"And then you have the current president's habit of just lying about everything…"

And I suspect, sometime in the future, we're going to discover that the numbers were even worse than we thought they were—were covered up.

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ericmay 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Maybe, maybe not.

And when a vast majority of the population isn't working what do these numbers really tell us? If we have fewer jobs, but then the people doing those jobs are paid more and thus paying more in taxes, maybe the jobs numbers don't even matter (I'm not sure that's true, just for arguments sake).

And let's say they were covered up. Ok and what does that change? Are people who already hate Donald Trump going to vote harder and then, what? Pursue the same economic policy? Democrats are by and large aligned with his economic agenda.

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mgkimsal 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> thus paying more in taxes

If the taxes were being spent to help those who were not working (unable to or for whatever reason) maybe that would be fine. We might take in more taxes, but when we cut funding for childhood cancer research, and build more missiles... is this really the way we want our money spent?

> Democrats are by and large aligned with his economic agenda.

Perhaps there was more overlap 10 years ago, but... that "both sides are just as bad" doesn't seem to ring true.

	▲	ericmay 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> We might take in more taxes, but when we cut funding for childhood cancer research, and build more missiles... is this really the way we want our money spent? Well we all have our opinions on how our money is spent. I for one think we need a lot more missiles and a lot more folks working instead of living off of taxpayer dollars (labor participation rate is the lowest ever), broadly speaking. But we don't really have to have an either-or scenario here and it's unfortunate that politics has gotten this bad in America. > Perhaps there was more overlap 10 years ago, but... that "both sides are just as bad" doesn't seem to ring true. Well, I'm not suggesting both sides are bad (though they are in their own ways - we should eject all communists and fascists from this country and planet). I'm suggesting that Democrats agree with Donald Trump's economic policy even if some are politicking otherwise. If you look back to Trump's first term he began instituting tariff-like policies and other economic agenda items around restoring manufacturing capacity. Biden continued those policies, and then Trump has taken them a step further. Democrats today are campaigning on high inflation, but recall that inflation was also very high in 2022 and so forth, gas prices were even higher than during our support for Ukraine (I strongly support Ukraine), and so forth. But if/when Democrats are elected it is unlikely they will roll back the Trump tariff scheme though perhaps negotiate more favorable deals with less bickering with our European friends and partners, and will maintain tariffs and other economic measures against countries such as China and perhaps others like Mexico and Canada.

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amanaplanacanal 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Pretty sure the Democrats would not have done either the ridiculous tariffs or the stupid Iran war. They wouldn't have passed anything like the BBB. Nor would they have tried to scare all the immigrants out of the country.

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ericmay 12 hours ago | parent [-]

> Pretty sure the Democrats would not have done either the ridiculous tariffs

They may not have gone with that specific approach, but the direction was the same. Instead of tariffs the Biden Administration's BBB bill gave money to corporations instead. Two directionally aligned approaches there.

The rest of the comments (immigration policy or Iran) are irrelevant to this specific topic IMO

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amanaplanacanal 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Directional alignment but completely different policy. Trying to claim they are the same is nonsense.

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amanaplanacanal 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You don't think those two things have any effect on the economy?

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ericmay 12 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure they have an effect but are they economic policies? If you want to take the approach that everything is an economic policy I guess we could do that, but I think it's a bit limiting.

I guess also, what's the goal of economic policy? Does your economy matter much if you can't defend it, for example? If you have no industrial base does that matter?

Under sequential administrations all the way up and until at least the end of Mr. Obama's second term we had, broadly speaking, the same economic policy and we lost a lot of jobs under that regime, lost manufacturing capabilities, and more. People were really unhappy with that scheme which was supported by both Republican and Democratic administrations. Maybe we should examine our policies even if there are temporary changes that are unfavorable. Should we be long-term oriented or short-term oriented?

It's a very complicated topic of course, but I think just "grr mad at Trump" is not only immature but just wrong and leads to no meaningful analysis of what our economic policies have been, the results, and what changes may produce.

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amanaplanacanal 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Immigration is clearly economic policy. It was partially justified on immigrants taking American's jobs.

The war isn't strictly economic policy, but everybody could see it would have a bad effect on the economy, which is why everybody else was smart enough not to do it.

	▲	ericmay 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Immigration is clearly economic policy. Sure but it's not strictly an economic policy. If you want to just talk about the economics of immigration I'd be happy to discuss that. I think there are pros and cons to many different approaches. > The war isn't strictly economic policy, but everybody could see it would have a bad effect on the economy, which is why everybody else was smart enough not to do it. Similarly Europe and the United States could have been economically smart and unsanctioned Russian gas and let them take over Ukraine. Sometimes economic policy is trumped by other considerations.

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epolanski 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Job numbers have always been reviewed down after being released every single time since 2022.