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PaperclipPerfector  20d ago (text post)   35154 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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they ignore the fact that analysts have produced a great deal of research and economic analysis arguing that such policies are good for Americans. Nationalists may disagree, but practically nobody of any influence is saying that the goal of public policy is to make foreigners better off even if it comes at the expense of Americans.

Citation needed.

But irregardless of the enemy's self-reported attitude towards helping Americans, nationalists believe that the enemy's values are actually anti-American.

When the enemy says "who will do the jobs??!!1!!" they're making a blatant bad faith argument. It's interesting how everyone who says that also believes all the billions living in shithole countries around the world should be imported into America and given access to as many handouts as they want

When the left criticizes Trump’s views on tariffs, they focus on Americans having to pay higher prices, not the possibility that Chinese workers might lose jobs.

Maybe it's better to say that the Overton window is nationalistic, so when the antis control the levers of power they need to present their preferred policy from the lens of nationalism. On the other hand Chinese aren't black/brown/minority/dei so they hold no value in the enemy's value stack. I'm pretty sure when Trump was threatening tariffs on Colombia, there were a fair share of fake news articles crying about the poor Columbians about to lose their jobs.

Imagine a man who pays little attention to balancing his checkbook and doesn’t put much effort towards organizing his finances. At the same time, he lives in a state of absolute paranoia that his wife might occasionally give a dollar to a homeless person. When he finds out, he blows up at her. “Our family first! What kind of person puts others ahead of their own family? A strange inverted morality you have!” Then he goes back to keeping his money in a savings account instead of buying government bonds or mutual funds.

There is no such thing as a risk free investment, and that risk is priced in to the possible reward. What gives us the right to judge the man's risk preference as well as the value of his time in managing investments? Some people choose to keep hard currency at home to diversify the risk from the bank. While on the other hand the dollar given is a dollar lost for nothing in return. And how small are occasional donations really; it reminds me of this old tweet: https://x.com/CNBC/status/1076173906455810050

Anyways I think the idea the author is touching on is "penny wise, pound foolish." But nowhere is it implied that the penny-pinching miser hates the thing he's pinching pennies from.

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