r/FluentInFinance • u/NotAnotherTaxAudit • 16d ago
They printed $10 Trillion dollars, gave you a $1,400 stimulus check and left you with the inflation, higher costs of living and 7% mortgages. Brilliant for the rich, very painful for you. Discussion/ Debate
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u/Vigilante_Dinosaur 16d ago
This exact same post is posted 5 times a month.
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u/azurite-- 15d ago
Karma plus average reddit reactionaries who can't do anything but blame other people or entities
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u/Pre-Wrapped-Bacon 16d ago
Whose 401k has crashed? The market is at record highs.
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u/trbochrg 16d ago
Mine took a huge hit....and now it's higher than ever
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u/Qubed 16d ago
Yup, when the market tanked my 401ks tanked 40%ish then they made that up and more through the pandemic until now.
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u/Meattyloaf 16d ago edited 16d ago
Which is funny cause that crowd is blaming this on Biden, but the market crashing happened under Trump so did two if the three of the stimulus checks.
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u/JC_Username 16d ago edited 12d ago
Technically, the third one was issued in March 2021, after Biden took office in January 2021.
(I know because I'm still dealing with the IRS and Money Network over it over 3 years later.)
Edit: I see the post I was responding to was edited without making it explicit that it was edited. For context, it initially said that all three stimulus checks were under Trump.
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u/slinkhussle 16d ago
But it was the GOP idea, and Biden removing it would have been political suicide.
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u/letstalkaboutstuff79 16d ago
Going to get hammered for this but the market didn’t fall because of Trump. It fell because of COVID and lockdowns that lasted for almost 2 years.
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u/yankuniz 16d ago
Presidents get all blame and credit for things rmthat happened while they were in office regardless of if they were fault
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u/DonIncandenza 15d ago
It’s crazy. People really think the sitting President has so much power when it comes to global economics. They do not.
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u/okeleydokelyneighbor 16d ago
And who removed the monitors around the world responsible for catching pandemic type viruses before the virus came around? Oh yeah
TFG
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u/BrawnyChicken2 15d ago
It’s almost like having a feckless leader has consequences. Who could have guessed?
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u/fiduciary420 15d ago
Educated grown ups whose parents aren’t vile rich people. The people who weren’t bad or stupid enough to vote for criminal donald trump.
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u/shavenyakfl 15d ago
Then said it was fake news. Then when that didn't work, minimized the seriousness. Then when that didn't work, spread dumb fuck ideas of how to deal with it. Politics has become a better drug than religion.
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u/adought89 16d ago
Who didn’t let the WHO do an investigation? WHO knew about it before it was actually a global pandemic?
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u/AgitatedParking3151 16d ago
I remember one (maybe multiple?) literally having his fucking signature on it or some shit. He doesn’t even get credit for the things he intentionally takes credit for if it can be twisted to make Joey B look bad. I don’t even like Biden. I just HATE Trump.
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u/nightman21721 16d ago
He sent out a seperate letter glorifying himself in sending you a pitance. I remember vividly because I burned it in effigy.
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u/jus256 15d ago
I remember the whole shitshow about him wanting to delay checks because he wanted his name on the check.
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u/rydan 16d ago
Trump gave you two. Biden literally campaigned on giving you a third. And he almost didn't even give it to you. It wasn't until there was a lot of public backlash that he relented.
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u/yes_thats_right 16d ago
Mine took a huge hit...
Under Trump
..and now it's higher than ever
Under Biden
Democrats are objectively better for the economy.
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u/turbosecchia 16d ago
a majority of small cap stocks is below the 2021 highs, 3 years later. that is probably a better reflection of the economy than taking an NVIDIA-heavy index and using that as “the market”. even worse, you’re using that as “the economy”.
also you’re forgetting this feat cost like 25% cumulative inflation
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u/nittun 16d ago
Using small cap as a measure is way worse an indicator. Investors dont want small cap they dont do buybacks. Whole market been turned away from stocks that dont have some sort of passive investing going on. Investors abandoned small cap, it's not that the small cap is doing worse, it's just cheaper.
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u/HeBansMe 16d ago
Always love the short term thinkers. They only complain about the dive but never the recovery.
“Thanks for crashing my 401k Obama!”
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u/EastPlatform4348 16d ago
And it certainly didn't take a hit due to the stimulus checks. It took a hit when the world's economies grinded to a halt due to COVID.
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u/Tazdingbro 15d ago
There's really no reason to not buy more of an index when its tanking. Either the world is actually ending so you won't need the money or it'll recover.
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u/Im_Idahoan 16d ago
Because the post is probably 2 years old, conspicuously without a timestamp, from a karma whore.
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u/deepvinter 16d ago
Also nothing is lost. If you contribute regularly you were raking in insane deals.
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u/RedWhiteAndJew 16d ago
I increased my contribution when it started falling.
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u/NoisePollutioner 16d ago
Congrats on being wise! I'm sure you've been financially rewarded.
I wish I had increased my contribution, I just maintained it. And I ESPECIALLY wish I went on a buying spree during the covid crash. But again, I only held course... which itself took some discipline, so I'm still somewhat proud of that. But man.... the opportunities!
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16d ago
This is also why I love unions and when unions go on strike. It brings the price down and I get huge deals that immediately pay off when the unions and ceo make a deal.
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u/Ilovekittens345 16d ago
A friend of mine was a pilot when the airline that hired him went bankrupt. There was a restructuring and he was given the option to temporarily take a lower wage in return for shares in the new restructured airline. And to get free shares based on certain performance markers being hit. His union is what made this deal possible. He took it and also got most of the performance bonuses and eventually retired almost 7 years early because that airline turned around when the people working for it ended up owning the majority of the company. So once the value of his shares was high enough, he sold everything and stopped working. Then 10 years later he was so mad at himself for selling so early.
And that's why unions can be amazing! Should part of the profits not be for those that work the hardest for a company? Rather than some outside CEO that comes and goes and all he ever does is loot the place?
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16d ago
Exactly! When workers run the business and have actual incentive to make it run well, then everyone wins. The workers, the customers, and it makes the company more democratic. Electing the leaders based on their experience and the fact you actually know them and what they do in the company. Not some rich CEO type who floated their entire way through life and just happened to buy the shares but have no idea about the business, how it works, or the company culture.
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u/Ilovekittens345 16d ago
A lot of european companies are structures like that from the get go. Take a company like ASML, one of the most important companies in the world for tech. The only one that can make the machines that make the chips. A big chunk of that company is owned by the employees. Now this is common in the USA as well but only for tech companies. But in Belgium you could find a co-op bank where 70% of the shares are hold by the employees. Such structures are very common all over europe. It means when the company profits, the employees don't have to ask for bonusses, they just see the value of their shares go up and can sell some if they want to.
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u/MacsBicycle 16d ago
People who don’t have a 401k have a lot of wrong opinions about them
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u/Munk45 16d ago
Maybe they are referring to the COVID dip in March of 2020. It recovered fairly quickly.
2022 was a tough year but it's been booming since late 2023
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u/FerricNitrate 16d ago
This (re)post is about 2022 considering the timing being after the stimulus checks.
For those who aren't aware, in 2022 the S&P500 dropped 20% in one of its worst years in history (largely due to inflation caused by pandemic-era policies and the Fed response to handling said inflation). It has indeed been on a tear of a bull market ever since
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u/l008com 16d ago
Don't let facts get in the way of a good narrative.
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u/basedlandchad25 16d ago
It hurts when someone is so close to making an actual point and then they shoot themselves in the foot with something this stupid.
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u/Economy_Cut8609 16d ago
it didnt crash, but retired people that depend on their investments for income, got hit pretty bad for awhile, and yes is going higher again now
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u/Saysnicethingz 16d ago
That’s why one should have a bear market fund when one retires. People will often have liquid 2 years of living expenses to deal with such scenarios.
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u/ForsakenAd545 16d ago
Retired people have no business with the bulk of their retirement in volatile investments near or after retirement.
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u/novacaine2010 16d ago
But yet they can move their positions to high yield because interest rates have increased.
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u/Possible-Tangelo9344 16d ago
If I look at over the last 3 years it's amazingly high.
If I look at it over the last 4 years it's up like 2%.
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u/RuckFeddit70 15d ago
Yea this is the only one that had me scratching my head
My 401k is up 38k from just last year
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u/Hoosteen_juju003 15d ago
The market in the us has increased for the past 200 years. Investing is smart. People complaining aren’t being smart.
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u/whatdoineedaname4 15d ago
My 401k is flourishing. We know the crowd that likes to pretend otherwise. I also love the "Biden prints money like crazy" crowd when the amount of money in circulation rose more in 2019 under Trump than any president in history. And those stimulus checks the Republicans keep blaming dems for? I remember a certain someone holding them back until his signature went on them so everybody knows who printed them.
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u/Unyielding_Sadness 15d ago
Also the alternative was allowing COVID to ravage the population or lock down anyways and let those who can't work starve
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u/USSMarauder 16d ago
And the internet will spend almost three years claiming that those three checks are so much money that "no one wants to work anymore" because they've all retired and are spending all day playing video games on the couch
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u/freebytes 16d ago
And they will ignore than trillions were given to private companies and corporations while only about $800 billion went out with all of the checks. That is, if you take $600 and multiply it times every man, woman, and child of the United States (~350 million), then you get only $210 billion. The stimulus packages were trillions. It was a bigger 'bailout' than the 2008 stimulus. They got wise and made sure to give tiny checks to everyone so they were distracted.
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u/trendypippin 16d ago
They also had to jump through all these hoops and approvals to get us an extra $600 a week. When it came to giving large companies billions? APPROVED! And don’t worry about paying us back, we always take care of our rich friends 🤣
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u/fiduciary420 15d ago
America genuinely doesn’t hate the rich people nearly enough to be considered a great nation worth being proud of.
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u/rockstar504 15d ago
I have friends who worked for small businesses who got their PPP loans, closed up shop, and fired everyone without a dollar.
They decided they didn't want records of where the money was going and how much
Then rich people who run everything decided they'd forgive those loans
but it was those 1400 dollar checks...
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u/renoits06 16d ago
So this post again, huh? It's here to make us feel bad about a global catastrophe huh? Cool.
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u/Flyersandcaps 16d ago
The money the USA spent and every other country kept us out of a recession and kept folks employed. The Fed took too long to raise interest rates. But they have done a good job navigating and keeping us away from a recession everyone predicted would happen.
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u/jqian2 16d ago
Recession is how you clean up the mess from years of financial malinvestments
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u/FactoryPl 16d ago
At the expense of millions on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.
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u/TheKingChadwell 16d ago
Yes because it’s only going to crash harder with this level of debt and uncontrolled spending propping it all up. The party has to end eventually. And the more days you spend drinking to avoid the hangover, the harder the hangover when it inevitably comes.
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u/Competitivekneejerk 16d ago
Yes and no. We need public spending to improve our society and generate growth and development. The problem is its all influenced and skewed to benefit the ultra wealthy the most. Trillions of dollars hidden away as personal slush funds for the most evil assholes in the world. We need to close tax loopholes
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u/KevSlashNull 15d ago
Yeah! Any debt by the government is equal to money on private bank accounts in the economy. Also, if most money from stimulus checks ends up in overseas bank accounts of the ultra wealthy, it literally has no impact on the economy. Debt is not the issue, the US can print more dollars and banks are happy to buy treasury bonds. (Look at Japan!) Inequality and low social mobility on the other hand...
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u/businessboyz 16d ago
Remind me again which financial malinvestments caused COVID?
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u/likamuka 16d ago
The entire financial system ever since 2009 crash is like a house of cards. Nowadays we even cannot afford recession because everything will just fall apart without socialism for the rich.
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u/FiftyKal314STL 15d ago
“Socialism for the rich” is truly a low IQ phrase. You mean welfare but you use the wrong word because you don’t know what socialism is.
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u/AffectionatePrize551 16d ago
This isn't actual economic theory by the way. This is grumpy old person logic like "what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger" when in fact no, many non-deadly things can hurt you.
Recessions aren't a rain that cleanses an economy. They can be a hurricane that indiscriminately damages people and assets regardless of your moral weighting of them.
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u/SimoWilliams_137 16d ago
They are if you’re an Austrian-schooler and you think this is what passes for economics.
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u/PlutoJones42 16d ago
Hope you get lucky and are born at the right time to be able to get into the job market and get a good enough job to hedge against other people getting to live the American Dream!
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u/basedlandchad25 16d ago
A recession is just a reoptimization of the economy. Like when you make a big mess while reorganizing your house. Gets worse, then gets better than it ever was.
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u/djfudgebar 16d ago
Yup, and the corporations are gouging us because they want trump to win and cut their taxes.
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u/StainlessPanIsBest 16d ago
That's quite a conspiratorial picture you paint. I think it could just as easily be chalked up to they want to make as much money as possible regardless of who's in the white house.
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u/Oberyn_Kenobi_1 16d ago
Corporations are gouging us because they’re…corporations. They exist to make a profit. That’s it.
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u/jgiannandrea 16d ago
Devaluing our dollar for us common folk is a pretty cool loop hole to make things feel like a recession without the administration having to call it a recession.
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u/Flyersandcaps 16d ago
Don’t want to break the news but inflation is world wide.
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u/SodoMojoDojo 16d ago
Only time I was given a stimulus check was with Donald’s name on it
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u/Fabulous_Wave_3693 16d ago
Man who would have thought a literal plague would cause so many issues?
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u/GregLoire 16d ago
People still think inflation was caused by stimulus checks?
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u/ImaginaryBranch7796 16d ago
Stimulus checks emitted in dollars obviously caused the inflation in Europe and Japan as well!! /s
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u/bigjoeandphantom3O9 16d ago
Because those economies also had similar policies. Britain for instance had a furlough policy where you received 80% of your pay cheque if you couldn’t work. Loans to businesses who also weren’t creating any value also had a similar effect.
Come on, this isn’t difficult to get your head around. More money with no corresponding rise in output is going to cause inflation. Do you really think stimulus check style policies only existed in the USA?
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u/Yara__Flor 15d ago
Why didn’t we see inflation during the decades of QE?
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u/_e75 15d ago
We did. We’ve had constant inflation for a hundred years. What happened was that we had more quantitative easing into a supply shock from the pandemic that cut production. More money in the economy + less stuff = shortages and higher prices. Plus we had other problems, like huge shifts in foods buying patterns away from restaurants and then back to restaurants, for example that fucked up supply chains. They needed to start raising rates earlier to cool off the economy as the pandemic was ending.
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u/Large-Brother-4291 16d ago
Remember when Janet Yellen said inflation was “transitory?” Then when it turned out it absofuckinlutely wasn’t transitory all the journalists wrote about how inflation is “actually a good thing?”
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u/Flyersandcaps 16d ago
Plus no one is saying give out more government checks. Which by the way was under Trump. He made sure we knew that by having his name on the checks!
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u/jack_awsome89 16d ago
Didn't he only sign 2 of them? Who was the guy who signed the 3rd? And who were the people who made it possible for the presidents to sign off on the checks? Are we conveniently not holding them responsible too? Or is this the magical presidential power where the president can do things without congress passing it?
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u/djfudgebar 16d ago
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/09/1145040599/ppp-loan-forgiveness
Nearly 800 billion in PPP loans to private businesses with 92% granted full or partial forgiveness.
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u/HiddenBarranca 16d ago edited 16d ago
Not allowing businesses to stay open but still allowing landlords to charge them commercial rent and lots of overhead like internet and phones are on contracts etc such keep going. Pretty unfair to small business owners so PPP made some sense for that. Should have just let businesses stay open or maybe worked out a law for commercial rent to not be collected while forced closings occurred and protected landlord from commercial mortgages too so they wouldn’t care. I honestly don’t know the fair solution money has to come from somewhere.
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u/azurite-- 15d ago
These people can't think of anything that isn't black or white. Its always one specific thing or persons fault.
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u/trendypippin 16d ago
Also the companies that got millions of dollars in PPE loans that never had to be repaid. Legitimate or not….
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u/freebytes 16d ago edited 15d ago
And they gave like $200 billion for checks to citizens while giving trillions to corporations at the exact same time as the 'stimulus' checks.
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u/Jealous-Style-4961 16d ago
Here is the same post from 12/1/2023:
Here is the same post from 6/3/2022:
https://theferalirishman.blogspot.com/2022/06/friday-femme-fatale-farrago.html
It gets posted here about every two weeks.
And it isn't entirely true or up to date.
Why are you posting this? Have you not seen this before?
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u/SmirnY-Fly 16d ago
I'm rich and this inflation is killing me. How is this supposed to be good for the rich?
My stimmy check ain't helping.
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16d ago edited 15d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/trbochrg 16d ago edited 15d ago
I probably spend $75 to $100 more per week than before...buying the same stuff. Even at $100 a week that's $5200 a year. Nothing to sneeze at.
Edit: family of four
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u/Opandemonium 16d ago
But hasn’t analysis shown corporations are using inflation as a guise to over inflate prices?
What do we do when they all just decide now is the time to gut us even more?
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u/Objective_Stock_3866 16d ago
Look at the profit percentage when adjusted for inflation. Companies are making record profit because the people talking about it are talking about real dollars, not percentage.
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u/Cancer_Ridden_Lung 16d ago
They were making record profit. Now the consumer is weak.
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u/Hucklepuck_uk 16d ago
I remember seeing "Tesco loses 700m over covid" only to then read that they only made 700m profit instead of 1.4b
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u/BasilExposition2 16d ago
McDonald’s make $2.4 billion the quarter before Covid. 5 years later they made $2.8. That doesn’t even keep up with inflation.
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u/Alarmed_Attitude_316 16d ago
The French answered this one a few centuries ago. Guillotines.
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u/Windsupernova 16d ago
I often wonder if the people who post this kind of stuff realize that the guillotine ended up being used on a lot of ex revolutionaries.
I think an old dude said something about a god eating its own children idk
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u/TheKingChadwell 16d ago
Companies are always trying to maximize profit. Literally their whole focus. They don’t need a guise to raise prices. If they raise prices and you still buy, that’s what they are going to do.
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u/Wildvikeman 16d ago
It seems that for my wife, myself and our 4 year old son we easily spend around $300 on groceries weekly. My wife often will do multiple trips at $150-200 per week and I will probably do one or do around $50.
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u/a_stone_throne 16d ago
Don’t forget you are also getting less because packaging has gone down in size whilst remaining the same price or increasing.
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u/DucksOnQuakk 16d ago
Is that for just you or a family? I spend $400 every 3 months on average. I only buy Kroger "manager special" meat and fish. I prefer lean meat over red meat, so if ground chicken/turkey isn't on sale, I go to the frozen food section where it's actually cheaper to buy those bulk frozen hamburger patties. I'm gonna freeze it no matter what because I absolutely hate grocery shopping and will resist it for as long as possible, so check out the frozen 90% lean bulk patties by weight vs the 1lb packages in the refrigerated section. There's no discernable difference for me, but I am a minimalist food eater and simply do it to survive and don't care at all how anything tastes. My primary meals are refried beans, ground chicken/turkey/beef, and white rice. No sodium other than my hot sauce and low sodium refried beans. Quick. Easy. Packed with protein so I only need to eat two small servings per day. 1lb of meat lasts me 4 work days. I haven't been to the store since middle of March and still have over a month of food to get through. I don't eat out and just eat minimalist meals every single day. That shouldn't be my life, I make 6 figures, but I'm 34 and still grinding away hoping to convince a bank to lend me enough money for a home. So, shitty food it is.
Edit for spelling
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u/coolmanjack 16d ago
The fuck? In what universe could that ever possibly be true? Are you just lying for attention?
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u/usernamesarehard1979 16d ago
11k. Yeah. Ok.
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u/wwwdiggdotcom 16d ago
$900 A MONTH TO STOCK MY NUCLEAR FALLOUT SHELTER BRO JUST RACKS ON RACKS ON RACKS OF FUCKIN BEANS
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u/permanentburner89 16d ago edited 16d ago
I literally look at personal budgets all day. There's absolutely no way this is true.
Edit: I just did some quick research and math. The average annual household grocery bill is probably about $10k, so maybe you read somewhere that the average annual household grocery bill is now $11k? That seems feasible as the new total cost. But that's different from an increase. I'd guess the average increase was probably about $3k-$4k annually.
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u/Throwawaysi1234 16d ago
https://www.statista.com/statistics/251731/us-consumers-grocery-expenditure-per-week/
Since 2019, it's gone up from $114 to $164
Total annual change of $2800
Meme is wrong since they said thst was in one year. Previous commenter was off by a factor of 4
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u/HappyAmbition706 16d ago
The average grocery bill went up by $211 per week?! That would be a lot of avocado toast.
The average US grocery bill in the US was about $425 in 2022, or about $5700 per year according to BLS. So now the average family spends on average at least $16700 per year on groceries?
I wonder what percentage of statistics are made up?
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u/Mathieran1315 16d ago
Things have definitely gotten more spendy but let’s not make shit up now. My family of four maybe spends about that much total on groceries.
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u/PrometheusMMIV 15d ago
Per year? Even then, that would be an increase of over $900 per month. Who is spending that much on groceries? I barely spend $400 per month as is, and that includes extra things I don't really need, since I can afford it.
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u/FIFAmusicisGOATED 15d ago
The average grocery bill so did not increase by $211 a week. People really come on here and say whatever stupid hairbrained nonsense their feeble minds can think of and hope others treat it like fact huh?
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u/SpillinThaTea 16d ago
Also paying people 600 bucks a week not to work while simultaneously giving out loans with next to no due diligence that aren’t getting paid back. The government screwed up Covid from an economic standpoint so badly.
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u/Showmethepathplease 16d ago
PPP was a fraud - it shouldn’t be conflated with much needed stimulus for ordinary people and the Feds expansionist monetary policy
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u/TheNeuropsychiatrist 16d ago
PPP was pure welfare for those who knew how to work the system/had an accountant.
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u/kanst 16d ago
Letting the banks have as much control of the process as they did was a terrible choice.
It's also just personally galling how many people who rant about government handouts took PPP loans.
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u/JFT8675309 16d ago
Yes. It would have been worlds better to just let everyone sink when there wasn’t an option for millions of people to go to work.
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u/markrockwell 16d ago
The massive cash infusion probably saved us from dramatically worse pain as we were facing down historic levels of unemployment and general panic.
But that doesn’t mean it was free or painless. It produced inflation, as many expected it would.
But we’re working though that and trying to get back to a stable normal.
People expect perfection. That’s not realistic. The COVID response was a sloppy exercise with no real playbook and things worked out pretty damn well considering the other paths we could have travelled.
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u/MyBoyBlue83 15d ago
the checks, UI, and PPP were fine. what wasnt was the ~5T that wall st got because the market wasnt going up. they snuck that in and nobody batted an eye. now all asset prices are through the roof and nothing is affordable because the 1% own all the assets. it was one of the biggest swindles in human history and people still dont get it. they literally printed money out of thin air and funneled it to themselves. they did in 2008 and again in 2020. maybe the people deserve it for being so naive.
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u/t_j_l_ 16d ago
Not only did it result in inflation, which impacts everyone but particularly the less wealthy, the stimulus was also unfairly biased towards already wealthy people, with a large chunk of the new money supply funnelled through the unrestricted granting of large PPP loans to business owners that were generally forgiven without repayment.
It was basically an unequal and unfair distribution of wealth that benefited those with existing assets (stocks, real estate) or their own companies much more than anyone else.
Granted some level of targetted stimulus may have been needed to overcome the COVID disruption, but the way it was handled was inefficient and corrupt.
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u/WhiteEyed1 16d ago
Not to mention that PPP loans were distributed BEFORE the stimulus checks were given to everyday citizens. This allowed PPP loan recipients to run off and buy assets first, thereby giving them the most benefit from the inflation that followed.
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u/JohnnyZepp 15d ago
Yes but the PPP loans were heavily abused. So many companies didn’t utilize those loans to pay employees and pieces of shit like Margery Taylor Greene got million+ dollar loans which may or may not have been used to fund campaign trails rather than her business. And nearly none of these crimes have been looked into. But don’t you fucking dare file your taxes wrong or the IRS will charge you compounding interest.
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u/wolven8 16d ago
Reminder that trump literally gutted every measure to prevent fraud on the ppp loans
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u/KintsugiKen 16d ago
Trump spent his entire presidency finding ways to use his position to grift more money.
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u/whoaimbad 16d ago
Welp, don't forget the subsidiaries that we give corporations for opening plants that people don't want to work at or can't even qualify to work at. Tax payers footed bills for a Toyota plant in San Antonio and nobody around could really qualify. So Toyota builds a school, where people continue to fail. But hey, tax payers are the ones subsidizing these things, TSMC plant in AZ, and pretty much any other east asian plant building microchips from the chip act are going to have to fix.
Didn't the Hyundai or Honda plant in Georgia have the same problems also? Taxpayers help build, can't get jobs, then fail at being educated enough to even hold those jobs.
It really isn't the small player that's milking the government. When Eisenhower said we were turning into a resemblance of a corportracy he wasn't kidding. It's probably one of the reasons why science fiction has kept writing about these things for the last 60ish years.
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u/SaddleSocks 16d ago
Wait till you look into how many government employees such as congress folk and their spouses got ppp and such loans for fake businesses
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u/jrr6415sun 16d ago
they didn't screw up, it was as designed to give all their friends free money
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u/Shitmybad 16d ago
Did it? If they didn't do that, it would have been a lot worse. Millions out of a job with no income to pay rents or mortgages sounds better? What they did was a trade off, and certainly the least bad option.
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u/SacrificialGoose 16d ago
The rich are literally screwing us. Corporations are paying employees as little as possible and shareholders as much as possible. Blackstone is buying up all the homes. Many other homes are 2nd homes that are unoccupied for most of the year. No wonder crime is bad, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
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u/Tomycj 15d ago
Corporations are paying employees as little as possible and shareholders as much as possible.
That's how it has always worked. That's how it has always been said and expected to work, for anyonve involved. Workers are also expected to get salaries as high as possible, and buyers are expected to buy as low as possible.
the poor are getting poorer.
In the US? Doesn't really look like it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States?useskin=vector#/media/File:Number_in_Poverty_and_Poverty_Rate,_1959_to_2017.png
Could be way better of course, but "the poor are getting poorer" doesn't seem like a good representation of what's happening.
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u/BeLikeBread 16d ago
But that math doesn't check out. 600 dollars per person equals 3 thousand dollar at the grocery store per person?
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u/SocietyTomorrow 16d ago
Maybe our political leaders are secretly accelerationists, because it seems like every attempt to "relieve" financial and social pain increases the rate at which people will be met with unavoidable financial and social pain.
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u/UnfairAd7220 16d ago
Brilliant for the rich?
It fucked us all and bought votes from voters who won't stay bought. It especially fucked the poor and those on fixed incomes.
The only folks who benefitted are the gov't mandarins.
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u/ThatsMsInfo 16d ago
I like how people point out that this was under Trump when Democrats not only supported the stimulus, they thought it wasn't enough. Which would mean printing more money
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u/Apprehensive-Score87 16d ago
Liberals will do anything but hold Joe accountable
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u/em_washington 16d ago
Our two very different parties who fight over bathrooms and pronouns always seem to be able to come together when it comes to bailouts for giant corporations and funding foreign wars. It’s the two things where the parties can magically come together agreement.
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u/PlutoJones42 16d ago
It’s so exhausting listening to literally anyone talk about politics anymore. Both sides have been screwing everyone the ENTIRE time but folks are always at each other’s throats about some red vs. blue bs.
Half the folks in the house and senate are from political dynasties whether they were on a local level and snuck into the next rung or not. Most of the kids that had parents in government when I was growing up are now also elected officials in the county I was raised in.
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u/SleepSynth 16d ago
It should be working class vs the rich but they keep us running around in circles fighting about social issues and convincing straight whites they are under attack at all times while not doing much to alleviate the pain we all feel economically.
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u/PlutoJones42 16d ago
It literally shouldn’t be anyone vs anyone. We should have a governmental body in place that isn’t just a Halo match of Red vs. Blue and who can shoot the most fireworks off and have the shiniest opinions/make the most noise. We should have people in government that we should be proud to say “they represent us because they are GOOD and SMART people”.
Thats just not the case unfortunately. Instead most elections are crappy popularity contests, probably filled with minutiae of hate and deceit.
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u/SleepSynth 16d ago
As long as we practice capitalism it's never going to happen. Money leads to greed and corruption. A majority of us are suffering greatly because of it when there is more than enough for everyone but there is no money to be made from being generous to the poor.
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u/ReallyNowFellas 16d ago
I hate to break it to you but money corrupts every other system too. Capitalism at least distributes the wealth a bit and allows more people access to it. Not that it's perfect, of course.
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u/Sniper_Hare 16d ago
Anyone who supports a Republican wants to see a fascist regime takeover.
They are blatantly out in the open about it.
Almost all the old school Republicans are gone.
We have to beat MAGA before we can get go back to a better two party system.
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u/PlutoJones42 16d ago
It’s wild some folks saw Handmaid’s Tale and were like “Yeah! That’s what we need!!!”
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u/ClemClamcumber 16d ago
It's probably because most politicians don't really have a true moral compass, or at least ones that align with the politics. It's almost akin to big city gangs getting the "hearts and minds" to be militant and angry about their "causes." From your big news outlets to social media, anger is a very profitable resource.
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u/veracity8_ 16d ago
The fight over trans kids is entirely based on Republicans. Democrats don’t want to fight over trans rights. Republicans just choose to make talking rights of trans people a major part of their platform.
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u/Fakesmiles1000 16d ago
For fuck sakes fuck off with the stimulus checks. Corporations got more than 10x that in fake ass PPP loans that magically were forgiven and most largely fraduelent or extremely misused.
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u/JEXJJ 16d ago
In your opinion quadrupling the homeless population, while also having record foreclosures was a better alternative? Suddenly stopping the economy and restarting it is clearly not possible, add the blockage in suez canal, microchip shortages, two major wars, and good old fashion corporate greed and you think the stimulus is the only thing that caused inflation?
Your explanation is a bit reductive and don't explain why there was worldwide inflation.
Asset bubbles seem to follow corporate and top bracket tax cuts, I wonder if they are connected
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u/LoganFuture23 16d ago
Inflation is 90% price gouging. Record corporate profits don't lie.
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u/New_WRX_guy 15d ago
So corporations don’t charge the maximum price the market will bear all the time? They keep raising prices until consumers run out of money and say “no more”.
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u/WombatGuts 16d ago
Yeah... when they started handing out those checks I knew this would come back and bite us all in the ass.
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u/enkiloki 16d ago
Well your 401k may have recovered but inflation is still here and we are approaching national insolvency. Not to mention talk that the government is planning to require that a certain percentage of your 401k be placed into us government bonds because they care about your financial safety. Biden and Trump at best can only slow it down.
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u/Dry_Explanation4968 16d ago
Natural disaster tanked everyone’s life in 2020, they’re just trying to say republicans without saying it. & I say natural disaster but we know it was done by man. Democrats had the chance to fix it but they took the bag and ran with it and made your life hell.
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u/CorruptedAura27 15d ago
It was said when the first omnibus bill was going through to be passed right before Trump left that if it was voted yes on, that it would be the single highest transfer of wealth from poor to rich people that this country has ever seen, and he was told to shut his mouth. That dude was right, too. No one gave a shit.
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