EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 4799
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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets. Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread | ||
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Uldridge
Belgium5204 Posts
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KwarK
United States44285 Posts
On February 25 2025 05:11 Uldridge wrote: Once again I don't understand geopolitics so why are these countries abstaining or like why are African countries voting against? Russian lapdogs? Against, i can kind of understand, but abstinence??? Lots of African kleptocracies propped up by Russian paramilitaries and their lack of scruples over war crimes and slavery. Africa gonna Africa. | ||
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Hat Trick of Today
202 Posts
On February 25 2025 05:11 Uldridge wrote: Once again I don't understand geopolitics so why are these countries abstaining or like why are African countries voting against? Russian lapdogs? Against, i can kind of understand, but abstinence??? Some countries still benefit from Russian involvement (often in corrupt forms but whatever). A lot of countries, such as India, still remember the assistance the Soviet Union provided them in times of need (Indo-Pakistani War in 1965 as an example). The Soviet Union, for what it is worth, provided an absurd amount of military and financial aid to a lot of countries around the world and many of these countries still remember this fondly. That’s the hilarious thing about the US setting all of their international programs on fire right now. No other country is doing the same thing because they can recognise that people can legitimately feel appreciative of aid and assistance at the very least. | ||
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KwarK
United States44285 Posts
On February 25 2025 05:21 Hat Trick of Today wrote: Some countries still benefit from Russian involvement (often in corrupt forms but whatever). A lot of countries, such as India, still remember the assistance the Soviet Union provided them in times of need (Indo-Pakistani War in 1965 as an example). The Soviet Union, for what it is worth, provided an absurd amount of military and financial aid to a lot of countries around the world and many of these countries still remember this fondly. That’s the hilarious thing about the US setting all of their international programs on fire right now. No other country is doing the same thing because they can recognise that people can legitimately feel appreciative of aid and assistance at the very least. The irony is that Brezhnev, the Soviet saviour of India, was a Ukrainian. Indians don’t care though and Russia is perfectly happy to spend Soviet goodwill as if it were their own. It’s like if people expressed their admiration for Gandhi by backing Pakistan over India every time. Sure, Pakistan can claim to be a successor of British India but it’s not the right one in this context. | ||
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ETisME
12866 Posts
On February 25 2025 00:00 KwarK wrote: People who decry the public sector for inefficiency and wish it were more like the private sector have never actually worked in the private sector and it shows. Shareholders are much less worried about how their money gets frivolously wasted than taxpayers are. Waste in the private sector is a joke. So many private jet flights that could have been emails and each time the C suite flew in for a fucking afternoon we’d prepare them all gift bags and local treats to make them like us more in the hope we’d keep our jobs despite the mounting losses. The shareholders needed the C suite to fuck off and the plant to stop spending money on indulging the C suite but the plant management wanted to keep their jobs and strategic investment of company money in office politics was deemed worthwhile. I was the weirdo for saying that I’ll wait to get my office redecorated until after we make some money. More experienced coworkers recognized that an impressively refurbished office is a status symbol that makes your peers think you’re more important than you are which is especially important when the business is losing money. That's plain wrong. Shareholders absolutely care about performance. Everything you consider a waste are part of budgeting. I am baffled you would even think shareholders don't care. When was the last time any Europe gov had a headcount cut as big of a % as meta did just last year. 5% in like a quarter | ||
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Sadist
United States7328 Posts
Also in the era of meme stocks to think performance is driving stock price is ridiculous. Teslas stock keeps going up even though it should be going down. They face more competition than ever before. Not to mention their CEO constantly antagonizing the people who would typically be his customers. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States24341 Posts
On February 25 2025 05:17 KwarK wrote: Lots of African kleptocracies propped up by Russian paramilitaries and their lack of scruples over war crimes and slavery. Africa gonna Africa. GH: I highly recommend Walter Rodney's "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" and Susan Williams' "White Malice: The CIA and the Neocolonisation of Africa" If people want to know more about what "Africa gonna Africa" means. That's presuming Kwark isn't just being openly racist anyway. | ||
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Impervious
Canada4222 Posts
I really think this was a good synopsis of things, and coming from a comedian no less..... However, he's also missing one key point. I think he has underestimated the amount of people who have figured this out, and realized that the democrats continued to promise more of the status-quo. We'd keep watching math and science scores go down in the education system, and the costs of post-secondary education will continue to rise. Healthcare would keep getting worse and more expensive. Wealth inequality would continue to get worse. The implied promise of the American dream would continue to not materialize for more and more people. Voting for the democrats would bean electing more and more bureaucrats similar to the ones already in place for the last several decades, which would continue the cycle. People who already obtained wealth would continue to compound their net wealth. Manufacturing jobs that used to provide middle class lifestyles would continue to leave the country, and the remaining jobs would continue to pay worse relatively by not keeping up to inflation. The US currency would continue to be the worlds main trading currency, keeping the value of the currency inflated. The US would continue to meddle in foreign nations affairs for their own benefits. "Let's go Brandon" isn't just about Biden. It's about the career politicians that continue to make things worse. I think Trump got a lot of support from people who realized that the status-quo isn't working, and Trump offered an actual change to the status-quo, even though at a high level most people do agree with the democrats about social issues. I think this is why Trump and Bernie got a bunch of support from the same groups of people. Both people wanted to shake up the status-quo. However, it still blows my mind that the majority of voters wanted a billionaire to lead them out of this mess, especially after his track record in the first term..... The systems in place that helped him amass such a vast amount of wealth greatly benefit him, and he didn't do anything to make it harder on himself and his peers, and easier on the rest of Americans. Instead he engaged in a bunch of stupid endeavors that ultimately cost a lot of money. The wall as an example is incredibly expensive, an ecological nightmare, and ineffective considering the really old technologies like a ladder or pickaxe, as well as newer drones strong enough to physically lift a person or some goods right over the wall..... Or putting taxes on goods, leading to reciprocal taxes hurting themselves as much, or if not more. The US is already relatively uncompetitive with the rest of the world when you consider the production of natural goods, manufacturing, or agriculture. Any reciprocal taxes on these industries hurts. The reciprocal taxes from China last time Trump was in office was a perfect example. The government spent, what, 5 or 6 times as much money to subsidize farmers affected by the reciprocal taxes compared to the taxes collected from China. China was fine. The US suffered more. And now it seems like the taxes on Canadian goods is a go. Or at least, up here we really need to assume it will be a go considering he stated it was a go during a press conference today. I think that we need to put up reciprocal tariffs. I don't like the idea, as I know a trade war is going to hurt us. However, Trump is acting like a bully on an international stage. I'm not going to sit there and take it if someone personally punches me, and I hope my government won't just sit there and take this either. Trump acted like a bully last time he was elected. He campaigned that he would do it again, but worse. He was voted for by a majority of the voters. Congress and the Senate are both controlled by the Republicans. He's got a mandate from the voters to act this way, and continue to do so until he gets voted out. At this point I really think it's going to have to hurt the pocketbooks of the average American before they put enough pressure on their congressmen and senators to cause them to stand up to Trump. | ||
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KwarK
United States44285 Posts
On February 25 2025 07:02 ETisME wrote: That's plain wrong. Shareholders absolutely care about performance. Everything you consider a waste are part of budgeting. I am baffled you would even think shareholders don't care. When was the last time any Europe gov had a headcount cut as big of a % as meta did just last year. 5% in like a quarter When was the last time you directly voted your shares? | ||
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ETisME
12866 Posts
On February 25 2025 07:11 Sadist wrote: I think Kwarks point is that private business has tons of waste. Anyone who has worked at a large company knows this. Thinking its a problem unique to the public sector is hillariously wrong. Also in the era of meme stocks to think performance is driving stock price is ridiculous. Teslas stock keeps going up even though it should be going down. They face more competition than ever before. Not to mention their CEO constantly antagonizing the people who would typically be his customers. waste is not unique to public sector. Who even said that? The problem of public sector is no competition and immune to large head cut like private sector. Do you want to see how extreme it looks in China? And no, I work in a large international company in management role (largest in the country), so there goes whatever theory you had. You ever worked on gov contracts? | ||
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ETisME
12866 Posts
On February 25 2025 07:30 KwarK wrote: When was the last time you directly voted your shares? You don't need to vote to have influence, you sell or you short | ||
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Sadist
United States7328 Posts
The left isnt status quo, its for not burning things down with no replacements. Thats responsible government. Im not happy with the way things are. I think theres an older generation of democrats who had their will broken by fox news. They need to go and we need younger and more energetic replacements. Theres loads of things we can improve on that will fix peoples lives. Lets just talk about issues and what we want to do to fix them. Healthcare needs to be #1. Be honest, say this is what we can accomplish quickly with these congressional numbers, if we want to accomplish more it will take a few election cycles unless theres a blow out. People will come back if the left can be the party of truth, honesty, and transparency. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27340 Posts
On February 25 2025 07:11 Sadist wrote: I think Kwarks point is that private business has tons of waste. Anyone who has worked at a large company knows this. Thinking its a problem unique to the public sector is hillariously wrong. Also in the era of meme stocks to think performance is driving stock price is ridiculous. Teslas stock keeps going up even though it should be going down. They face more competition than ever before. Not to mention their CEO constantly antagonizing the people who would typically be his customers. There is some grotesque, grotesque inefficiency in the stock market by its very nature. It’s so driven by outside perception that’s bound to happen at times. Look at Theranos for god’s sake. Their entire USP and valuation was for a product that didn’t work And there’s quite a difference in incentives for shareholders who are in for a long haul, and those who aren’t. The former may be content with a modest, sustainable growth. Indeed, they may actually work for the company they hold shares in, and intend to remain so they have a foot in two stables so to speak The latter may not, provided they get a sufficient boost and can sell, if shit subsequently hits the fan, well so what? Let’s take Hypothetical Vidya Company. They cut costs, they cut jobs, shareholders like that so price goes up. Their big shiny new game is nearly finished anyway, so cuts don’t really impact its quality. Big shiny new game launches, is a big success, share prices bump up again. Fast-forward a bit and Hypothetical Vidya Company puts out a bunch of sub-par offerings, both critically as well as commercially. Because of course they do, and everyone knew that they would because the talent pool was gutted. HVC goes bust, or gets acquired at a fraction of its previous worth. Not to say the whole shebang is completely and utterly worthless in every scenario, but if that caveat is needed I shall add it. | ||
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KwarK
United States44285 Posts
On February 25 2025 07:38 ETisME wrote: You don't need to vote to have influence, you sell or you short So my stance is that shareholders don't worry about management and are basically just absentee rentiers who don't hold management accountable for shit. Your stance is that they take ownership seriously and actively hold management's feet to the fire on issues like waste. But your stance is also that they do this in a way that is indistinguishable from complete indifference and total inaction? How wonderful. | ||
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ETisME
12866 Posts
On February 25 2025 07:44 KwarK wrote: So my stance is that shareholders don't worry about management and are basically just absentee rentiers who don't hold management accountable for shit. Your stance is that they take ownership seriously and actively hold management's feet to the fire on issues like waste. But your stance is also that they do this in a way that is indistinguishable from complete indifference and total inaction? How wonderful. Shareholder cares about financial performance, and future valuation. They don't need to run the company, shareholders aren't meant to run the company or micro manage it. If the company is competitive, then sure the management are fine. Not to mention listed private companies are required to publish their reports and get microscope analysed by hedgefunds. Gov itself get little oversight, and complaints barely work. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18436 Posts
On February 25 2025 08:04 ETisME wrote: Shareholder cares about financial performance, and future valuation. They don't need to run the company, shareholders aren't meant to run the company or micro manage it. If the company is competitive, then sure the management are fine. Not to mention listed private companies are required to publish their reports and get microscope analysed by hedgefunds. Gov itself get little oversight, and complaints barely work. So the hedge funds are doing your job as a shareholder for you? And if the hedge funds decide to short the stock you're holding, I guess you're just fine with losing that money, because really, they're probably right and you deserved to lose. Whoopsie. The government jobs I've been in have had about the same bureaucracy as the private jobs I've been in. Basically, they need to know what bin what expense goes in and whether it can be justified. Why not put the same stock you put into "hedge funds" into congressional oversight committees and any number of NGOs who investigate how government money is spent? | ||
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KwarK
United States44285 Posts
On February 25 2025 08:04 ETisME wrote: Shareholder cares about financial performance, and future valuation. They don't need to run the company, shareholders aren't meant to run the company or micro manage it. If the company is competitive, then sure the management are fine. Not to mention listed private companies are required to publish their reports and get microscope analysed by hedgefunds. Gov itself get little oversight, and complaints barely work. So is your premise that financial performance is correlated exactly with waste? That all companies losing money are necessarily wasteful and that all companies making money have no waste? Because if not I’m really not seeing how a very general conceptual interest in a company making money can be described as an active interest in holding the company accountable for waste. Not when compared to the kind of scrutiny public companies face, from having their books open to the public to sunshine laws to whistleblowers to journalists to parliamentary inquiries etc. By required to publish their reports I can only assume you mean audited financials. That’s not what an audit does. They’re wholly unconcerned with waste. They don’t look for it, they don’t test for it, they don’t report it if they accidentally find it. An audit tests if the financials are fairly stated. If a company spends half their money trying to hold back the tide then as long as the expense is in the “holding back the tide” bucket then the auditor won’t say a thing. The objective and undeniable reality is that there is far, far, far more scrutiny and accountability for public waste than there is private. Taxpayer funded first class travel gets investigated and reported on to voters in a way that shareholder funded travel would never be to shareholders. | ||
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ETisME
12866 Posts
On February 25 2025 08:41 KwarK wrote: So is your premise that financial performance is correlated exactly with waste? That all companies losing money are necessarily wasteful and that all companies making money have no waste? Because if not I’m really not seeing how a very general conceptual interest in a company making money can be described as an active interest in holding the company accountable for waste. Not when compared to the kind of scrutiny public companies face, from having their books open to the public to sunshine laws to whistleblowers to journalists to parliamentary inquiries etc. By required to publish their reports I can only assume you mean audited financials. That’s not what an audit does. They’re wholly unconcerned with waste. They don’t look for it, they don’t test for it, they don’t report it if they accidentally find it. An audit tests if the financials are fairly stated. If a company spends half their money trying to hold back the tide then as long as the expense is in the “holding back the tide” bucket then the auditor won’t say a thing. The objective and undeniable reality is that there is far, far, far more scrutiny and accountability for public waste than there is private. Taxpayer funded first class travel gets investigated and reported on to voters in a way that shareholder funded travel would never be to shareholders. Of course audit don't look for waste. ROI etc are what shows the performance. It isn't upto you to decide a private jet is wasteful, that's the whole point I don't even understand how public sector being far more wasteful and less headcount cut is a topic for debate. | ||
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KwarK
United States44285 Posts
On February 25 2025 09:42 ETisME wrote: Of course audit don't look for waste. ROI etc are what shows the performance. It isn't upto you to decide a private jet is wasteful, that's the whole point I don't even understand how public sector being far more wasteful and less headcount cut is a topic for debate. You think someone or something called ROI is out there looking for waste? So not the “required reports” you were referencing before which I explained don’t actually exist. Just this Roy fellow. If you mean return on investment then presumably your argument is now that the mechanism for monitoring waste is reading the earnings report and extrapolating from that. Google has a public earnings report, how many dollars of waste did they have? Egg manufacturers are earning money like crazy this year. Presumably their waste has dropped dramatically since 6 months ago. Shareholders have no real mechanism for identifying waste in the companies they own and policing it. None. It doesn’t exist. This is very different to taxpayers who have a lot of mechanisms for identifying and policing misuse of public funds. Americans put money into 401ks, the 401ks buy the equities, but they exercise no meaningful influence on management. | ||
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ETisME
12866 Posts
On February 25 2025 09:44 KwarK wrote: You think someone or something called ROI is out there looking for waste? So not the “required reports” you were referencing before which I explained don’t actually exist. Just this Roy fellow. If you mean return on investment then presumably your argument is now that the mechanism for monitoring waste is reading the earnings report and extrapolating from that. Google has a public earnings report, how many dollars of waste did they have? Egg manufacturers are earning money like crazy this year. Presumably their waste has dropped dramatically since 6 months ago. Shareholders have no real mechanism for identifying waste in the companies they own and policing it. None. It doesn’t exist. This is very different to taxpayers who have a lot of mechanisms for identifying and policing misuse of public funds. No because what you consider waste don't matter. It matters how the company categories the cost, be it an actual cost of goods/service or development or investment. It's not a report to find waste. Any wasteful companies (ie overspending/bad investment) by nature will be outperformed by a lesser one. | ||
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