Reading that article is a serious indictment of economic literacy in the United States. People don't understand what role the president plays in the economy, what causes inflation, or how and why interest rates change. They draw really superficial causal links and don't think about it after that; it's fact to them.

It's reasons like this education may be the single most critical issue, since we can't make progress on the climate or anything else if the population is incapable of critical thinking. I hate to say it like this because it feels patronizing, but Jesus fucking Christ.

"It's simple, really. We liked the way things were four years ago,"

You liked living in a crumbling economy riddled with mass unemployment and caused by a fumbled pandemic response that resulted in thousands of preventable deaths? Because that's where we were 4 years ago. That's the economy Trump gave us the first time.

“It’s simple, really. We liked the way things were four years ago,” said Samuel Negron, a Pennsylvania state constable and member of the large Puerto Rican community in the city of Allentown.

His buddy called your homeland garbage.

He didn't give a shit.

How the fuck can they say it was better 4 years ago. Do they mean right before Covid hit? Right before people lost their jobs and the dumbass politicized an illness? Right before people couldn't get baby formula? Right before people started fighting for fucking toilet paper? Before people started dying?

Dumb, dumb motherfuckers. You won't be at the table, you're going to be on the table, a table you built, and torn apart with knives you sharpened. You dumb fucks.

4 years ago...in the height of COVID?

You know you won't be given a phone call or sent a new driver's license or something when we've entered idiocracy. You'll just wake up one day and be in it. And that one day was about two days ago.

Welcome to Costco, I love you.

Gee, what didn't we have yet four years ago? Oh, that's right, a global pandemic shutdown and the resulting stimulus. Definitely the fault of the Dems.

I'm calling it. The Fed will start gradually lowering its interest rates down to near 0 as the stock market booms with cheap money. The news will show troubling social and geopolitical problems that will be quickly swept over by the latest Dow Jones and S&P 500 values getting to absurd heights. People will start grumbling about the nation's problems again while Trump will say it's the "Deep State" causing all of this and pointing the finger at Democrats and undocumented immigrants.

Inflation starts to spike again at the start of the 4th year of Trump's presidency. Even more people will start to go homeless as the average monthly cost of a 1 bedroom apartment soars to $3k. If Trump is still "healthy", the Supreme Court will declare a sitting president can hold on to power during times of emergency and cancel US elections.

Too many ignorant dumbasses that can't understand the concept of delayed effects. The upturn in the economy during Trump's last time in office was a delayed effect of Obama's administration. The shit we're in now is because of Trump's. This shit has happened every single time a Republican has been in office during my life. They fuck everything up, but the effects aren't seen until they're gone.

Outside of the economy: This dumb orange prick was in office during the height of the COVID pandemic and people are still dying from that. If you think it was better 4 years ago, you must have been hiding under a rock.

It's simple, really. You and your loved ones will be the first to be tossed on buses when they start collecting people. Enjoy 😊

^ no I'm not remotely happy about this. But I guess people gotta find out that hard way.

We liked the way things were four years ago,

Apparently I am the one who has been living in an alternative reality for the past eight years.

All the headlines today are about how the democrats screwed up. What I have not seen discussed is how in the everlivingingfuck any person could possibly vote for Trump. There was nothing good about his presidency. By all measures, he was one of the worst presidents in American history (while Biden was one of the best in modern times).

We all, myself included, need an education about what the president does and how they can impact kitchen table economics. I mean, I find it hard to grasp that people would vote for Trump just because the cost of bread is up while ignoring the pages of lies, indictments, convictions, rapes, bankruptcies, coup attempts, impeachments, not to mention hate speech. I hope people still don't have the belief that the US president has any substantial impact on gas prices. The economic efforts of the Biden administration have fixed everything that Trump screwed up.

I still don't think people know what inflation is. And while we all have the world's information in our pockets, no-one cares enough to look it up. Inflation goes up because the demand for goods is higher than the supply - meaning either we were buying too much crap and/or there were environmental variables decreasing supply. Inflation happened because of the government stimulus checks, supply chain issues, and disease spread across livestock - it's a feature, not a bug. I get that all they care about is their grocery store bill but a basic understanding of economic policy would go a really long way. The Democratic policies, past and proposed, put consumer (and livestock) protections in place to prevent or minimize price gouging and monopolies and supply chain disruptions. The Republicans fight these bills because it would cut profits for corporations. Voting for a Republican is a vote for less regulation - it's the regulations that keep prices down. Unfortunately, government moves slow AF so a lot of times these regulations don't have an impact until the next president's term.

By all accounts, Trump is going to drain our wallets. I am terrified. I haven't had a raise in over ten years. I don't really have a skill set that can transfer well to other companies. I'm a renter with an amazing landlord (relatively cheap rent) but I was hoping to buy a house sometime in my lifetime. What Trump has proposed is going to substantially raise the prices of good and services. The Republican agenda is to strip the country of public services and make them private enterprises - raising the cost of living for everyone. I really don't know what I'm going to do for the next four years.

It's not the faulty of Democrats. It's the fault of the media and capitalism. It's the fault of crumbling journalism as people choose hot take emotional rage bait over educating themselves to understand why we are where we are. It's the fault of the DNC and RNC being too powerful and their fight against reasonable elections such as RCV or STAR voting. It's the fault of corporations controlling congress. The conspiracy that no one wants to acknowledge is that we're moving towards a country that is privately owned by a handful of billionaires.

Trump voters are stupid and have poor memories.

Except for the ones who are just plain evil.

“It’s simple, really. We liked the way things were four years ago,” said Samuel Negron, a Pennsylvania state constable and member of the large Puerto Rican community in the city of Allentown.

They apparently liked being stuck in their house while the entire economy tanked, they had to wipe their ass with their own hands, and a dumb ass told them that we'd perhaps look into injecting cleaners to protect themselves from a novel virus that was killing anywhere from 3-10% of the people that initially got it...because that was four years ago.

Basically, people are dumb and think that the current economic situation reflects only current policy, whereas in reality it takes several years for a policy to affect the economy significantly. I mean i don't have any love for Biden, but the fact that the inflation started at the end of Trump's presidency and continued into Biden's was due primarily to Trump policy. The fact that it slowed finally is due to Biden policy, but now that Trump is taking over, he'll take responsibility and immediately go back to policy that breaks the economy again, but only at the end of his term. This is one reason he's unlikely succeed for long if he to tries to seize power illegally and would have been way worse off if he had won his second term. His policy effects would be under his watch. Also why single term presidents are often less reviled than two term ones historically.

Some immigrants, once they become established in a country, will then seek to stop other immigrants, even of the same ethnicity, culture or ancestry, from doing what they did. They'll pull up the ladder behind them.

Inb4 they get deported and denaturalized.

"beset on all sides, with idiots"

It's simple, really. We liked the way things were four years ago

You can't fix stupid.

There's going to be a lot of extremely obese leopards around, with all the faces they will be eating.

This is where we were 4 years ago.

https://youtu.be/7zAjoXSaQ8M?feature=shared