FlashMobOfOne

You’re not wrong.

Respectfully, you have to ignore centuries of history if you think there isn’t, and the fact that all of this has happened in the US before and it recovered.

All it takes is patience, but it’s important to remember that you only get a handful of buying opportunities in a lifetime. They don’t come around often enough to ignore.

If you have cash tucked away, moments like these are a time to buy. Think of it like a Steam sale for your future pocketbook.

I picked up a few thousand shares of oil stocks in March 2020 for 50-75 cents, sold them for $12.50 in 2023 (thanks Permian Resources) and then paid off my student loans and put a down payment on a condo.

Be greedy when everyone else is fearful - Warren Buffett

I know one of the rules is to post headlines without editorializing, but it really pisses me off that the term ‘strikes’ is subbed in for ‘bombings’.

I could always be wrong.

There have been disruptive strikes in our history, particularly the rail strikes in the 1800’s, but I don’t think there will be any meaningful civil disobedience unless one thing happens: Major, prolonged covid-style disruption to people’s personal convenience.

I remember in March 2020 when everyone was gung ho about staying indoors, social distancing, and stopping COVID. Then, three weeks later, you had Americans threatening to kill politicians because they couldn’t get their hair cut or go to a restaurant. Then you had people threatening to kill politicians because they had to wear a cloth across their face to go places. It’s insane, but lack of convenience will be the major precipitating factor if a strike were to happen.

Which, of course, it 100% did. That’s what it’s designed to do.

Geographically, you’re not asking a country to do a general strike.

You’re asking 50 different countries, each with its own culture, filled with a majority population so poor it cannot miss a day of work without risking raising its debt profile.

I’d love it if we could, but I just don’t think it’s possible.

It’s not a good comparison, though, as Reagan could still publicly present as a cognitively-functioning person.

Biden couldn’t. The June debate wasn’t the first time we’d seen his brain melt in public. It was just the worst.

What about the morons who ran a candidate with very public dementia?

Realistically, it’s the fault of people voting for shitty candidates. That’s not a matter of opinion, but of fact.

Your point of view sounds a whole lot like the 2500 year-old history of blaming young people.

In reality, however, it’s the Boomers who are largely responsible for the world we find ourselves in, not the 20 year-olds. Electing Reagan twice, by itself, was more harmful to American society and beneficial to consumerism than anything Gen Z has done.

I don’t think this is a generational thing, personally, unless we’re talking about the Boomers.

The Boomers took a vibrant, beautiful world and spent two generations driving it into this McDonaldized hellhole we live in, after reaping the benefits of the most prosperous economic period for workers in our history in the 1960’s. They’re still profiting now thanks to the lopsided tax policies that favor people with wealth.

The vast majority of the country only has one or two choices when shopping for necessities now, so I can’t really blame them for the world that they were born into. Calling young people consumerist is just blaming them for circumstances of which they had no real control.

Why?

Democrats and Republicans have spent the last eight years convincing the poor and middle class that voting doesn’t matter. Hell, Democrats even subverted their own primary rules twice to strike that point home, and then argued in court that it was their right to do so when they were sued for it.

I vote, but I can’t pretend it matters much when I watch most people in this country across the last eight years working gig jobs for 100 hours a week and all their labor can buy for them is a roach-infested studio regardless of where they live, and our president always has money and time for genocide.

Agreed. Biden LOVED bloodying his hands.

I feel shocked.

/s

Wow.

I wish we could find people in our government half as committed to a living wage as they are to the Vances’ PR.