viewing habits. Disney, based in Burbank, announced in February it would eliminate 7,000 jobs worldwide.
In California alone, employment in the information sector, a category that includes technology and entertainment workers, declined by more than 16,000 from November to February, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data, which predates a recent wave of job cuts in March.
A recent survey from the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found widespread pessimism about the economy. Two-thirds of respondents said they expected bad economic times ahead for the state in the next year and a solid majority of respondents — 62 percent — said they felt the state was already in a recession. …
No. a slight slowdown in the rate of growth is not, or should not, be anything we should worry about. Unlimited growth, and an economy that depends on it, is killing us. the IMF is bankers, and bankers think of growth as the secret to everything, except when they need to kill it order to stop inflation.
The best possible proof that the majority is always correct, that most people really understand what they are talking about, is this wonderful perfect world in which we live :<)
RW
You trying to stir the pot? We are over discussing SS
Run,
No, just a general observation.
What triggered it was all that advice that I had been given about moving on and dating again contrasted to what I just read on the National Widower’s Organization which validated my impulse to take care of myself first and move very slowly, if at all, towards a new romantic relationship. I found that it applies to almost everything though. That is because effectively the observation is really a logical tautology. If we live in a democracy where the majority rules and if things are really screwed up, then the ruling majority was wrong, mostly now about guns, babies, and climate but also mental health, globalization, the role of work in the social order, child rearing, and more.
IOW, ignorance is its own reward.
Yeah, and I know that reality is complicated by the contradictions implicit in the (little “r”) republican solution to governing. Since we fear the tyranny of the popular majority, then we trust elites to be “the ruling majority” by following their lead which effectively makes our republic a dollar democracy at best. Thanks to technology, then money can amplify even the worst of thoughts.
In any case, here’s hoping that (capital “R”) Republicans have at last stretched their Bizarro reality beyond its practical limits. Ironic that dead school kids may beat their dead babies. I am hesitantly more optimistic now than at any time since September 2008, but we all know how well that turned out.
Ron
sorry to learn that we are done discussing Social Security, though from what i have learned by discussing it is that you are right.
we were, of course, supposed to have democracy of checks and balances and rights of minorities (voting minorities, not racial minorities, or, you know, those other minorities like criminals and poor people.
having. apparently failed at that, we are now rushing to rule by strong men who can save us from those mirorities. the rich of course are not a minority.
Coberly,
Yep. It does not appear to me that our side will ever learn well enough to work its way out of this mess. OTOH, it does appear possible that the other side will make such stupid mistakes that their party may not recover from their screw ups for a longer time than just one major election cycle. Our politics casts the idea of failing forwards in an entirely new light.
Ron
I fell forwards when I was young. Now that I am old I fall backwards.
I do not think the US will recover from this. There is a rottenness now, or made visible now, that may have always been there but I did not really see it. perhaps the survivors of the depression and the War against truly evil were working hard so that i would not have to see it.
Clarence Thomas said he loves RVs and Walmarts
Business Insider – April 6
… in a documentary financed by the GOP megadonor who was taking him on luxury vacations
Clarence Thomas once said he enjoys RV parks and Walmart parking lots over beaches in a documentary bankrolled in part by a GOP megadonor, who has reportedly treated the Supreme Court justice to luxury vacations around the world.
“I don’t have any problem with going to Europe, but I prefer the United States, and I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States,” Thomas said in an interview for a 2020 documentary about his life titled, “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words.”
“I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it,” Thomas continued, adding, “I come from regular stock, and I prefer that — I prefer being around that.” …
Clarence Thomas Decided Against the Staycation
NY Times – April 10
Just read three articles on the Thomas vacations. Two gaps in all of them. First was none spoke about of any case specific business Harlan had with the Supreme Court or other federal courts that could have gotten there. I would have thought editors would pound on reporters to include specifics like that. Not sure how many cases the court issues rulings on, but even a decade of them isn’t an insurmountable obstacle here. Second, none of them mentioned income tax obligations.
Anything to worry about here?
I.M.F. Lowers Growth Outlook Amid Financial System Tremors
NY Times – April 11
The International Monetary Fund says a painful slowdown, which could include a recession, has become a bigger risk for the global economy.
The world economy faces the increasing risk of a painful slowdown amid worries about the global banking system and concerns that rising interest rates could force banks to curtail lending, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday.
The warning follows weeks of turmoil in the global banking sector, which included two bank failures in the United States and UBS’s takeover of Credit Suisse, brokered by the Swiss government. Fears that bank runs would ripple through the financial system have abated in recent weeks, but concerns that additional bank failures and tightening lending standards could slow economic output around the world remain.
In its latest World Economic Outlook report, the I.M.F. made a slight reduction to its growth forecast for 2023, lowering it to 2.8 percent, from 2.9 percent in January. Growth for the year is expected to be much slower than the I.M.F. predicted a year ago, when it projected output of 3.4 percent. …
Or here?
California Economy Is on Edge After Tech Layoffs and Studio Cutbacks
NY Times – April 11
As recession fears persist, the troubles in major industries have hurt tax revenues, turning the state’s $100 billion surplus into a deficit.
California has often been at the country’s economic forefront. Now, as fears of a national recession continue to nag, the state is hoping not to lead the way there.
While the California economy maintains its powerhouse status, outranking even those of most countries, the state’s most-powerful sectors — including tech companies and supply chain logistics — have struggled to keep their footing, pummeled by high interest rates, investor skittishness, labor strife and other turmoil.
Even the weather hasn’t cooperated. Severe flooding throughout much of the winter, caused by atmospheric rivers, has left farming communities in the Central Valley devastated, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in crop losses.
Thousands of Californians have been laid off in the last few months, the cost of living is increasingly astronomical, and Gov. Gavin Newsom revealed in January that the state faced a $22.5 billion deficit in the 2023-24 fiscal year — a plummet from the $100 billion surplus a year ago. …
California’s tax structure … relies in large part on taxing the incomes of the wealthiest Californians, often translates into dips when Silicon Valley and Wall Street are uneasy, as they are now. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, one of the state’s most prominent corporations, said in January that it was cutting 12,000 workers worldwide, and Silicon Valley Bank, a key lender to tech start-ups, collapsed last month, sending the federal government scrambling to limit the fallout.
This has coincided with a drop in venture capital funding as rising interest rates and recession fears have led investors to become more risk-averse. That money, which declined 36 percent globally from 2021 to 2022, according to the management consulting firm Bain & Company, is critical to Silicon Valley’s ability to create new jobs.
“The tech sector is the workhorse of the state’s economy, it’s the backbone,” said Sung Won Sohn, a finance and economics professor at Loyola Marymount University. “These are high earners who might not be able to carry the state as much as they did in the past.” …
Entertainment, another pillar of California’s economy, has also been in retreat as studios adjust to new viewing habits. Disney, based in Burbank, announced in February it would eliminate 7,000 jobs worldwide.
In California alone, employment in the information sector, a category that includes technology and entertainment workers, declined by more than 16,000 from November to February, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data, which predates a recent wave of job cuts in March.
A recent survey from the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found widespread pessimism about the economy. Two-thirds of respondents said they expected bad economic times ahead for the state in the next year and a solid majority of respondents — 62 percent — said they felt the state was already in a recession. …
well,
as long as we are governed by pfree enterprise uber alles, yes, we need to worry.
the Japanese, I am told, endured a long period of “stagnation” without much pain among the people. Maybe we could learn something from them.
No. a slight slowdown in the rate of growth is not, or should not, be anything we should worry about. Unlimited growth, and an economy that depends on it, is killing us. the IMF is bankers, and bankers think of growth as the secret to everything, except when they need to kill it order to stop inflation.