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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   32030 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025

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A decade ago I would never have seen myself cheering for The Experts or The Media, but I've seen the alternative now, and it's just so much worse.

OK, we've lost some money from dumb economic policy. I've lost money, you've lost money. Stocks down. Schizo tariff policy is dumb.

But is this really worse than what the experts were cooking up in terms of DEI, mass immigration and green economics? Australia has been in an economic meltdown, GDP per capita fell bigly. Housing is massively unaffordable. No politicians have any answers except more plans to pump housing prices even higher, subsidizing first-home buyers. The ponzi marches on! The European economies have been wrecked by the EU. Britain is still being wrecked. Canada has been stagnating, universities turned to degree-mills, massive immigration, houses unaffordable, wages inadequate...

Why is it that schizo tariff policy is worse than deliberate, considered, orderly wrecking of the economy? Is it that famous quote from the Joker?

"Nobody panics when things go 'according to plan.' Even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I told the press that, like, a gang-banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all 'part of the plan.' But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!"

And I haven't even mentioned the social problems caused by these policies! London is what, 30% English? Isn't the capital of England supposed to be English? Isn't Birmingham supposed to have garbage picked up, it's supposed to be a rich industrial city, not a shithole? Aren't Western countries supposed to be high-trust societies? Isn't it bad when Biden brings millions of migrants into the US?

Trump is not perfect and he probably can't solve many if any of the challenges the US faces, while likely making many things worse. But the other side is fully committed to making things worse, they've worked hard on it and see it as virtuous. I consider DEI, expensive energy and mass migration as core policies of the mainstream right and left, everyone besides Trump and Trump-adjacent figures. As far as I'm concerned, these are bad policies.

Respectable, moderate, reasonable, orderly German centrists are working to raise the price of petrol and diesel and make workers poorer: https://www.eugyppius.com/p/incoming-german-government-from-hell

Chancellor-hopeful Friedrich Merz confirmed that “many workers will have less net income … in the coming years” due to social welfare contributions – particularly pension, health insurance and long-term care insurance payments. He also openly admitted that his party, the CDU, had failed to secure the tax relief for workers on which they had campaigned, because of “disagreement” with the Social Democrats. And when the interviewer asked him to confirm again that this means Germans “will … have less net income … because social welfare contributions are rising, but taxes are not falling,” Merz agreed that “these concerns are certainly not unjustified.”

But is this really worse than what the experts were cooking up in terms of DEI, mass immigration and green economics?

That's a sufficiently low bar that we (not you, all of us collectively) ought to be ashamed of it.

I consider DEI, expensive energy and mass migration as core policies of the mainstream right and left, everyone besides Trump and Trump-adjacent figures. As far as I'm concerned, these are bad policies.

I recall Cheney and Bush being excellent on domestic energy production, such that the fruits of their policies were felt well into the Obama administration on lowered natural gas prices.

He also openly admitted that his party, the CDU, had failed to secure the tax relief for workers on which they had campaigned, because of “disagreement” with the Social Democrats

If only there were some other party with which the CDU could have formed a coalition.

Yes but the notional balances of retirees accounts has gone down which is a great evil, whilst all these other evils were good for the amount of 0's on the spreadsheet and could be justified by magical thinking in other spreadsheets about fungibility of human labor.

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