SnuggleButt [he/him]

Yes, this will eventually break our reserve currency status which would plunge the US into a fiscal nightmare situation. Our debt would finally matter and inflation would be seen like never before.

They are purposely plunging it imo because the tech bros who backed Trump have a ton of crypto and their value isn’t denominated in USD, it’s denominated in assets. They also don’t give a shit about a functioning US because they can flee and go anywhere. The USD failing will not impact their wealth, and, at least in the short term, it will give them more. This is a perfect scenario in which the world might shift to a “currency” they already have a massive stake in. It’s essentially the equivalent to bringing a company they own a huge stake in, public, except at a currency level. It’s extremely dangerous and the USD is kind of the main obstacle. Even if Bitcoin is never actually used as a currency (and it’s not which means its intrinsic value imo is even less than a single dollar) as long as the charade keeps up, they can capture a large amount of wealth that they can translate to real assets over time

If an oil-rich country breaks from the petrodollar and aligns with another currency, I think that would mark a very obvious end to US hegemony. Otherwise just a slow shift in what trade is denominated in

Yeah that makes sense. I’ve gotten two quotes so far one around 2.2k and another 3.5k which is a pretty wide difference. They are definitely only replacing the tank and yes a colder climate but we have all four seasons in good quantities. I’m gonna wait for another quote or two but it’s been tough since some places don’t install those tanks because the manufacturer has stricter requirements when it comes to certification (which is a good thing I guess; 18 years for a tank feels like a pretty good lifecycle). I appreciate your insights though and will live with my cold water for now!

Okay wait this is so relevant to me personally right now. My water heater tank just sprang a leak after 18 years and I am looking to replace it. It is an energy kinetics system 2000. I have no idea what the price of a replacement should be (just the tank) and am being given different prices for different tanks. Since the original lasted so long I am leaning towards the same brand but individual consumers cannot purchase them directly, and I’m getting pushback from the only quote to offer an installation of that tank on the breakdown of the price. Can you give me any advice? It would be super appreciated

His presidency will end of old age, but right beforehand his make-a-wish will be to visit 5th avenue one more time. And he’ll do it. And all his fan girls will cheer and clap

Removed by mod

I genuinely don’t know if they will. Like yes the rhetoric is aimed at them and the man on the plastic chair is completely senile and probably does want them removed, but the actual people behind the wig have an incentive to keep them around. A two party system locks out proper representation and is a beautiful pressure valve that’s conveniently soaked in tradition. A one party system in America will fester a tremendous amount of anger and much more potential instability. It is a safer play to try to keep the charade going and they’re probably just letting him pretend the controllers plugged in for now since he doesn’t have much time left. I think he’s run a bit away with the plot, but I do think they’ll reign them in and regardless of who is leader, they’ll use the tools established to maintain surveillance and disappear undesirables who want workers to be paid at least half of what they’re worth

Yo can we stop pretending the Dems are dumb? They would literally prefer Trump over sanders, let alone someone who would actually run this country decently well

They aren’t flailing around, limbless birds. They aren’t the sheep that will be culled. Their donors are the fucking same, it just wasn’t their turn. Their instincts are perfect for the task they’ve been given

There is a regenerative farm to table restaurant near me. The owner used to work in the Obama admin first term. He left and started a farm, and I quote, not because the government worked poorly, but because it worked perfectly

I am Italian and I give everyone here a pass as long as they send me one meatball each and with a tape recording of them saying the phrase

I will then mail them back a hand written critique of their meatball with a laminated pass

To be fair, I think there are sentences and words that if we said directed at the chuds, would actually dismantle their entire movement. Words that they were told you’re not supposed to say that would also actually hurt them because it defined who they are behind closed doors and would also break the brains of their supporters because we’d be seen, to them, more “alpha” for saying it outright in public

If you got someone on public television say it directly to trump’s face it would go viral in both camps. Probably more likely a shitty dem gets the opportunity and does it before someone who deserves the attention and support

That’s why you degrade and normalize slow and steady. The playbook is written and reused, the product just refuses to read it

Isn’t it amazing to know that Obama was farther to the right than Reagan?

What they did in the past does not reflect their current price. They have a P/E ratio of almost 250 with declining revenue. That is unheard of. It implies that from their current position they’d need to 6-8x their profits just to reach its current level of valuation and be comparable to their competitors valuations. This means that after 6-8xing their profits their stock price shouldn’t move and only then would they be comparable. If it does move up from here, it would necessitate even more growth

You are describing Tesla’s growth and justification for valuation maybe, 4-5 years ago.

Oh yeah I agree I don’t think it will be avoided long term, I probably just think it will take longer than you probably think is all. And mainly I tie reserve currency to inflation, in that its current strongest property (due to the dollar slowly losing this status) is holding the floodgates of immense inflation back, not necessarily the insane trade leverage it once had

Well the reserve currency is the lynchpin in my opinion because it’s holding back a tidal wave of inflation, which would then cause the issues you’re describing to explode. Without the demand that status generates, the excess supply has nowhere to go. Our current crisis is a function of the massive printing during Covid that even the reserve currency status struggled to contain.

I feel like if Covid as a tipping point did not destroy this country im not sure what will. A lot of people are taking on debt, but there’s a lot farther they can fall. There are cheaper alternatives they will move to in terms of housing, food, etc. not everyone sits at the bottom but everyone can sit at the bottom and I think there’s still a lot to fall. Much poorer countries exist in much worse conditions. And the institutions whose value are based on that debt that won’t be paid back will just be bailed out like in 08 and during covid via printing. This is why the reserve currency is the lynchpin because they can only keep doing this if there’s external demand for dollars.

There already is a critical mass of people who are doing really poorly, but relatively. The issue is they’re not all entering that state at once, so the permanent crisis I describe in my prior comment is one of very many small crises happening, always. This both normalizes the situation but also prevents a large mass of people from being disenfranchised at once, making it hard for society to react as a mass unit. These smaller units will slip into conditions similar to poor countries, meaning they are still viable to live in even though they’re terrible, all driven by consistent inflation.

It’s a decentralized, slow and steady destruction that only affects small portions of the population at once. Unless inflation erupts at once it won’t ever effect enough people at the same time to cause a mass situation

I think the best marker of an imminent rapid decline is the middle-upper class/upper-class non elite. Like, think of people like doctors. These typically indicate the beginning of a revolution or a large change because they have enough money to live very well lives, but not enough to maintain them in the face of hard times, meaning their standard of living can shift the most out of any group of people, and they still represent a nominally large population. There are less of them than there once was but they still exist and I think are important to pay attention to

I mean this is all true but my point is it’s been happening since 08 non-stop. The house of cards is designed to function like this, and whenever there’s turbulence that might threaten it, the us govt prints their way out.

It feels like a perpetual crash is looming because they’ve designed the system to perfectly maintain a constant crash for ordinary people, and drip feed assets to the wealthy. I don’t see an event that stops this from happening until after the US loses the world reserve currency, which would necessitate a substantial decoupling between Europe and the US, which would necessitate more than just China as a competitive superpower

I would argue that we’ve been in the middle of a recession/crash for the last 2 years, so I’m not sure how much would change. A market crash is a different story. They may or may not print their way out of a crash they can’t control but based on how the market rebounded from the tariffs, I feel like the market is completely and utterly rigged at this point, which means it won’t ever really crash

Inflation is the biggest thing that could happen, and we’re already experiencing it. Stagflation really. Sure we might have another situation that causes the markets to crash that they will likely print their way out of, but most of that inflation gets caught in equities. I think the pace of inflation the ordinary person experiences can’t get much worse at this point, and most people are already priced out of a home without inheritance money/assets. This is the tightest squeeze I feel the American populace has felt since the Great Depression, and many metrics point it’s worse; the only reason it doesn’t feel worse is because the normal person isn’t starving due to the difference in agricultural setting. But we’ll see. I think America will just continue to experience inflation at too large a pace and our economy will slowly crumble over the next 10-20 years as we lose our world reserve currency status

Actually think it would be smart to look at the average age of this demographic’s parents. Even in this economic climate there will be economic improvement for people as they age, albeit slower and less than before, but it will also be tied to when their parents pass and leave them with stuff

Didn’t Trump initiate this withdrawal? Like, the entire withdrawal from Afghanistan?

The article kind of contradicts itself. Near the start I believe it mentioned how it wasn’t just a delay in births, but then when it gets down to the changes based on age, it very much indicates a delay, in that women below the age of 30 had a significant decline, but early 30s is the same and 35 and beyond is greater. Yes this is a decline since it’s harder to have a child past a certain age but it’s mostly a delay for now, although considering how our economy is also declining, this trend will increase

Love how we’ve tricked everyone into thinking the only way government can influence economy is through interest rate controls. Lol. Lmao even