All Things Biden: Is It Over Yet?

[rainbow]

President Biden dropping a qualified f-bomb. Oh, the 42s out there yalping in outrage.

Salon piece:

Congrats: You're a fascist!

Wrong. Fascists have better dress sense.

[Brian Peacock]

[Tero]

How the chips fall. Not sure about iPhones.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... r-a-decade

[Tero]

Biden/democrat bill would raise taxes if you calculate it this way. Corporate taxes go up, they will pass this on to employees:
Excerpts from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) indicated that the legislation might lead to increased payments on personal taxes for Americans of all incomes (an increase in $16.7 billion for taxpayers earning less than $200,000 a year, $14.1 billion for taxpayers earning between $200,000 and $500,000, and $23.5 billion for taxpayers earning over $500,000). This calculation was based on the assumption that companies would indirectly pass on parts of the minimum corporate tax to employees, an assumption that was criticized by Steven M. Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (TPC).

You can't call it "tax" though, if it is a reduction of wages!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation ... ct_of_2022

[Sean Hayden]

It’s not like we can’t make their lives miserable. We can. They rely on the rest of us for everything.

[Brian Peacock]

There's a problem with income inequality for sure, but at the foot of that issue are the personal and social values which drive and legitimise wealth hoarding. I'm sorry to sound like a wet librul here. Once you've got more money than you'll ever need to live off for the rest of your life what remains is little more than macho dick waving. These guys just don't want to grow up.

/mini-rant

[rasetsu]

There's a problem with income inequality for sure, but at the foot of that issue are the personal and social values which drive and legitimise wealth hoarding. I'm sorry to sound like a wet librul here. Once you've got more money than you'll ever need to live off for the rest of your life what remains is little more than macho dick waving. These guys just don't want to grow up.

/mini-rant

I have a theory, which admittedly needs some development, but which says that it is the negative emotions in life that drive our choices, not the positive ones. Anxiety and fear, and our desire to reduce those unpleasant feelings, lead us to make choices that we think will diminish the feelings when we have them or are in danger of having them. Fear of loss and helplessness provokes strong emotions in people. People who lived through the Great Depression seem to be at a greater risk of becoming hoarders, and it seems to me that their acquisition of material goods is a way of controlling a fear of not having enough which they overdeveloped by living through a time of privation. Seen through this lens, the inequality is driven not by an irrational desire for some fulfillment that they do not need and which their actions will not attain, but rather an attempt to provide greater and greater insulation from fears about not being able to control their life situation via their monetary wealth.

[Tero]

Tversky and Kahneman have proven pretty well that our decision making is a sort of rule of thumb decision making to minimize loss. They use the word heuristics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Tversky

[rasetsu]

That's a gross mischaracterization of Kahneman and Tversky's work.

[pErvinalia]

Gross, I tell you!

[Brian Peacock]

There's a problem with income inequality for sure, but at the foot of that issue are the personal and social values which drive and legitimise wealth hoarding. I'm sorry to sound like a wet librul here. Once you've got more money than you'll ever need to live off for the rest of your life what remains is little more than macho dick waving. These guys just don't want to grow up.

/mini-rant

I have a theory, which admittedly needs some development, but which says that it is the negative emotions in life that drive our choices, not the positive ones. Anxiety and fear, and our desire to reduce those unpleasant feelings, lead us to make choices that we think will diminish the feelings when we have them or are in danger of having them. Fear of loss and helplessness provokes strong emotions in people. People who lived through the Great Depression seem to be at a greater risk of becoming hoarders, and it seems to me that their acquisition of material goods is a way of controlling a fear of not having enough which they overdeveloped by living through a time of privation. Seen through this lens, the inequality is driven not by an irrational desire for some fulfillment that they do not need and which their actions will not attain, but rather an attempt to provide greater and greater insulation from fears about not being able to control their life situation via their monetary wealth.

Aye. It's theories like that which affirm your qualifications as a bonafide economist!

Here's one of mine: loss aversion tactics are a sound approach to life when you don't know where your next calorie is coming from, and in those terms storing resources for the lean months is good for both you and the community. But the possession of resources is also bound to the status games of men, which play out as little more than sport in our socioeconomic context, and in ways that are clearly detrimental to wider society.

[Tero]

President seeking dead woman in audience
FOX: President Biden had deceased Rep. Jackie Walorski "top of mind" Wednesday when he looked for her in the audience at an event addressing hunger in the U.S., according to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

Jean-Pierre fielded roughly 10 questions Wednesday about the president’s gaffe during the White House press briefing. Jean-Pierre told reporters 14 times that the president wasn’t confused about whether Walorski was alive and in the room, but he had her "top of mind" because he will be meeting with her family on Friday.

The Indiana congresswoman was killed in a car accident in August, which the White House noted in a statement at the time.

[Tero]

Loan pardon unpopular with GOP. Now ruined for democrats as well:
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/29/11259235 ... m=news_tab

[Sean Hayden]

They’re entitled to kiss my ass, all of it, the whole thing. These scoundrels don’t pay for anything with their own money.

[rainbow]

They’re entitled to kiss my ass, all of it, the whole thing. These scoundrels don’t pay for anything with their own money.

Who does?