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Ronbergs t1_j22hbdc wrote

How can companies not see that the GOP is inevitably going to destroy them? The economy is looking terrible for everyone, not just for average americans...

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gizamo t1_j22niub wrote

Tbf, there are many industries that have more to fear from Democrats, and rightly so. For example, Oil and coal companies, tobacco companies, medical insurance companies, hedge funds, etc.

Basically, any company that's built on harming average citizens should probably prefer the GOP for the next couple decades.

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Ronbergs t1_j22pbyu wrote

Very true. Although its not quite so black and white on the side of dems. There are still too many Dems who support all those things. It is mostly repugnants that support that nonsense though.

I feel like if all these other companies stop supporting GOP then the GOP wont stand a chance. Im shocked that this hasnt happened tbh, with the stakes being what they are.

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gizamo t1_j22qmol wrote

Indeed. I agree on all of that, except I'm never shocked when corporations choose short-term interests over long-term interests. For many, if they can cling to their greed for just a bit longer, they consider that a win.

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orbital-technician t1_j22s3ka wrote

Oil is required for most plastics and met coal is required for iron smelting, so I doubt either is going anywhere in our lifetimes. Sure, energy sources will be diversified, but we can't abandon either industry today or the foreseeable future.

Tobacco might go away. Medical insurance should go away. Hedge funds will exist, as they are simply active investment groups that "hedge" risk. Leveraged and derivative investments might be more highly regulated and less common.

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gizamo t1_j22t2a8 wrote

I agree with all of that. My point wasn't that any are going away, only that their lives would be much harder if Dems got their way more often...oh, except medical insurance; I agree with you on that as well. I was suggesting they could disappear.

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Dptrouble t1_j233o8w wrote

Almost like profiting off of hurting people shouldn’t place you in a protected class.

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Wotg33k t1_j233wn0 wrote

Almost like profiting off hurting people is fucking wrong and the opposite of what we founded the nation for.

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tickleMyBigPoop t1_j24haai wrote

> Oil and coal companies

Right now the average price of petrol in germany is 6.802 USD a gallon. In the USA the average price is 3.159 USD per gallon. In a oil heavy state like texas it's 2.751 USD per gallon. US gas prices being as low as they are is purely due to domestic production in the americas and massive refinery capacity.

Tell me which price point harms poor people more. But with your logic lets just ban all oil and gas companies from operating in the US surely we'll be better off.

>hedge funds

i can see you have no idea what hedge funds actually do, hint it's in the name. Hedge funds don't hurt people, they simply hedge against risk. If you're one of the few workers with a pension and the market waters are bearish you better hope your accounts are managed by a hedge fund.

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gizamo t1_j251p86 wrote

Tell me you entirely missed my point with illogical bad-faith arguments.

> i can see you have no idea what hedge funds actually do.

I can see you have no idea how to view a person's history. I've been actively trading since the '90s, and I've been contracted as a programmer by multiple hedge funds.

> But with your logic lets just ban all oil and gas companies from operating in the US surely we'll be better off.

Jfc. Was that warm up mental gymnastics for you, or is the peak of your absurdity? Smh.

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mtsai t1_j22sue0 wrote

how does one read this headline and go straight into politics. take head out of ass.

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Ronbergs t1_j22wpd3 wrote

Its almost like the two are deeply connected 🥴

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opticd t1_j23058j wrote

Honestly, the US is really unique in that the government seems dead set on destroying its tech industry. The media has a ton of reason for targeting US tech (disrupted their ads model) and the general public has basically eaten it up wholesale. Every other country is desperate for (e.g. any EU country) or protective of (e.g. China) tech companies and the US seems dead set on shitting all over theirs (on both sides of the aisle).

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Ronbergs t1_j233k3n wrote

The EU has actually been putting more restrictions than most from what ive seen. China has immensely strict restrictions on its tech industry, just ask Jack Ma. And up till Facebook incurred the wrath of Dems by using its power to propagandize voters, tech companies have had free reign in the US. Still do in most ways.

I dont see the US trying to destroy the tech industry at all. Tech companies can do almost anything they want. The only one thats got much of the governments wrath is FB and now maybe Tik Tok (same reason as FB).

My point was more that the GOP is actively harming the economy at every turn, which has been terrible for everyones finances.

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opticd t1_j234agd wrote

The EU is putting up a ton but it’s primarily intended to target US tech companies and the EU has come out before saying that they’re doing it to “level the playing field” and to help “the next Google to be founded in Europe.” It’s basically thinly veiled protectionism.

The US isn’t as aggressive, though the current FTC is pretty hawkish to domestic tech companies. Congress is primarily in a jawbone posture at the moment but that’s still a sharp contrast to other countries that heavily protect (and in some cases take active measures like stealing tech) for domestic tech companies.

I do think the GOP is maybe slightly more aggro toward tech. I think it’s primarily intended because they want ownership on online platforms that’ll allow them to control speech. You see a ton of grandstanding from the left intended to target tech companies too (just look at what Warren, Klobuchar, and others have said/done in the space). It’s kind of like comparing “Wants to obliterate and control” to “Actively dislikes/despises”. Not sure either party is really favorable toward tech IMO.

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dungone t1_j235eb4 wrote

EU policies are there to protect smaller EU startups against US tech giants. The EU is much better than the US when it comes to grants and tax breaks to small tech startups. But it lacks the private VC funds that had fueled the Silicon Valley tech giants but also turned American Tech into a laughing stock in the past few years.

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Ronbergs t1_j239td8 wrote

Everything you said is absolutely right. Im not trying to slight the EU, they have an objectively better system than the US with this stuff... and almost everything else.

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tickleMyBigPoop t1_j24ip5o wrote

> but also turned American Tech into a laughing stock in the past few years.

US tech still dominates even in the startup area. EU tech is still a joke.

If the US really wanted to shatter european chances of competing it would simply grant visas on demand to any european citizen with a tech degree/background.

I have many european coworkers working really hard on coming over here because they'd instantly get a 3x salary increase and a 50% reduction in taxes and that's not even talkign about equity comp.

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dungone t1_j24ka8d wrote

It's a laughing stock because it enables fraudsters to separate idiot investors from their money, not because you have a friend who came to the US for a job. The VC industry is full of bloviating billionaires who lose their money on things like Theranos, WeWorks, Uber, Twitter, Tesla, Juicero, and every conceivable cropto ponzi scheme, and then try to take their bad decisions out on the rest of us by calling for mass layoffs of tech workers. They are a laughing stock.

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tickleMyBigPoop t1_j24me8r wrote

Is that why it still attracts more international investment capital than the European tech market?

For all the companies that flopped or pulled an FTX/theranos there’s even more the succeeded in generating returns. Europeans won’t ever have a comparable tech sector because they lack the risk tolerance.

Just the entrepreneurial cultures are totally different where in the US if you fail then you do it again and everyone is totally cool with that. Including investors. I think Sweden is the country that’s comparable when it comes to startup risk tolerance, at least that’s from what i saw doing projects across Europe.

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dungone t1_j24siya wrote

I believe a large chunk of the foreign investment comes from the Saudi royals who are famous for squandering their nation's wealth on hairbrained projects.

The number of startups in the USA is actually at an all time low. And in case you haven't noticed, the valuations of American tech companies are experiencing a massive correction.

"Risk tolerance" is just another way of saying that you're vulnerable to grifters. And indeed, that's what American tech has become synonymous for this year. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/29/tech-grifter-sbf-elizabeth-holmes-therano-ftx

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tickleMyBigPoop t1_j24toqe wrote

Just use any excuse you have to ignore the fact the european tech sector basically doesn't exist when compared to the US tech sector outside of one company that makes photolithography machines, and that no one in the world cares to invest in it relative to the US tech sector.

as you post on reddit, which is hosted on AWS, which runs on servers with Intel or AMD cpus

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dungone t1_j24uycv wrote

90% of the world's advanced microchips are made with European technology. And ARM architectures are European. It's an existential crisis for AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, Nvidia, etc., who are fighting to try to buy it. At this point American computer hardware is very much dependent on foreign technology and is using government protectionist policies and subsidies to stay afloat. Meanwhile, the EU is very much investing in chip design and foundries and they will not be beholden to any foreign countries.

American tech industry is famous for consumer-focused get-rich-quick schemes. This is a very big problem for Silicon Valley - it is always looking for the next consumer trend, like the fashion industry. The EU has long been making longer term bets on technology for their existing industrial and commercial base. For example, Italy has almost as much industrial robots as the USA, while Germany and Sweden have far more. And there are plenty of EU startups focusing on that space. As another example, there are plenty of agri-tech startups in the EU that receive lots of funding. As another example, while American banks are still running on code written in the 1960's, countries like Spain and Germany are leading the way in developing high quality modern banking software. Even the governments of the EU are investing in gov-tech which includes everything from electronic voting to collaborative law editors for legislative bodies. EU is solving a lot of "boring" stuff that the USA can't touch, such as having a single app that lets you plan your trips and pay for any train, bus, taxi, bike, scooter, rickshaw, and any other form of transportation across all of Europe.

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dungone t1_j234g30 wrote

Economy is seeing strong job growth, wage growth, and record profits, while inflation is slowly getting under control.

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Ronbergs t1_j239als wrote

The economy is starting to improve, but its still much worse than it was not long ago. Wages are NOT growing and the cost of living has gone through the roof. Americans have no spending money. Many companies are seeing record profits, but many others are seeing record lows.

The tech industry is having a bit of a stumble. Amazon, Meta, and Twitter have had big layoffs for various reasons. In googles case, i dont think job cuts are certain yet, but theyve been trying to cut costs like crazy lately. Im not an expert so i cant say why for sure, but the economy is not doing great.

You can trace our current economic issues to GOP handling of the pandemic, and more importantly, the constant harm they cause it through bad policies.

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dungone t1_j23b0f6 wrote

You've got to look at the facts. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/business/economy/jobs-report-november.html

Wages are 5% higher than this time a year ago. GDP growth last quarter was 2.9%, which is healthy.

The tech layoffs are FUD. There were 260,000 unfilled tech jobs this year even after 90 thousand layoffs. The national average unemployment rate is 3.7% but for software engineers it's been 2.3%. And that doesn't even begin to describe the growing skills gap, with the most highly skilled engineers being in more demand than ever.

Your concerns about high prices come down to two basic things: energy and housing. Both of them are best addressed by dealing with the supply side. No amount of wage growth will ever make housing affordable - only more houses can do that. For energy it's the same - we have chronically under-invested in renewable energy and are now paying the price.

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Ronbergs t1_j23dlx4 wrote

The economy is getting better, but youre only looking at a few parts of the whole picture. Inflation is huge right now and even that is eclipsed by the greed of the wealthy, which has massively increased the cost of living. The gas price spike and cost of meds like insulin are a good example of the greed.

And that wage increase doesnt mean much. Its just an average. Many peoples wage increases yearly to accout for inflation, but thats lagging behind inflation quite a bit. Min wage workers didnt see much wage increase at all. The wealthy certainly raised the average for themselves tho.

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tickleMyBigPoop t1_j24ighl wrote

> greed of the wealthy, which has massively increased the cost of living.

lol wut

Bro housing costs are because susan doesn't want the new builds to block her view. Rich people don't lobby cities to implement harsher zoning laws, that shit happened in the 1970s because white people are scared of black people living near them.

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tickleMyBigPoop t1_j24i6yc wrote

> Wages are NOT growing

over the past few decades total compensation has been going up.

>Americans have no spending money.

lol what, compared to who? Americans moreso than anyone else on earth have the most spending money. Maybe the swiss have more.

>Amazon, Meta

Their layoffs have been fat trimming of non essentials. unemployment for software engineers is 2.3%

We want companies to run as lean and as efficient as possible...that's a good thing.

>You can trace our current economic issues to GOP handling of the pandemic

Not really actually. Controlling for age deaths from covid are pretty equal, with some lockdowns states doing worse that states that didn't lock down. Dems controlling the white house would have been in the same shit position.....being the president lacks the power to enforce a national lockdown.

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JWM1115 t1_j25vqg3 wrote

How the fuck can you say it’s the GOP pandemic policy? If my memory lasts a couple years then the GOP was against all the lockdowns, quarentines, and extreme bs involved with the pandemic. If they had control at the time the economy would not be much different than it was pre-pandemic.

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Ronbergs t1_j25zo85 wrote

Yea thats the problem... theyre against lockdowns and vaccines and masks??? and they deny the existence of covid, claiming its a left wing hoax. That made covid spread out of control, obviously, just like they knew it would. They just wanted a political tool and now covid will probably never go away. If they were in control we'd just have more needless covid deaths. Their president wanted us to inject bleach. FUCKING BLEACH.

I had to quit my job because people in my area keep going crazy when i wear a mask. Theyre almost ready to swing on people if they see them wear a mask.

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JWM1115 t1_j260471 wrote

Nice story about your personal life. But it was pandemic policies that fucked the economy. We are talking about the economy here.

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Ronbergs t1_j261w3o wrote

Workers are not part of the economy. Got it. Impressive insight.

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JWM1115 t1_j26qf8e wrote

They contribute but are not decision makers. That comes from the C suite. But there was not much they could do with governors who would rather kiss government ass and declare lockdowns or whatever.

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JWM1115 t1_j25uxm5 wrote

As long as wages are rising inflation isn’t going anywhere. Higher wages are what’s driving inflation not the CPI.

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dungone t1_j25wyli wrote

That's just not true for a ton of different reasons. First of all, labor costs themselves are only responsible for a small fraction of prices, meaning that production costs will never go up as fast as wages. Second of all, increasing wages results in lower debt and higher savings rates, not just higher spending levels. So once again, higher wages will never cause inflation that is higher than the wages themselves. I can’t emphasize this enough. Whatever “inflation” that is created by higher wages is absolutely 100% worth it.

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thebochman t1_j23xvx1 wrote

You mean you don’t love the “once in a lifetime” recessions every few years that grind the economy to a halt due to no regulations?

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