This story leaves more questions than answers

I’ll hold off judgment until an investigation is complete

1. Yes many families are having a rough go of it, maxing out credit cards, etc.  What is not mentioned is many of these folks refuse to cut back, they still eat out often. Still taking trips . As a banker friend of mine said it's not they have  less money, many refuse to cut back on their spending.  Las Vegas this year has record hotels books and travelers.

2. Closed business??  I have seen the 2600 retail stores meme floating around all the conservative sites. OH MY gawd Joe is killing the stores. There are 1.06 million retail shops in the US. Most of the 2600 stores closing have been in bankruptcy for the last 10 years. Rue21 on the list has declared bankruptcy for the 3rd time.

3. 60% of the American public now have individual stock market/mutual funs accounts and that number grows each year.

4. New business startups?  5.5 MILION new business in 2023. Broke all previous records.

5. Yes, many people are at subsistence level.  Last week on a thread I pointed out the billionaire elites tax rates a re minimal.  Top 400 of the richest families in the America  paid on average 8.7% on their taxes. I was attacked as a liberal commie etc for suggesting such a thing that the elites need to pay ore as their wealth is growing exponentially. American Thinker came out today and talked about the wealth gap

6. We are bankrolling private development because every other country in the world is also doing so...at levels way more than the US . If we do not subsidize our industries and keep our companies competitive China and other will destroy us. China has moved into the most advanced EV's, battery technology.  Musk said if we did not put tariffs on Chinese ev;s it would be a extinction level event for the us car co's. We live in a unfair world. This is no longer 1776 or 1955 where we did not have to worry about foreign competition. I live in the real world.

7. US companies cannot find workers for lower paying jobs/unskilled.

8. Our unemployment rate is very low.

9. get off the rw chat boards, your church group, the bloggers and such who make big $$ selling fear porn, your like minded friends and look what is really going on.

10. Yes retirees are being hard hit. many of these retires retired way too soon and should have worked 4-5-6 more years. I cannot tell you how many bragged on FB they were retiring at age 57, 58, 60 and talking about how much fun retirement is to us working peons. now they are going back to work and eating crow.. Most also had no where enough money in savings. A friend of mine retired at 58. He had a moderate/generous pension but I told him at the time he was retiring too early.  No no no. Now he is going back to work at age 63. My CFP has been begging his clients they need to par back the spending. Some are listening some are not.

Every point you made you’ve placed the blame of the mess that were in on the American people

And yet in this post, not a single bit of blame  goes to the government  for their  mismanagement of the nation’s finances. You seem to believe that they’re not responsible at all for our unsustainable debt and the printing that requires to maintain it, which leads to inflation. Many of us predicted that we would see significant inflation again when the government was shutting down businesses and paying people are staying home. That was 100% the government that did that

It is the government that’s created a whole class of people who are now dependent on the government

It is the government that help lead to the destruction of the black family

Our government has pretty much mismanaged or created unintended consequences on just about everything that touches yet somehow you want them to have more power. Completely mind-boggling

Then you turn around and blame “right wing porn” for why people in this country feel the  way they do about the economy.   Perhaps you should stop to think that maybe they feel the way they do because they’re experiencing the reality in their own lives




 

Here's a video of it-  in this article

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/slovakian-prime-minister-shot-and-wounded-7329631d



as I post this he has been in surgery for quite some time- apparently he was shot 5 times.

Chilling - you can hear the 5 shots in the video - 5 shots is quite traumatic.  I hope he pulls through.  A long surgery isn't exactly a good sign.

Work from home has been a failure.  Very few people have the discipline to work 8 hours a day from home every day. I called a company last year  and the woman/service rep dog kept barking in the background. Totally unprofessional.


New employees learn by watching current employees. and it's just plain easier to go to the next cubicle to ask or question or see how it is done.
Nothing like face to face. Why most co's are bringing their employees back or at least 1-2 days per week.

Mirror image? I think people are reading too much into this portrait.

....."Mr. Yeo said his goal was to produce a more modern royal portrait, reflecting Charles’s desire to be a more modern monarch, reducing the number of working royals and scaling back the pageantry of the coronation (all things being relative).

Still, the choice of shade seems particularly fraught given the … well, firestorm the king has endured since his ascension to the throne.

Consider, for example, the continued falling out with his second son, Prince Harry, and the publication of Harry’s memoir, with its allegations of royal racism; the related calls for an end to the monarchy; Charles’s cancer diagnosis; and the furor over the mystery about Catherine, Princess of Wales, whose own cancer diagnosis was revealed only after increasingly unhinged speculation about her disappearance from public life...............

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/style/king-charles-iii-portrait-jonathan-yeo-red.html