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Financial anxiety: Media - the primary instigator It's one thing to feel financially tight. It's another thing to have endless news articles and publications

Financial anxiety: Media - the primary instigator It's one thing to feel financially tight. It's another thing to have endless news articles and publications and posts warning of how bad the global economy is and how inflation is running out of control. Not only does this constant negative message directly cause stress on the viewers, but it can cause fear in business which can lead to "precautionary" retractions... which can exacerbate the actual market problems. Decision-makers in companies will make harsh short term decisions either to look responsible to shareholders or to cover their asses from upper management, and these decisions can have negative long term consequences to the company, employees (especially those laid off), and the market in general. How often do we see news of mass layoffs, and a month or two later we see a big hiring round from the same companies? This is grossly inefficient for the companies, and it's obviously very harmful to those let go. If the media didn't jump on every potential disaster with such fervor, we would all be better off. But promoting fear gets attention, and attention is potential revenue... or votes.

gjsman-1000 3y ago
Don't shoot the messenger. If anything, inflation and shrinkflation's effects on the average American are, in my opinion, understated; and Thomas Jefferson (if you've ever read his comments about inflation) would've been calling for hangings. Also, worth remembering, the median American income is $40,480 /yr., while median household is $74,580 /yr. Half of Americans make less than that per year. 20th percentile income, by median, says that 1/5th of American households make less than $28,000/yr (no law of averages with high earners skewing the result here). One glance at the housing market, or inflation, and I think they have every right to feel angry. Edit: Or is it 80th percentile?
- loeg 3y ago
  Your median figure for individual income includes children, part-time workers, and retirees.
- lesuorac 3y ago
  Perhaps more importantly and that during inflation/shrinkflation the median income has _decreased_ so not only do you get less for your money you also have less money! I will say though on inflation we should shoot the messenger. Inflation is a disease; it describes a symptom (increased prices). The word inflation does not describe at all why prices increased. Did oil get more expensive so the cost of revenue increased? Did a company realize they were charging below market rate? The news can be do a tiny bit of investigation before reporting on it for hours on end. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-279.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-27...
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    I also can't stand, when it comes to inflation, that the media talks about a low-inflation quarter as though it is "relief for consumers." What about it is relieving? Prices haven't gone down, prices aren't going down, we're supposed to feel relieved that prices are still going up, just slower? I honestly dare the bankers on the Federal Reserve, and frankly, all of Congress, to live on a 20th percentile income. They'd be all over inflation in seconds once reality set in. Edit: I might mean 80th, I'm struggling to remember which end is lower (20th or 80th).
    - disgruntledphd2 3y ago
      20th is lower than 80th. It goes from 0 (lowest) to 100 (highest).
    - dingnuts 3y ago
      The measures the government needs to take to end inflation aren't politically popular. For instance, student loan forgiveness and the pause on interest payments are almost certainly a major driver of inflation. Would you say canceling forgiveness and resuming payments for all borrowers in order to cull inflation is a position that will win elections?
      - loeg 3y ago
        The number of voters benefiting from student loan debt pauses is relatively small and they are also mostly not swing voters. I agree we should resume student loan debt payments, for a variety of reasons.
- coffeebeqn 3y ago
  This is hardly just the news talking too much about the thing. Cumulative inflation over the last 4 years has been insane and most people haven’t gotten double digit raises (just to tread water in the best case). People feel the pinch because it’s an actual fact in their day to day life
- andrewmutz 3y ago
  In inflation-adjusted terms, the lowest income americans have done the best over the last few years, with their wages rising 9%: https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2022/ https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2022/ > Between 2019 and 2022, hourly wage growth was strongest at the bottom of the wage distribution. The 10th-percentile real hourly wage grew 9.0% over the three-year period. When we look across the wage distribution, we see wage growth declining for each successive wage group until we reach the high-wage group. Compared with the 9.0% wage growth at the bottom, growth was less than half as fast for lower-middle-wage workers (3.9%) and less than one-third as fast for middle-wage workers (2.4%) between 2019 and 2022. Upper-middle wages grew even more slowly at 1.8% over the three-year period, while the 90th-percentile wage grew 4.9%—faster than the middle wages, but not as fast as the 10th-percentile wage. And this is from EPI, a left-leaning think tank.
  - voisin 3y ago
    For context about just how well “the best” have done: > The 10th-percentile wage in 2022 was $12.57, or $26,145 annually for a full-time worker. 9.0% real wage growth is still not remotely close to livable.
    - m4jor 3y ago
      For real. Who the heck can live off $26k a year. That's peanuts.
  - unethical_ban 3y ago
    If someone makes 25k and gets a 2.5k (10%) raise over a few years, they still aren't as well off as someone who made $200k in 2018 and got laid off and now only makes 120k. I know you were responding to a comment about raises but seeing "done the best" in any context for the lowest earning workers feels odd.
  - titzer 3y ago
    Painfully tonedeaf comment. If you're at poverty level, not making ends meet, and inflation is 30% and your wage growth is 9%, you are falling behind. If you are above "making ends meet" and your income growth is only 3% but you are still "making ends meet", things are fine for you. Inflation is absolutely decimating the lower half of the country. Your numbers are sophistry.
- makomk 3y ago
  The BBC is a British institution though, and the British media has treated the effects of inflation here very differently to how the American media did, with endless front-page coverage of every last detail and prediction and problem whereas the American media downplayed the issue and how badly people were doing in day-to-day terms and instead told readers that inflation was some partisan Republican narrative.
  - darkclouds 3y ago
    [dead]
  - kemotep 3y ago
    Not sure if you are American or not, but at least from my prospective experience as someone in the US there seems to be a never ending glee from the media in predicting an imminent economic downturn and there were/are constant articles and stories about how difficult the economic situation is, how bad inflation is, and so on. Maybe a Democratic Party partisan outlet would say it is just a Republican talking point but the average news media outlet I have seen has had something negative to say about the economy every week for the past few years.
PheonixPharts 3y ago
I think it's great to check media sensationalism, but I think there's a massive disconnect between the impacts of inflation on highly paid software engineers, and most Americans. It's also a bit strange to see you view media as a completely separate entity from "decision-makers in companies". My experience has been that most decision makers in companies get most of their ideas entirely from the board and major investors. I recently left a publicly traded company, and pretty much every time our "leaders" met with the border and major investors they would come back singing a very different tune then they went in. But these same major investors and board members also have relationships with people running major media companies (which are also just companies), in many cases they may even be the same people. There's this trend I've seen on HN to just dismiss anything that seems wrong with the world, no matter the evidence, with "media sensationalism", as though we are living in fantastic times if it were for that pesky media distorting our views.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- kvathupo 3y ago
  As the child of blue-collar parents, I'd agree that there's a lot of price anxiety in their neck of the woods. I'd also add that the statistics can be misleading: of the jobs added, many are in food services and front-line healthcare. For the former, the positions don't provide hours and pay poorly. Not a great area to be adding jobs in amidst high inflation and depressed lending.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  > I think it's great to check media sensationalism, but I think there's a massive disconnect between the impacts of inflation on highly paid software engineers, and most Americans. Thank you for saying this, it's exactly what was going through my head while reading that post. The very idea that money problems are in people's heads, while it can be true, people are panicking not because the media told them to but because they can see for themselves that they don't make enough money. If you've never been through it you may not understand. When we hit the recession in the early 90's my family quite literally did not make enough money to afford everything month to month (stepfather worked at a grocery store). We were slowly going into debt just to survive (bills, housing, food, gas).
lawlessone 3y ago
did media make my milk sour?
crvdgc 3y ago
It's not as applicative in this case, at least for the UK. As a software developer based in the UK, the inflation mentioned in the article is felt very deeply by myself. The article cited 7.2% as the price inflation rate, which is close to the rate of 7.6% calculated by the Office for National Statistics based on my household spending[1] and is consistent with my personal experience. On top of that, the UK Treasury adjusted the personal tax threshold policy back in April this year, basically freezing the tax bands to no longer rise with the inflation, which caused a direct 3.3% hit on my income. This freeze is estimated to be the largest over 50 years according to BBC[2], but since we are discussing media sensationalism, so maybe that's not something that would convince you. Anyway, maybe the situation is different elsewhere, but I do find this article more truthful than not from where I stand. [1]: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/articles/howisinflationaffectingyourhouseholdcosts/2022-03-23 https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/arti... [2]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67031930 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67031930
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > The article cited 7.2% as the price inflation rate, which is close to the rate of 7.6% calculated by the Office for National Statistics based on my household spending[1] and is consistent with my personal experience. Do you know if those figures factor in non-consumables like housing and insurance? Asking because many US areas are seeing 20-100% jumps (or higher), year over year over year. When your largest expenses skyrocket, single digit increase stats don't reflect reality well.
  - tomjakubowski 3y ago
    What areas have seen housing or insurance costs jump over 100% year-over-year?
    - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
      Florida. We moved in 2021 to same size house (but 25mi further out) and our rent is 1.95x our last rent. Rents generally doubled in our last neighborhood, one expired lease at a time. Typically, long existing tenants were not given opportunity to renew and new tenants got the new doubled rate. Some of those old tenants joined the ranks of homeless people with savings, because there was nowhere to go. My sister may be one (diff state). We'll know more tomorrow. Insurance stores are even more dire.
vikingerik 3y ago
Laying off then hiring should be a positive. Presumably the laid-off were your worst talent and workers, while the new hires are at least randomly distributed and should be selected towards the upper end of the talent range.
- ok_dad 3y ago
  Again, that’s not how it works. You don’t lay off bad employees, you lay off randomly or lay off teams you no longer need or want. Layoffs are an opex reduction exercise, not a house cleaning.
  - nradov 3y ago
    That's not always true. Some layoffs cut entire organizational units regardless of individual performance. Others cut a certain percentage across the board (sometimes with exceptions for strategic growth areas). The CEO might tell every manager to cut 10%, and obviously they're going to take that chance to eliminate their worst performers.
- nonameiguess 3y ago
  Unless you managed to somehow change the intellectual characteristics of the labor pool in the span of less than a year, this is impossible on an industry-wide basis. At best, one company gains and another loses, but even if it evens out, the deadweight loss of unemployment payouts, time spent applying and interviewing, onboarding and offboarding, relationship upheavals, all make this a net negative activity socially.
titzer 3y ago
The media sensationalism isn't the underlying problem, it just exposes it. The modern economy runs primarily on the confidence and emotions of the market participants. It is at the mercy of an irrational mix of evolved ape behavior.
diogenes4 3y ago
> Financial anxiety: Media - the primary instigator In my experience it's "how will i pay for rent and food the next two months".
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  Yep. Then toss in widespread housing insecurity. I've got an aging sister likely facing homelessness.
2devnull 3y ago
You are right, except in this instance there is very objective proof that inflation and homelessness are problems that have gotten worse recently and are having widespread impacts. If the media choose not to cover this, because of whatever reasons they have (maybe they worry about frightening the public ?) then it will not be addressed politically. They are called the 4th estate for a reason. They determine what political discussions are allowed. Inflation is an important issue for lower income and middle class workers.
commandlinefan 3y ago
> Media As far as I can tell, the mainstream media is working overtime to _downplay_ the actual state of things. I'm a computer programmer with an advanced degree and three decades of experience and until about a year ago, I got a dozen unsolicited job offers a month. Now I can't recall the last time I saw any. Reddit's /r/cscareerquestions used to be flooded with people complaining about persistent recruiters, now it's flooded with credentialed people who've been looking for a job for months with no success. My wife and I both make good salaries in a relatively low cost of living area and we're suddenly finding ourselves cutting back drastically just to keep from falling behind. I track my finances pretty carefully and I can compare what I spent on groceries and gas and medical expenses later year vs. this year (against the 0% pay raise we've both gotten for the past few years) and it's quite a bit. I'm in a good position since I bought a house a long time ago at a fixed mortgage rate and am still employed, but I can't even imagine how people even a little worse off than me are doing... all while the network news and the places on the internet that haven't been shadowbanned are insisting that we're just exaggerating the scope of this financial crisis. I remember 2000 and 2008, and neither seem like anything compared to this.
Gibbon1 3y ago
> can cause fear in business which can lead to "precautionary" retractions... which can exacerbate the actual market problems. Thing I learned a long time ago from an experience[1]. Managers often place more trust in what they read in rags like the NYT and the WSJ than they do their in house experts. Which is crazy because the guys that scribble for those outfits are relative buffoons with a knack for writing and nothing else. And relying on third hand bullshit most of the time. [1] VP said we were idiots because what were were saying didn't line up with an article he read in Inc Magazine.

gjsman-1000 3y ago

Don't shoot the messenger. If anything, inflation and shrinkflation's effects on the average American are, in my opinion, understated; and Thomas Jefferson (if you've ever read his comments about inflation) would've been calling for hangings. Also, worth remembering, the median American income is $40,480 /yr., while median household is $74,580 /yr. Half of Americans make less than that per year. 20th percentile income, by median, says that 1/5th of American households make less than $28,000/yr (no law of averages with high earners skewing the result here). One glance at the housing market, or inflation, and I think they have every right to feel angry. Edit: Or is it 80th percentile?

loeg 3y ago
Your median figure for individual income includes children, part-time workers, and retirees.
lesuorac 3y ago
Perhaps more importantly and that during inflation/shrinkflation the median income has _decreased_ so not only do you get less for your money you also have less money! I will say though on inflation we should shoot the messenger. Inflation is a disease; it describes a symptom (increased prices). The word inflation does not describe at all why prices increased. Did oil get more expensive so the cost of revenue increased? Did a company realize they were charging below market rate? The news can be do a tiny bit of investigation before reporting on it for hours on end. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-279.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-27...
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  I also can't stand, when it comes to inflation, that the media talks about a low-inflation quarter as though it is "relief for consumers." What about it is relieving? Prices haven't gone down, prices aren't going down, we're supposed to feel relieved that prices are still going up, just slower? I honestly dare the bankers on the Federal Reserve, and frankly, all of Congress, to live on a 20th percentile income. They'd be all over inflation in seconds once reality set in. Edit: I might mean 80th, I'm struggling to remember which end is lower (20th or 80th).
  - disgruntledphd2 3y ago
    20th is lower than 80th. It goes from 0 (lowest) to 100 (highest).
  - dingnuts 3y ago
    The measures the government needs to take to end inflation aren't politically popular. For instance, student loan forgiveness and the pause on interest payments are almost certainly a major driver of inflation. Would you say canceling forgiveness and resuming payments for all borrowers in order to cull inflation is a position that will win elections?
    - loeg 3y ago
      The number of voters benefiting from student loan debt pauses is relatively small and they are also mostly not swing voters. I agree we should resume student loan debt payments, for a variety of reasons.
coffeebeqn 3y ago
This is hardly just the news talking too much about the thing. Cumulative inflation over the last 4 years has been insane and most people haven’t gotten double digit raises (just to tread water in the best case). People feel the pinch because it’s an actual fact in their day to day life
andrewmutz 3y ago
In inflation-adjusted terms, the lowest income americans have done the best over the last few years, with their wages rising 9%: https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2022/ https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2022/ > Between 2019 and 2022, hourly wage growth was strongest at the bottom of the wage distribution. The 10th-percentile real hourly wage grew 9.0% over the three-year period. When we look across the wage distribution, we see wage growth declining for each successive wage group until we reach the high-wage group. Compared with the 9.0% wage growth at the bottom, growth was less than half as fast for lower-middle-wage workers (3.9%) and less than one-third as fast for middle-wage workers (2.4%) between 2019 and 2022. Upper-middle wages grew even more slowly at 1.8% over the three-year period, while the 90th-percentile wage grew 4.9%—faster than the middle wages, but not as fast as the 10th-percentile wage. And this is from EPI, a left-leaning think tank.
- voisin 3y ago
  For context about just how well “the best” have done: > The 10th-percentile wage in 2022 was $12.57, or $26,145 annually for a full-time worker. 9.0% real wage growth is still not remotely close to livable.
  - m4jor 3y ago
    For real. Who the heck can live off $26k a year. That's peanuts.
- unethical_ban 3y ago
  If someone makes 25k and gets a 2.5k (10%) raise over a few years, they still aren't as well off as someone who made $200k in 2018 and got laid off and now only makes 120k. I know you were responding to a comment about raises but seeing "done the best" in any context for the lowest earning workers feels odd.
- titzer 3y ago
  Painfully tonedeaf comment. If you're at poverty level, not making ends meet, and inflation is 30% and your wage growth is 9%, you are falling behind. If you are above "making ends meet" and your income growth is only 3% but you are still "making ends meet", things are fine for you. Inflation is absolutely decimating the lower half of the country. Your numbers are sophistry.
makomk 3y ago
The BBC is a British institution though, and the British media has treated the effects of inflation here very differently to how the American media did, with endless front-page coverage of every last detail and prediction and problem whereas the American media downplayed the issue and how badly people were doing in day-to-day terms and instead told readers that inflation was some partisan Republican narrative.
- darkclouds 3y ago
  [dead]
- kemotep 3y ago
  Not sure if you are American or not, but at least from my prospective experience as someone in the US there seems to be a never ending glee from the media in predicting an imminent economic downturn and there were/are constant articles and stories about how difficult the economic situation is, how bad inflation is, and so on. Maybe a Democratic Party partisan outlet would say it is just a Republican talking point but the average news media outlet I have seen has had something negative to say about the economy every week for the past few years.

PheonixPharts 3y ago

I think it's great to check media sensationalism, but I think there's a massive disconnect between the impacts of inflation on highly paid software engineers, and most Americans. It's also a bit strange to see you view media as a completely separate entity from "decision-makers in companies". My experience has been that most decision makers in companies get most of their ideas entirely from the board and major investors. I recently left a publicly traded company, and pretty much every time our "leaders" met with the border and major investors they would come back singing a very different tune then they went in. But these same major investors and board members also have relationships with people running major media companies (which are also just companies), in many cases they may even be the same people. There's this trend I've seen on HN to just dismiss anything that seems wrong with the world, no matter the evidence, with "media sensationalism", as though we are living in fantastic times if it were for that pesky media distorting our views.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kvathupo 3y ago
As the child of blue-collar parents, I'd agree that there's a lot of price anxiety in their neck of the woods. I'd also add that the statistics can be misleading: of the jobs added, many are in food services and front-line healthcare. For the former, the positions don't provide hours and pay poorly. Not a great area to be adding jobs in amidst high inflation and depressed lending.
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
> I think it's great to check media sensationalism, but I think there's a massive disconnect between the impacts of inflation on highly paid software engineers, and most Americans. Thank you for saying this, it's exactly what was going through my head while reading that post. The very idea that money problems are in people's heads, while it can be true, people are panicking not because the media told them to but because they can see for themselves that they don't make enough money. If you've never been through it you may not understand. When we hit the recession in the early 90's my family quite literally did not make enough money to afford everything month to month (stepfather worked at a grocery store). We were slowly going into debt just to survive (bills, housing, food, gas).

lawlessone 3y ago

did media make my milk sour?

crvdgc 3y ago

It's not as applicative in this case, at least for the UK. As a software developer based in the UK, the inflation mentioned in the article is felt very deeply by myself. The article cited 7.2% as the price inflation rate, which is close to the rate of 7.6% calculated by the Office for National Statistics based on my household spending[1] and is consistent with my personal experience. On top of that, the UK Treasury adjusted the personal tax threshold policy back in April this year, basically freezing the tax bands to no longer rise with the inflation, which caused a direct 3.3% hit on my income. This freeze is estimated to be the largest over 50 years according to BBC[2], but since we are discussing media sensationalism, so maybe that's not something that would convince you. Anyway, maybe the situation is different elsewhere, but I do find this article more truthful than not from where I stand. [1]: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/articles/howisinflationaffectingyourhouseholdcosts/2022-03-23 https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/arti... [2]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67031930 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67031930

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> The article cited 7.2% as the price inflation rate, which is close to the rate of 7.6% calculated by the Office for National Statistics based on my household spending[1] and is consistent with my personal experience. Do you know if those figures factor in non-consumables like housing and insurance? Asking because many US areas are seeing 20-100% jumps (or higher), year over year over year. When your largest expenses skyrocket, single digit increase stats don't reflect reality well.
- tomjakubowski 3y ago
  What areas have seen housing or insurance costs jump over 100% year-over-year?
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    Florida. We moved in 2021 to same size house (but 25mi further out) and our rent is 1.95x our last rent. Rents generally doubled in our last neighborhood, one expired lease at a time. Typically, long existing tenants were not given opportunity to renew and new tenants got the new doubled rate. Some of those old tenants joined the ranks of homeless people with savings, because there was nowhere to go. My sister may be one (diff state). We'll know more tomorrow. Insurance stores are even more dire.

vikingerik 3y ago

Laying off then hiring should be a positive. Presumably the laid-off were your worst talent and workers, while the new hires are at least randomly distributed and should be selected towards the upper end of the talent range.

ok_dad 3y ago
Again, that’s not how it works. You don’t lay off bad employees, you lay off randomly or lay off teams you no longer need or want. Layoffs are an opex reduction exercise, not a house cleaning.
- nradov 3y ago
  That's not always true. Some layoffs cut entire organizational units regardless of individual performance. Others cut a certain percentage across the board (sometimes with exceptions for strategic growth areas). The CEO might tell every manager to cut 10%, and obviously they're going to take that chance to eliminate their worst performers.
nonameiguess 3y ago
Unless you managed to somehow change the intellectual characteristics of the labor pool in the span of less than a year, this is impossible on an industry-wide basis. At best, one company gains and another loses, but even if it evens out, the deadweight loss of unemployment payouts, time spent applying and interviewing, onboarding and offboarding, relationship upheavals, all make this a net negative activity socially.

titzer 3y ago

The media sensationalism isn't the underlying problem, it just exposes it. The modern economy runs primarily on the confidence and emotions of the market participants. It is at the mercy of an irrational mix of evolved ape behavior.

diogenes4 3y ago

> Financial anxiety: Media - the primary instigator In my experience it's "how will i pay for rent and food the next two months".

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
Yep. Then toss in widespread housing insecurity. I've got an aging sister likely facing homelessness.

2devnull 3y ago

You are right, except in this instance there is very objective proof that inflation and homelessness are problems that have gotten worse recently and are having widespread impacts. If the media choose not to cover this, because of whatever reasons they have (maybe they worry about frightening the public ?) then it will not be addressed politically. They are called the 4th estate for a reason. They determine what political discussions are allowed. Inflation is an important issue for lower income and middle class workers.

commandlinefan 3y ago

> Media As far as I can tell, the mainstream media is working overtime to _downplay_ the actual state of things. I'm a computer programmer with an advanced degree and three decades of experience and until about a year ago, I got a dozen unsolicited job offers a month. Now I can't recall the last time I saw any. Reddit's /r/cscareerquestions used to be flooded with people complaining about persistent recruiters, now it's flooded with credentialed people who've been looking for a job for months with no success. My wife and I both make good salaries in a relatively low cost of living area and we're suddenly finding ourselves cutting back drastically just to keep from falling behind. I track my finances pretty carefully and I can compare what I spent on groceries and gas and medical expenses later year vs. this year (against the 0% pay raise we've both gotten for the past few years) and it's quite a bit. I'm in a good position since I bought a house a long time ago at a fixed mortgage rate and am still employed, but I can't even imagine how people even a little worse off than me are doing... all while the network news and the places on the internet that haven't been shadowbanned are insisting that we're just exaggerating the scope of this financial crisis. I remember 2000 and 2008, and neither seem like anything compared to this.

Gibbon1 3y ago

> can cause fear in business which can lead to "precautionary" retractions... which can exacerbate the actual market problems. Thing I learned a long time ago from an experience[1]. Managers often place more trust in what they read in rags like the NYT and the WSJ than they do their in house experts. Which is crazy because the guys that scribble for those outfits are relative buffoons with a knack for writing and nothing else. And relying on third hand bullshit most of the time. [1] VP said we were idiots because what were were saying didn't line up with an article he read in Inc Magazine.