I will never not read that as magic the gathering, it makes the news so much better
Which in turn reminds me of this internet classic that never fails to make me laugh
What’s it supposed to be?
Marjorie Taylor Green, Congress woman from Georgia. (Jewish space laser)
Wait… Does she matter? Why is there such an overlap between politicians in the US, and people you are surprised aren’t in an asylum?
Money and cults of personality
Removed by mod
That’s why I call it magicTG no overlap
Removed by mod
Until she decides she should be Magic instead.
Has this MTG ever sicced the Pinkertons on someone?
She probably would if she had the opportunity.
the next tweet, wonder when marge started throwing a fit
the tantrum, btw
I can’t believe the Republicans are appeasers. They beat the drum for decades how Democrats couldn’t stand up to tyrants, and now Republicans are literally appeasers. It’s 1984 levels of turnaround.
They don’t believe in anything but power. Internal consistency is not a concern.
Republicans are an existential threat to the US and we should treat them as such.
I wish there was only some evidence the GOP is aligned with Russia…
It’s not like you’re gonna find them all flying over to Russia together, like during the 4th of July or some crazy shit like that…
They will verbally jerk off Ronald Regan for “outspending the USSR into dust” and then act like Ukraine Aid doesn’t do the exact same thing
It’s a whole party caught between giving head to their long term partner, the Military Industrial Complex, or their new side fuck, Vladimir Putin. Either way, the rest of us are forced to lick up the leftovers.
They always were and always will be appeasers and bootlickers. Democrats are also appeasers who lack conviction and courage, but they’re not (anywhere near as often) bootlickers.
Fun fact for those on the fence about this, the US has monetary sovereignty in a fiat currency, which means that the US government has essentially infinite money.
Edit: for those that are curious, yes, the game about the federal budget is exactly that. The deficit is essentially tracking the amount of money that the federal government owes to itself. Remember, fiat currency means that the value of money exists because the government says that it holds that specific value. A $2 dollar bill is still worth $2 when purchasing items, but worth several $ more than the printed value.
Edit 2: I didn’t think it needed to be said, but I’ve been proven wrong. I don’t literally mean infinite money.
I wonder, sometimes, what a society would look like without inflation. Is there an economic system that says “this is the price of bread, from now on” and builds off of that?
Of course, my only talents are music and memes, so I doubt that I’d specifically benefit from such a system, but maybe humanity as a whole?
One of the reasons some inflation is ‘good’ is that it drives investment. People are discouraged from saving their money since it will slowly devalue. Rather, those with capital are incentived to invest it in other areas of the economy.
That would only happen if deflation was a thing too. In my (highly idealistic) world, money would not change value at all, so growth in a business would be real, not just projected numbers on a chart no one understands. In a fixed-econony, you invest into businesses that actually grow.
I know this may come off as controversial, but this sort of thinking will be necessary for interstellar trade, if we don’t blow ourselves up first.
Could you elaborate a bit on that? I’m not really sure how a business that “actually grows” would be functional ina fixed economy without becoming confusing graphs or entering some other major problem.
Like, the business actually gets bigger: opens more stores, creates new products, offers more services. The regulatory system behind this is starting to sound a bit tankie though, so I’m gonna shelve it for more thought.
Taxes are the current most frequent form of deflation in any country with a sovereign currency. The government spends/prints money in step one, the currency circulates through the economy in step two, and the last step, taxes, is your anti-inflationary device.
Certain people could be taxed more…
Then bread becomes the currency
But fine, then my bicycle is worth how many breads? If I offer to
how many breads is that worth? I don’t care what kind of leftist you are, these are the real questions we should be asking in a post-capitalist society.
After a while it becomes a pain to lug all that bread around, so what if everyone just agrees to have little bits of paper with “1 bread” written on it in place of actual bread, and we can use that. Someone gives you a bit of bread-paper and later if you need bread, you can just go see them at home, or wherever they keep their bread, and get a loaf or two as agreed.
But of course people will just write “1 bread” without actually having the bread so it’s better if we have some central authority where people can swap their bread for carefully drawn bits of paper that can be verified as real, and if anyone wants bread they can just go to that authority and swap their paper back for bread.
You don’t have to go and actually get the bread of course. Nearly everyone will take the bread-paper as a replacement for actual bread, because hey, if they really need bread they can go to that central authority and get bread. And it’s good bread, high quality stuff, so everyone trusts them to give them bread if they need it, but how many people really need all that actual bread? It’s much easier to swap bits of bread-paper for that motorcycle, or groceries, or whatever, rather than pass actual bread around the place.
But then after a while it becomes a real nuisance to hold all that bread somewhere, so how about we just hold a nominal amount of bread, say, enough to cover people who might want to change their bits of paper for bread today, and for the rest of the bread we’re supposed to have we’ll just keep track of who has how many bread-papers in a journal.
And so on and so forth, until there’s no bread at all and hardly any bread-papers even, and we’re transferring bread-papers electronically using phones and plastic cards with a lot of smarts in them and in the end we’re just mucking around with bread-numbers in a book somewhere.
Just want to say my initial comment was a bit tongue in cheek but you actually used it to explain the issue really well, so thank you!
Tiktokers in 2020 just became very wealthy lol
I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic, but I love the revolutionary optimism. That has been a question that has been posed in philosophical politics ever since Marx and Engels were alive.
Before even then
Price controls were something people were trying even as far back as the crisis of the third century when Diocletian set the standard prices for several common items bought by the Roman peasantry like bread.
Contrasting against the grain dole, which worked better because it was the state stepping in to directly remove a large cost from the lives of eligible households, allowing them to put that money towards improving their fiscal standing. For ancient Romans it was Bread, but for modern Americans a solid equivalent would be medicine or education, shit you could argue that the post war boom was in part because of the govt. doing this partially with housing, subsidizing the costs of WWII vets to build new homes or buy existing ones, of course because America black vets got shafted and redlined but the general idea is still there.
And in a country with practically infinite money, why don’t we ensure housing? We have infinite money, we could house literally everyone, but we don’t. Why not?
Infinite money is not the same as infinite resources. We can’t just create houses out of thin air just because we have money. We still need tangible things like lumber and concrete to actually build the house.
With that said, we could certainly provide housing for everyone in the U.S. It’s not an issue of resource scarcity.
It’s a way to force the masses to be productive for their capitalist overlords. Overt slavery isn’t acceptable any more, but saying “you’re going to live under a bridge unless you comply” still is.
I’d genuinely love to learn more, do you have any readings for pre-marxist ideas about equality in economics?
https://youtu.be/hvk_XylEmLo?si=k4sT-b3VnwAdjiTI
Not a reading, but it’ll certainly getcha blood boiling!
He’s actually a good resource on ancient Roman history generally too, he’s the guy who brought my attention to how successful the grain dole system was and why it was that successful.
He also includes social developments like the Aedileship of Agrippa, which was one of the greatest periods of infrastructure development and renewal in Roman history.
Not sarcastic at all, I just wonder about the need for “growth”. I know absolutely nothing about the theory, I just wanna know why it seems to be necessary. Why don’t we fix prices, or at least have them justified regionally, based on the need of the region?
There is no need for growth. Sustainability used to be a thing. But the wealthy do what the wealthy do with all their leasure. Turning systems inside out and on their head. Gaming it till the growth pushes everyone else out. And it’s not likely to change till capitalists are regulated from existence.
Currency and markets can exist without capitalism. Sustainably can’t exist with capitalism.
If we fixed prices for one thing, we’d have to do it for everything. In a world where resources aren’t exactly infinite, that creates a huge problem; especially when you have to pay people who’re producing this fixed-value commodity (because you need people for that) and you have to increase their wages to buy stuff that isn’t fixed-value, like housing (since land is a limited, though abundant, resource).
There’s infinite land in the universe, let’s go get it (/s, but only kinda)
On many items produced in the USSR, the price was molded into the form itself, since it was fixed and wasn’t going to change.
That’s how you end up with either huge government spending to keep the prices of something fixed either by subsidies or by buying surpluses.
Or you end up with shortages and a black market.
Again, infinite money. Surplus could be exported to countries who don’t have infinite money.
Also, yarr
Holy Zimbabwe Batman!
For those that are curious this is not even remotely close to how the economy words. The us government absolutely does not have unlimited real money, sure they can print money and it will become worthless. But that’s not the same.
I got a degree in economics. I’m not going to watch up trash on YouTube. If you can’t condense it and make a point it is obviously meaningless.
The government buys things with US dollars, if it uses huge huge amounts of US dollars to buy things you get inflation. It’s a basic premise…
Just look at Germany pre ww2 or look at Zimbabwe after it stopped being Rhodesia.
Just look at Germany pre ww2
The German government in the early '20s engineered their hyperinflation as part of an attempt to demonstrate an inability to pay the ruinous war reparations demanded by the Versailles Treaty. It’s really not a good example of “natural” inflation.
As someone who is not informed on this and just is going by what is written in this thread, the videos seemed high quality and informative, and you saying “I got a degree” and refusing to engage because you don’t like YouTube is absolutely unhelpful and uninformative.
It seems like @rockSlayer@lemmy.world is right, based on the information available right here. If you really disagree and would like like to show otherwise, please do engage and provide more information, I find this interesting.
The economics major has a point actually, but it’s nowhere near as interesting or important a point as they think.
neither of those governments had monetary sovereignty. Zimbabwe was also an exceedingly rare case of hyperinflation within a country using fiat currency.
Edit: please, engage with the source material. What about monetary sovereignty is incorrect?
YouTube isnt a source.
If what you are claiming is true that the government has unlimited real money this means three things. 1 any government could make as much real money as they like and massively improve the livelihoods of all citizens but choose not to. There is a guaranteed Nobel prize in economics and probably physics. Someone somewhere is hiding a huge conspiracy for whatever reason.
That at a minimum requires a paper on the topic. A YouTube video isn’t up to that standard.
The claim you are making is extraordinary. I’m not going to watch 1.5 hour worth of YouTube to prove you wrong just as I wouldn’t for a flat earther.
It really is up to you to explain this world changing information succinctly and coherently. To at least raise the topic. What you are saying is all the governments and universities are wrong here is a a load of YouTube videos. Not worth my time sorry.
If you can’t condense it and make a point it is obviously meaningless.
That’s literally what he did in the first comment you replied to.
He posted the sources to back up his point because you were disputing it, and then you said “you don’t have a point!” Ridiculous.
He talked about fiat money being unlimited but it isn’t unlimited.
Fiat money is a type of currency that is not backed by a commodity, such as gold or silver. It is typically designated by the issuing government to be legal tender.
In no way did he explain why fiat money is unlimited money. That’s the bit that needs explaining.
If you flood the economy with money that money becomes less valuable (inflation) and therefore you need more money to buy things. At no point does that mean you can buy unlimited goods, it just means you can print worthless paper.
So yea I need to know what evidence I’m disputing to dispute something. It’s not up to me to disprove an argument that hasn’t even been explained.
Classic economics major, though.
People just don’t seem to understand the supply-and-demand aspect of inflation, which is what causes these braindead takes; nor do these YouTube videos bother explaining it.
It’s madness.
They get a viewpoint and then just agree with everything that everyone remotely says close to it without judging it.
Then to win an argument you spam a huge amount of information that doesn’t prove the point in question but all does need to be disproved or they are magically right.
I just hope some people reading comments and not replying at least gain some knowledge of the system they are using.
Can we please not have YouTube videos be sources
At best, they’re a tertiary source consistimg of a bunch of condensed summaries of other sources
More often they’re cherrypicked by content creators to build a narrative for entertainment
And like, in this context (Lemmy comment debate) you’re asking people to watch a bunch of videos with ads and debunk the points inside. Maybe thats not too much to ask in other contexts, but you must know nobody arguing with you here is going to spend their time doing that
I could link to a bunch of flat earth videos as sources, and although they would be easily debunked, nobody here is gonna sit through them and follow up the specific claims they make
The Second Thought video is indeed a tertiary source, but the 1Dime videos has all sources in the comments. I understand that people don’t “like” it as a source, but that doesn’t invalidate them either. They are essentially longer form content explaining what I said in greater detail. If someone came in and said inflation was due to the flat earth, then we can dismiss those claims. Any “sources” would not be backed by economic or scientific theory. This doesn’t change based on the format of the source.
This is an internet comment section. You need to chill about youtube videos as sources. It almost comes off as snobbish. No one here is under any obligation to do anything for each other. If you wanna ignore a long video someone posted because you don’t want to sit through it, fine. You are allowed to do that.
The existence of flat earth videos doesn’t invalidate the entire concept of information in videos.
Get an ad blocker or use piped or something.
Absolutely correct. And for more detail on how non-fiat economies work and why the deficit is essentially a fiction to keep bond markets functioning, I recommend reading “The Deficit Myth” by Stephanie Kelton. This also explains why the EU will never rival the US (TLDR: EU member states are not able to control their individual monetary policies).
Holy shit… they’re STILL on about “the Clintons”? At least it wasn’t the Clinton Soros Obama Global Initiative…
Lol
Fucking scumbag.
I think that MTG, and a lot of commenters on here, need to realise that Ukraine will not stop this war until Russia are out, regardless of the international support or otherwise. Even if Ukraine is overrun completely the war would not stop, but would go on until Russia leave.
I would add three things to what they need to realize:
It is possible for Ukraine to win.
Russia is a ruthless and incompetent oligarchy, and they cannot be allowed to expand their territory.
Fighting or fleeing are vastly preferable to being subsumed by Russia.
All perfectly correct. However, it is a war that Russia will never win, like Afghanistan.
To elaborate on this point: Russia is trying to 1 take Ukraine and 2 keep it. They have not succeeded in part 1, and part 2 is much much more difficult. Afghanistan, as stated in the above comment, is a good example of this: the war to take Afghanistan took less than a year, whereas the struggle to keep it under control was failing two decades in.
Russia can’t even do the easy part.
Of course, this is assuming that they’re not just trying to keep hold of Crimea so they have a port on the black sea, which I think is the real reason they’re prosecuting the war.
What’s funny is that Ukraine was making no moves on the conquered territory of Crimea. They didn’t seem to want to fight Russia over it. But now that Russia went and invaded the rest of the country all bets are off…
Yes, very true that.
I think he was referring to the Russian war with Afghanistan not the 2 decades long US war with Afghanistan.
To add on – we need to recognize that Russia is trying to enforce the old rules of imperialism. In their eyes, Ukraine did not have the right to determine their own future and who they wanted to ally with. Russia had to approve of all their decisions and Russia controlled them.
Defeating Russia is more then Ukrainian independence. It is an unequivocal statement by the West that we will not allow imperialism nor wars of conquest to resurface in Europe. And hopefully with time, this extends to the rest of the world too, and other countries will check Western ones if we begin to forget that.
At the end of the day, a country’s sovereignty and right to self determination are sacred, only to be stripped if they use it to deny others of the same. There is a clear leftist geopolitical perspective here for continuing to back Ukraine.
That’s great and all, but mostly it’s keeping one of their largest geopolitical rivals tied up in a war that saps their strength at relatively small cost.
Multiple things can be true. And we’re hardly keeping them tied up in a war when they can unilaterally withdraw and end the war. If they don’t want to end up in a protracted, hopeless war, they can stop at any time.
Well that’s the thing, they can, but unless leadership changes, they won’t. Can’t be a strongman if you appear weak, so Putin has kind of cornered himself
And this is after he was given several off ramps. He could’ve withdrawn before the invasion and just said Western intelligence was paranoid. I believe Macron tried to talk him down too.
To add on – we need to recognize that Russia is trying to enforce the old rules of imperialism.
Which is absolutely bullshit when you consider that originally Moscow was in Ukraine, not Russia
The fuck are you talking about. The capital of the old Rus was Kiev, hence it being called the Kieven Rus. But moscow was at most an irrelevent village at best during most of the history of the Kieven Rus, it wasnt until the Mongols that you see Moscow become relevent through trade and not getting pillaged.
This is the equivelent of saying Dublin was originally in England not Ireland. Its nonsense.
People refuse to recognize that the Ukrainian people do not want to be taken over by the Russians. There’s no good reason why they should be. They refuse to acknowledge the desires of the people, maybe because fighting back against an oppressor is foreign to their own cowardly psychology.
You should rephrase this, almost looks like you believe Ukraine wants to be attacked by war criminals and terrorists.
How is it “clean” when it defunded support for Ukraine and added pay increases for Congress?
Fucking congress doesn’t deserve to get paid (the obstructionist assholes) let alone a fucking raise. Cut social security but let’s give ourselves a raise to the six figure salaries we already make. Fuck off
This isn’t a great take. If Congress paid poorly only rich people (or their minions) would be able to afford the job. If Congress paid really well, like as well as engineering or banking, then people would be more heavily incentived to compete for the slot by getting better education, or by desiring the role in the first place. Since a lot of well educated highly qualified people are working elsewhere bc it is better pay and conditions, you can tell which reality we are already in.
Only rich people can afford the job right now. What’s the fucking difference?
That’s what they said
So your solution to the problem is to make it worse rather than better? That seems like a great plan.
Explain.
Isn’t that only half of congress? And it didn’t get cut in this bill. It was a sticking point for Democrats.
They’re funded through next Feb, iirc. They’re not going to run out of support - until the next shitshow discussion that is
IIRC Ukraine funding was deemed important to national security, so was exempt from any shutdown.
If it’s any consolation Congress can’t raise their own pay for the current term, the increase will go into effect starting Jan 1st 2025
They can eat my entire ass. Pre shower.
That’s something they throw into bills to trick people that don’t know how they actually make their money.
clean? republicans defunded more military funding for ukraine
I thought that just got taken off the table for now, not defunded.
fix Ukraine support
unclear
But isn’t that just because it wasn’t covered in the 45 day bill? They didn’t address it, it needs to be addressed, but they didn’t defund what we already funded.
I mean since Lend Lease is in effect Biden has a lot more power to just give war material if he’s running up short financially.
Really how the US does most of its most effective work, find a partner, give them the guns, ask the pursers forgiveness rather than permission when war material doesn’t come back in the condition it was loaned in.
And it’s hard to imagine that the American military doesn’t think the war in Ukraine is a big win. I mean, it’s horrible, and I can’t imagine anyone is happy that all those kids in both sides are losing their lives, full stop. But given that it’s happening:
- The world is seeing the Russian government for the aggressors that they are - something the US government has been saying, but many didn’t believe.
- Russia and China have been considered the biggest threats to the US, but you don’t go to war just because a country is a potential threat. Ukraine is fighting a war with one of our primary threats, depleting their capability significantly (and showing us the weaknesses in the capabilities).
- The US is getting to see their systems in operation during a real conflict without risking US troops or being at war themselves. I bet there’s an awful lot of note taking happening.
It’s expensive but it’s money well spent even for selfish reasons, let alone it’s the right thing to do.
That second point is actually even worse than it sounds, because now Russia is draining the war materials of other adversaries to US geopolitical goals because of how unsustainable continuing to use their own stuff is.
This isn’t just a war of attrition against Russia, it’s now also against Iran and North Korea too, and Ukraine is STILL eating it all up like their front line forces are all just kirbies in Ukrainian army helmets.
The US not only has incentive to support Ukraine, it has incentive to do so vigorously enough to keep morale in Ukraine high enough to keep the war going even if it begins to drag into the years to come, almost especially if it starts dragging that long, every extra day Ukraine fights is more material Russia or China or North Korea or Iran wouldn’t be able to call upon threatening American allies or America itself.
It’s not even expensive. These are all vehicles and equipment that were just collecting dust. Imagine if you could accomplish one of your top goals using some old string and other crap you found in the attic. It’s like that.
One item I didn’t mention because it may or may not be in the US government’s best interest is that sending all those weapons to Ukraine is resulting in big contracts to weapon makers to resupply the stockpile. Probably good for the economy, certainly good for the defense contractors.
Another side-goal is showing past, present and potential Russian allies that it’s nothing more than a paper tiger. This’ll push more countries towards the US, especially those who’re vary of Russia’s future puppet master (China).
Here’s what will happen; because I don’t see how it won’t happen again. After the war, Russia will be a broken state financially. But all Western powers will be too chicken shit to let the country break up into smaller independent states. Some nation will get greedy and start pouring money and investment into Russia because the war is officially over and “relations must normalize”. All the old power structures stay in place, but titles will change. World still on the edge of disaster.
Here’s what will happen; because I don’t see how it won’t happen again. After the war, Russia will be a broken state financially. But all Western powers will be too chicken shit to let the country break up into smaller independent states. Some nation will get greedy and start pouring money and investment into Russia because the war is officially over and “relations must normalize” and we can’t let all those “poor, innocent Russians” starve. Of course civil war would be seen as a disaster, too. All the old power structures will stay in place, but titles will change. World still on the edge of disaster because people are too scared to let things die to be reborn better.
One word: China
honestly not sure, I’m waiting for the detailed breakdowns to come out.
Democrats need to hit back more like AOC does
And Fetterman. These two really make me smile with their next level trolling.
I don’t always see eye to eye with AOC, but I know her heart is in the right place. Can’t say the same for any other politician, Republican or Democrat.
Same. I think her and Bernie believe in what they’re fighting for and it’s for the good of the people, not corporations.
I may not agree with some of their positions but I believe they are doing what they believe is right. 9 times out of 10 I will vote for someone I think is honest and trying to do what’s best for the country even if I disagree with them, and I refuse to vote for an obviously dishonest politician even if I do agree with most of their positions.
deleted by creator
Marjorie Taylor Greene, who, yes, is a MAGA Trump Gangster.
Magic The Gathering.
Cardboard crack.
Marie Taylor Greene, so you were not far from truth.
Isn’t she supposed to be getting a divorce? Will that mean she just becomes empty?
deleted by creator
jor <– you dropped this
Close enough
marjorie taylor greene
I would’ve preferred if Ukraine funding was still in there, but MTG screeching is an alright consolation.
I find it interesting too how many people wanted “a clean bill” but then voted against it anyway because it didn’t have extra stuff they wanted or, in Rand Paul’s case, they’re fucking pieces of shit.
Probably the only thing Russia didn’t want to budge on for its foreign assets.
If it pisses off MTG you know it’s good
Oh no, some one spit in her chitlins.
Like a toddler at a candy store.
Worse. She’s paid for this
What are you doing for free, citizen?
I could give you a sweet guitar solo from my Peertube.
NGL, that’s pretty hot. Who’s on keys & cans there? They could loosen up and bend time a bit to follow your groove, IMHO. Keep it up! 🤘🏼
I didn’t know the guys, just that they were part of the ARC Austin band via the Salvation Army, they asked me to fill in.
I do not understand the question. Literally everything that I’m not paid for. So everything but my job ???
Is there a video of the tantrum?
Fuck MTG, Boebert, Loomer and all the other repcunts.
Gonna be even more mad when she sees this 😂
If she could read she’d be very upset
Stay mad forever bitch 😂
If anyone ever deserves to live by the rules she expects others to live by it’s that dum bitch.
Now now, she’s not a dumb bitch, that’s Boebert the sex pest. MGT is the Evil Bitch.
She’s both dumb and evil.
It’s a victimless non-crime.
