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Yikes, what happened to impartial (or at least the apperance of it) reporting? This thing reads like a straight up hit piece on Trump. It's impossible to take s

Yikes, what happened to impartial (or at least the apperance of it) reporting? This thing reads like a straight up hit piece on Trump. It's impossible to take something like this seriously when it's so obviously slanted. Sad to see it on the front page of HN.

Bucephalus355 8y ago
This article mentions the Koch Brothers, as if they are allied with Donald Trump. They are not. Donald Trump actually hates the Koch brothers (or at least his base does), and there is deep hatred for them on the comments section of Breitbart. Steve Bannon ha basically accused the Koch’s of treason. One way of viewing Trump’s actions might be in terms of “crisis theory”, or the idea in the 70’s to destroy the welfare system by overpopulating its sign-ups, thus forcing the creation of something new. He pouring gasoline on the economy to ignite and bring about its ruin. If you’re poor right now, you can probably live in some very creative ways. The wealthy are not very good at dealing with large declines in income, as evidenced by the German billionaire who killed him self in 2009 after his net worth dropped from $8 billion to $5 billion: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-merckle-newsmaker-sb-idUSTRE5055O820090106 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-merckle-newsmaker-sb-idUS... The opposite goal of this is the elites of the world who want to run a steady, slow-mo bubble ala Japan of the last 25 years. It definitely would be stable and work, but it would preserve the status quo and not really offer anything new to the working class.
- Apocryphon 8y ago
  Sounds like accelerationism, which is a Marxist theory of destroying capitalism by helping it reach excesses that cause a systemic collapse. Perhaps the far right and the far left and not so different in matters of eschatology.
  - JackCh 8y ago
    Accelerationism could be advocated by anybody who wants radical change that the majority of the public are not on board with, under the belief that the present course will bring more people to agree with them. If it makes sense to the Marxists, it probably makes sense to the far right as well. Of course if they miscalculate, they just end up working against their own interests.
AFNobody 8y ago
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/u-s-inflation-at-six-year-high-eating-away-at-wage-increases https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/u-s-infla... > A separate Labor Department report on Tuesday illustrated how higher prices are pinching wallets: average hourly wages, adjusted for inflation, were unchanged in May from a year earlier, even as nominal pay accelerated to a 2.7 percent annual gain from 2.6 percent in April. For production and nonsupervisory workers, real average hourly earnings fell 0.1 percent from a year earlier. The article I linked is an impartial example but it is not better. The simple truth is the underlying numbers haven't really improved since the GOP took the reigns. We are in a sideways holding pattern of 0% real wage growth and 2% of the working-age population has stopped looking for work since 2000[1]. The effects of the outgoing administration's economic policy last ~1 year after they leave office since the government doesn't really turn on a dime. The trends, honestly, are the same as they were under Obama and the GOP has done nothing but claim "Well we did it! Everything is fine now" despite the fact nothing of any real substance has changed since they took control of all 3 branches of government. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060
thesausageking 8y ago
What about it do you think is slanted? It's data-driven and presents both good ("The overall unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been in decades; the African-American unemployment rate is the lowest in recorded history") and bad ("Americans are deeply indebted, many are stuck with part-time jobs, and wage gains have been so disappointing, their weakness has challenged fundamental premises of mainstream economics") about the economy and Trump's contribution to it.
- Bucephalus355 8y ago
  I don’t think it’s slanted as much as it’s just a shallow analysis. Obviously there are the surface indicators of truth (a statistic here, a fact there, a nice quote from somebody), but big picture, the issue is not “is this Trump guy a good tinkerer economist/engineer of the US stock market”, but how the bipartisan monopoly of power in Washington has stabbed the working class in the back at every turn. The big clue that the author would never understand this was his conflating of Koch and Trump. That would be like saying Shite and Sunni Muslims are the same. It’s an incredible cultural oversight. A good example of btw of this “stab you in the back” elite is Madeline Albright, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State. For all her work promoting freedom and women’s rights, the network marketing scam company Herbalife paid her $6 million to promote increased legalization of its products. It’s a scam company that preys on the poor. http://mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.com/2018/04/herbalife-useful-idiot-madeleine.html?m=1 http://mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.com/2018/04...
  - aerotwelve 8y ago
    I don't want to get into a political grudge match here, but I wouldn't say that Trump and Koch are polar opposites by any means. Trump's tax bill was a Cato (Koch funded) Institute special. If it turned out David Koch himself wrote it, I wouldn't be surprised. The ALEC club may not like Trump's views on immigration or tariffs, but they're in perfect sync when it comes to more or less every other economic issue. And the administration's energy policy is another massive win for them as well.
RickJWagner 8y ago
Truth on such matters gets you downvotes!
- delbel 8y ago
  I get upset when my comments aren't downvoted here because of that
delbel 8y ago
You have to put your self in these peoples shoes -- for the past 10 years, under Obama, they have been lying through their teeth about an economic recovery that never happened. Now that it is actually happening, they don't know what to do. Also some of these people, including all of millenniums, have never even experience working during a time where america has economically prospered. This is totally new to them, on top of that, they have no skills to offer so it places them at a disadvantage. They spent the beginning of their career underemployeed or not employeed at all. Have you tried hiring a millennium? they have no work ethics. The ones that do are worth high wages because of the shortages. Now the economy is turning around, employers are hiring them anyway because they have no choice.
- sctb 8y ago
  Could you please not post unsubstantively like this? We can't learn anything from it and that's what we're here for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - delbel 8y ago
    So whatever happened to the people here who doxed me, and threaten to burn down my house with a forest fire, and was up voted to the top? You guys did nothing when I complained. Somebody did start a forest fire near my house we were at level 2 evacuation for months.
    - sctb 8y ago
      I'm sorry but I don't know anything about that. The best way to reach us is hn@ycombinator.com. We don't see everything on the site.

Bucephalus355 8y ago

This article mentions the Koch Brothers, as if they are allied with Donald Trump. They are not. Donald Trump actually hates the Koch brothers (or at least his base does), and there is deep hatred for them on the comments section of Breitbart. Steve Bannon ha basically accused the Koch’s of treason. One way of viewing Trump’s actions might be in terms of “crisis theory”, or the idea in the 70’s to destroy the welfare system by overpopulating its sign-ups, thus forcing the creation of something new. He pouring gasoline on the economy to ignite and bring about its ruin. If you’re poor right now, you can probably live in some very creative ways. The wealthy are not very good at dealing with large declines in income, as evidenced by the German billionaire who killed him self in 2009 after his net worth dropped from $8 billion to $5 billion: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-merckle-newsmaker-sb-idUSTRE5055O820090106 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-merckle-newsmaker-sb-idUS... The opposite goal of this is the elites of the world who want to run a steady, slow-mo bubble ala Japan of the last 25 years. It definitely would be stable and work, but it would preserve the status quo and not really offer anything new to the working class.

Apocryphon 8y ago
Sounds like accelerationism, which is a Marxist theory of destroying capitalism by helping it reach excesses that cause a systemic collapse. Perhaps the far right and the far left and not so different in matters of eschatology.
- JackCh 8y ago
  Accelerationism could be advocated by anybody who wants radical change that the majority of the public are not on board with, under the belief that the present course will bring more people to agree with them. If it makes sense to the Marxists, it probably makes sense to the far right as well. Of course if they miscalculate, they just end up working against their own interests.

AFNobody 8y ago

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/u-s-inflation-at-six-year-high-eating-away-at-wage-increases https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/u-s-infla... > A separate Labor Department report on Tuesday illustrated how higher prices are pinching wallets: average hourly wages, adjusted for inflation, were unchanged in May from a year earlier, even as nominal pay accelerated to a 2.7 percent annual gain from 2.6 percent in April. For production and nonsupervisory workers, real average hourly earnings fell 0.1 percent from a year earlier. The article I linked is an impartial example but it is not better. The simple truth is the underlying numbers haven't really improved since the GOP took the reigns. We are in a sideways holding pattern of 0% real wage growth and 2% of the working-age population has stopped looking for work since 2000[1]. The effects of the outgoing administration's economic policy last ~1 year after they leave office since the government doesn't really turn on a dime. The trends, honestly, are the same as they were under Obama and the GOP has done nothing but claim "Well we did it! Everything is fine now" despite the fact nothing of any real substance has changed since they took control of all 3 branches of government. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060

thesausageking 8y ago

What about it do you think is slanted? It's data-driven and presents both good ("The overall unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been in decades; the African-American unemployment rate is the lowest in recorded history") and bad ("Americans are deeply indebted, many are stuck with part-time jobs, and wage gains have been so disappointing, their weakness has challenged fundamental premises of mainstream economics") about the economy and Trump's contribution to it.

Bucephalus355 8y ago
I don’t think it’s slanted as much as it’s just a shallow analysis. Obviously there are the surface indicators of truth (a statistic here, a fact there, a nice quote from somebody), but big picture, the issue is not “is this Trump guy a good tinkerer economist/engineer of the US stock market”, but how the bipartisan monopoly of power in Washington has stabbed the working class in the back at every turn. The big clue that the author would never understand this was his conflating of Koch and Trump. That would be like saying Shite and Sunni Muslims are the same. It’s an incredible cultural oversight. A good example of btw of this “stab you in the back” elite is Madeline Albright, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State. For all her work promoting freedom and women’s rights, the network marketing scam company Herbalife paid her $6 million to promote increased legalization of its products. It’s a scam company that preys on the poor. http://mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.com/2018/04/herbalife-useful-idiot-madeleine.html?m=1 http://mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.com/2018/04...
- aerotwelve 8y ago
  I don't want to get into a political grudge match here, but I wouldn't say that Trump and Koch are polar opposites by any means. Trump's tax bill was a Cato (Koch funded) Institute special. If it turned out David Koch himself wrote it, I wouldn't be surprised. The ALEC club may not like Trump's views on immigration or tariffs, but they're in perfect sync when it comes to more or less every other economic issue. And the administration's energy policy is another massive win for them as well.

RickJWagner 8y ago

Truth on such matters gets you downvotes!

delbel 8y ago
I get upset when my comments aren't downvoted here because of that

delbel 8y ago

You have to put your self in these peoples shoes -- for the past 10 years, under Obama, they have been lying through their teeth about an economic recovery that never happened. Now that it is actually happening, they don't know what to do. Also some of these people, including all of millenniums, have never even experience working during a time where america has economically prospered. This is totally new to them, on top of that, they have no skills to offer so it places them at a disadvantage. They spent the beginning of their career underemployeed or not employeed at all. Have you tried hiring a millennium? they have no work ethics. The ones that do are worth high wages because of the shortages. Now the economy is turning around, employers are hiring them anyway because they have no choice.

sctb 8y ago
Could you please not post unsubstantively like this? We can't learn anything from it and that's what we're here for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- delbel 8y ago
  So whatever happened to the people here who doxed me, and threaten to burn down my house with a forest fire, and was up voted to the top? You guys did nothing when I complained. Somebody did start a forest fire near my house we were at level 2 evacuation for months.
  - sctb 8y ago
    I'm sorry but I don't know anything about that. The best way to reach us is hn@ycombinator.com. We don't see everything on the site.