Trump's Second Term
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acbytesla
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You have to wonder if Musk actually believes his own BS. Tesla or Space-X doesn't get built without significant funding from the US government. And the US government wasn't going to do that for a foreign company.
acbytesla
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Some of these billionaire executives have a point. I'm just not sure they know what the point means.
The United States is the wealthiest nation on the planet. But that doesn't help the average American when half that wealth belongs to ten families. It doesn't help the average American when 90% of that wealth belongs to the top 10%.
MAGA suggests that we Make America Great Again. That's fine, When precisely would they say that time is? The 1950s maybe? When homes were affordable. When a Fortune 500 CEO was making 10 to 20 times what his employees were making. Not the hundred to ten thousands times they are now. When healthcare costs were somewhat reasonable. When tuition was free at many State Universities. When the top marginal tax rate was 90%.
Or did they mean the gilded age before child labor laws and the minimum wage?
The United States is the wealthiest nation on the planet. But that doesn't help the average American when half that wealth belongs to ten families. It doesn't help the average American when 90% of that wealth belongs to the top 10%.
MAGA suggests that we Make America Great Again. That's fine, When precisely would they say that time is? The 1950s maybe? When homes were affordable. When a Fortune 500 CEO was making 10 to 20 times what his employees were making. Not the hundred to ten thousands times they are now. When healthcare costs were somewhat reasonable. When tuition was free at many State Universities. When the top marginal tax rate was 90%.
Or did they mean the gilded age before child labor laws and the minimum wage?
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angrysoba
Philosophile
Here’s the thing, I actually agree with Musk that the H-1B visa is great for America and many of the MAGAts only oppose it because they don’t like foreigners. But their visions are clearly incompatible. Musk is there because he wants to use his influence in government for his own business, not because he cares about the MAGAts. And they will find out of course that they voted for an oligarchic clique who want to rearrange regulations for their own benefit and dismantle parts of the state that cost money that could otherwise be invested in their companies.
The Great Zaganza
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the wealth of the wealthiest Americans has increased dramatically, often manifold, since Covid. Average incomes has stagnated or increased only below inflation.
Anyone who thinks is how an economy is supposed to work is either a grifter or an idiot.
Anyone who thinks is how an economy is supposed to work is either a grifter or an idiot.
acbytesla
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Exactly. It's not about what is good for the country. It's about what is good for them personally.
angrysoba
Philosophile
Seems that some people have had a nasty shock. Say it ain’t so, but some of the MAGA people turned out to be …racist?! And Elon Musk turned out to be …. not the free speech paragon he told us he was?!
TragicMonkey
Poisoned Waffles
I knew the leopards were going to eat faces but I really didn't expect the leopards to start eating each others' faces so soon! They're digging into dessert when the hostess hasn't even seated them yet!
trump has sided with elonia over the H1B thing, can't wait to see the tears of regrets on the MAGAT faces..
www.theguardian.com
Trump sides with Musk on support for H-1B visas for foreign tech workers
Remarks follow social media posts from Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who vowed to go to ‘war’ to defend program
www.theguardian.com
LINOtrump has sided with elonia over the H1B thing, can't wait to see the tears of regrets on the MAGAT faces..
Trump sides with Musk on support for H-1B visas for foreign tech workers
Remarks follow social media posts from Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who vowed to go to ‘war’ to defend program
Brainster
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Trump doesn't need his blue-collar supporters anymore, and he will argue that this affects mostly those pointy-headed college graduates anyway, not real Americans. Still, given the nativism of a lot of MAGA fans, probably a bit of a cold shower.
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
I'm sure it's been said many times before in many ways, but I think one problem is a kind of numbing innumeracy when big numbers come up, such that people don't really register how crazy it is. I think a lot of people kind of lump millions and billions together, as a kind of generic "lotsa" without realizing the progressive nature of multiplication. A thousand cents is a coffee and a bagel. A thousand bucks is sure more than a buck, but probably less than a brake job on your car. Get to a thousand thousands and it's good and big, but still pretty thinkable. You can hope for that before you die. But a thousand millions is not just big, it's freaking huge.
I just read that Musk's estimated annual income (obviously not just salary but other appreciation and so forth) is approximately 14 billion dollars. The mean for Americans is about 80 thousand. So his income is approximately 175,000 times that of the average American. 14 Billion a year means you make over 440 dollars every second.
You can play around with rounded figures here, but if you were to divide that 14 billion into the approximately 2100 working hours an American worker puts in on average in a year, that would come to a picturesque 6,666,666.66 an hour, rather more than minimum wage.
This is the point where you should consider that what's "great for America" may not = what's great for Americans.
A lot of people are beginning to notice the difference. They also notice that what's great for Musk may be good for America but not for Americans. Unfortunately, many of them blame it on immigrants because they are stuck with the delusion that what's good for America somehow ought to be good for themselves, too. It's not true that they "only (!) oppose it because they don’t like foreigners." They oppose it because they are noticing that what's great for Musk isn't necessarily good for them. He may profit from the H-1B, but they don't.
But instead of seeing where the real problem is, they (again) stick with the delusion and blame their misery on the H-1B immigrants instead of on the economy, which isn't there to improve their lives. It never was, but once upon a time it wasn't as obvious as it is now. This is why they want to 'Make America Great (for people like themselves) Again' (even though it never really was), and this is why they buy into the idea that this is what Trump and his billionaires are trying to accomplish.
It's time to realize that it isn't. Musk and Ramaswamy have made it explicit that it isn't: Ordinary Americans are useless retards who don't deserve better lives. H-1B immigrants are better and cheaper.
This should make Americans realize what they have in common with the immigrants, but this realization is a difficult first step to take for people with heads full of patriotism.
Yeah, the system is rigged, just not for you or me,
We fightin' for our lives, just tryna ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ breathe.
Your time has finally come, we're done with this bout,
Ya ◊◊◊◊◊◊ around too much and you just found out.
(...)
It’s survival of the richest, man, the sick get played,
While the rich get richer in the system that they made.
(...)
They say it’s freedom, but it's just their pockets you're feedin',
When the cost of livin’s just a tax to be me, I'm over here seethin'.
Yeah, I’m done playin' their game, done with the stress,
They profit off our pain, turnin' lives into checks.
Yoonigan on YouTube, Dec 10, 2024
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Has Trump still not commented on this? What about Fox? How will they tackle this?
How will the MAGA base respond when the DOGE twins start cutting expenses for the education of American 'retards'?
Is there any other way of uniting the two MAGA factions at this point than a distracting war with Denmark and Greenland?
Aaja Chemnitz just called Trump disrespectful and his idea of U.S. annexation of Greenland crazy, so he has all the excuses he needs.
ETA: It just occurred to me: Many of you like to turn almost any discussion into one about weapons.
This link is for you: Inuit weapons (Wikipedia)
ETA: I hadn't noticed KDLarsen's post with a link to an article in The Guardian (Dec 28, 2024) :
I guess it was to be expected that he would side with the people who pay him instead of with the people who voted for him, but I'm surprised that he is doing to explicitly instead of simply doing one thing while saying another.
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Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
trump has sided with elonia over the H1B thing, can't wait to see the tears of regrets on the MAGAT faces..
Trump sides with Musk on support for H-1B visas for foreign tech workers
Remarks follow social media posts from Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who vowed to go to ‘war’ to defend program
"I have many H-1B visas on my properties" reminds me of that Granny Weatherwax quote about the definition of evil being 'treating people as if they were things'.
I wonder what kind of positions those 'H-1B visas' are filling on Trump's properties. I mean, it's not as if he's one of the tech bros, is it?
Andy_Ross
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TellyKNeasuss
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It's probably just another case of Trump being clueless. He uses lots of workers with H-2B visas, but I doubt that he has any workers with H-1B visas.
turingtest
Mistral, mistral wind...
Typical Trump, though, isn't? The H-1B program is meant to help the people who use it; but it's absolutely in character for Trump to treat it as one he can use to provide him the help. And it's really in line with the way he treats even his MAGA voters- they aren't people he can do things for, they're a group of people he can use to do things with. MAGA is, for Trump, like the H-1B- a great program he's used many times and is a great believer in because it works for him, and that's all that really counts.
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