All_Pro_Bills

The Saudi's might get upset and sell all their Treasury Bond holdings. I believe the Saudi's are the 3rd largest holder of US debt behind China and Japan. Or they might threaten to end the petrodollar agreement made back in the early 1970's for settling all oil trades in US dollars (note: oil producing countries that have recently tried to do this had their governments overthrown or were attacked). maintaining this petrodollar arrangement is the number one Middle East national security interest of the US government. The US dollar status as world reserve currency and trade settlement provides special privileges to the US no other nation can utilize. This system is already becoming compromised as the percentage of reserves and settlement in dollars is falling but a it is happening slowly and in an orderly fashion. This would speed it up considerably and create a lot of chaos if foreign holders like oil producing countries suddenly decided they do not need or even decided to dump dollars. They would all come home and that would result in the dollar losing a of of its "value" and hence purchasing power via foreign exchange markets. That would result in all of our standards of living dropping and lots of inflation related to import prices. I guess the government could hand out more worthless dollars in more relief bills but they wouldn't be worth much. But if the Saudi's do this the US would threaten to stop the protection racket the US provides through military muscle that keeps their brutal and oppressive regime in power. Without the supply of US weapons, intelligence, and support the population would soon overthrown the monarchy. So they would be forced to pivot to either Russia or China as a new protector. In summary, there's a lot of potential for trouble and turmoil in the foreign policy area and virtue signalling might have a cost here. A problem in people's thinking with many issues is they fail to foresee or entertain there may be consequences or response to all actions taken. So yes, a change for the better! Edit: I should add that of course we all knew the crown prince was the force behind the killing. It was obvious at the time. But its not clear what the motivation is at this time to state the obvious. Perhaps this has been forgotten by President Biden or whoever is performing the tasks and duties assigned to the office of the President.

I disagree with your disagreement of my assessment of the left (if that sentence makes sense!). Frankly, I see them as a very real threat to our freedoms and rights. I see big government led by the Democrats, media, big tech and intelligence agencies working in cooperation and coordination to shut down any ideas or discussions or opposition to any of their views. Fact checkers, sensors, all kinds of methods to suppress what I consider essential acceptance of diverse views and opinions feeding into an environment where critical thinking and intelligent expression and free exchange of ideas are healthy. For example, I may not agree with everything or anything other posters have to say here but I support their right to speak their mind and respect them for stating their views. After all, why should I assume I am right about everything and others are always wrong? But that's the essential argument of the sensors, that they know better than anyone else what the absolute truth is about everything. And other voices should not be allowed to speak for whatever rationale they decide to apply. The current political and social environment is not healthy. Its a sign of a sick society.

Trump ran on a populist message but never really delivered on any of his promises or stated objectives for the people forgotten by the Democratic party a couple decades ago and never really represented by the core of the Republican party. That's working people, people that mind their business and do their jobs, small business people, fly over state citizens. People that hold what liberals view as quaint and outdated views, people that are tired of being blamed for all the ills of society. His other message was that of a swamp infested Washington federal government. A government more concerned with its own needs and power than serving the citizens that put them there, intelligence services spying on their own citizens. An unaccountable government out of control. Watching the Democrats 2021 vengence and revenge tour just confirms and reinforces these beliefs in the 75 million voters. The left is simply a political cast of sore winners that seems to revel in punishing their opponents. So much for the voices of reconciliation and coming together. All this will not be forgotten nor will it be forgiven when the tables turn. What is the saying on how to treat the people you meet on the way up and why? But I don't see Trump running again for the top job. What I do expect is some other leader or leaders that will present themselves as a more polished and refined version of Trump appearing on the scenes. And the realization that to defeat and drain the swamp you need to come at them from all angles. So expect lots of candidates at all state, local, and federal levels to begin appearing on ballots in most States. Winning just the presidency isn't enough.

Somebody that sees thing coming as I do. The entire thing has been in motion for maybe 20-25 years now. It's all unavoidable given the circumstances. Inflation and perhaps the greatest financial and economic disaster in all of history. That's why I think the Democrats and Biden did Trump a great favor in winning the election. I saw it described best that becoming President now is like "replacing the Captain of the Titanic after the ship hit the iceberg". Its going down. It will all play out but too late to have the blame stick on the previous administration. As prices of everything rise along with unemployment and living standard fall its most likely the Democrats will lose control of both the Senate and the House in 2022 and then the presidency in 2024. Along with the abandonment of a lot of foolish social policies and beliefs that will look absurd and ridiculous in the context of the coming calamity. Buckle up, make some sound investment or savings decisions, and develop or foster social and community arrangements and relationships that will help as cooperation and not conflict will be required to get through things. Current labels like liberal, conservative, democrat, republican, and other associations will not seem to matter. What I don't quite get to this point is the elite's know their system is going to crash and burn and a lot of their wealth and power with it. So what's their angle to keep control? Some draconian enforcement of some new order of tighter controls on freedom?

So you're saying detainees were tortured and murdered in these camps while Trump was President and now that Biden is President they are something like Disneyland?

If you keep making rational statements and push some common sense approaches you're going to get banned from speaking. Yes, it would make sense to perform a thorough and complete assessment and investigation of all the events that occurred before, during, and after the Jan 6th riots along with motivations and suspected causes. Who was there, what they were doing, how things escalated, why there was no additional security given a known potential risk for violence. Who failed to act, why? etc.. But let's not confuse the search for truth and facts with the desire to put on a political show, reach some per-conceived conclusion, and then take some actions disguised as "protecting democracy" that have the true intention of enacting measures to restrict political and constitutional freedoms. Targeted at the majorities political opposition. Only convenient "facts" will be allowed by the Congressional majority and anything not supporting the already tried and convicted case laid out in the press will be suppressed or disregarded. Its coming, Patriot Act 2.0 from the Committee for Public Safety.

I started to watch the first video but I could only deal with it for a couple minutes. I suggest adding these videos to interrogation and torture techniques. After being forced to watch a few minutes of these idiots in action you'll be willing to tell the interrogators anything and welcome death as an alternative to viewing the entire video. Frankly, I can't stand these intellectuals and academics. They live in a sheltered fantasy world completely disconnected from the reality. They push a lot of "theories" that are presented as "science" and validated statistical facts but their ideas are really nothing more than subjective and anecdotal opinions and viewpoints. Irrational and delusional viewpoints. Their main concern is feelings and emotions. They view words as harmful as a punch in the face (if you've been punched in the face before you know this is not true). They have no concept that people outside of their sphere of existence in this academic fantasy actually work at jobs that produce goods and services they depend on for their existence. Without the support of all the people they view as oppressors and undesirable they would quickly die of exposure or hunger. I'm slightly familiar with Critical Race Theory. Its more sociological nonsense. From what I get the bottom line of it all is white people are inherently racist and black people are always their victims. The idea is white people need to change or be marginalized in order for the "system" to change. My alternative interpretation of this is to say that the only way an African American person can be successful is if the white man allows them to do so. More or less gives them permission to be successful and not be "racist" towards them and hold them down. This is complete nonsense. I can't imagine any successful African American person buys into this ridiculous theory. I expect they'll attribute their success to what all people do. Which is a lot of hard work and effort. The theory also fails to accommodate the existence of mixed race children. Several of my nieces and nephews are mixed race. So what are they? 1/2 racist and 1/2 victim? How do you reconcile or deal with that? My overall observation about the systemic racism narrative is that proponents of this are trying to convince us that we all still live in 1860 or 1950 America. And while racism and bias do exist it is not something the overwhelming majority of Americans either actively practice, condone, or believe in. The race hustle believers will take one or two examples of bad behavior and extrapolate it to conclude the entire population is acting in the same manner. Simply preposterous. For all its alleged faults, America is the most tolerant and fair society in existence. Now or at any time in human history. The fact that so many people of color desire to come here invalidates the entire concept of systemic racism. Why would a person of their own free will come to live in some country where they'd be subject to constant and consistent racial discrimination? After all, this country elected a man of African descent as President for 2 terms. With a majority of white voters casting votes for him. Did they somehow ignore their inherent racist makeup and vote for him anyway over his opposition which happened to be a white guy? What does CRT say about that?

If you've ever been caught up in any kind of corporate downsizing or budget crunch and lost your job then you know there is absolutely no moral issue here. You are an input cost that needs to be eliminated. Plain and simple. You're gone. Its stylish now for businesses to preach the "team" concept and all the diversity concepts but when push comes to shove that all is going to fly out the window with a lot of your fellow employees as the bottom line is the bottom line. This is reality. Like it or not. It happened to me a few times and it sucks. But I dealt with it and did what I had to do to move on to other ventures. Most others in the same situation did the same. Labor is like any other cost input. And when you raise the cost of labor or business conditions worsen there needs to be some sort of adjustments. Just what those specific adjustment are and in what combination or composition is not always clear. If you raise labor costs to any business they'll need to adjust in some way. There's no avoiding that and morality has little to do with the outcome. The fundamental problem with a lot of people's thinking is that your cost of living has absolutely nothing to do with your ability to generate income or be productive. Your cost of living and maintenance of your lifestyle is not your employers problem to solve. You own it.

A friend of mine runs a moderately successful engine repair shop. He doesn't have any advanced degrees nor does he subscribe to any specific economic theory. He employs 5 people in the operation. These 5 employees have varying levels of skill and ability. Some can do a "standard" repair job in a couple hours. Others are not as skilled or proficient and therefore take longer. In one of our conversations he told me about one of his relatively new employees. This employee had approached him asking for a raise. What he told the employee was interesting and insightful. He told the employee he would give him a raise but only when certain conditions were met. Those conditions being his skill level and experience allowed him to do the job more effectively and efficiently. In other words, when his productivity improved. The problem at the time was the employee wanting the raise needed 5+ hours to do the job vs. a senior highly proficient employee needing 2 hours. And to do the job in 5+ hours he also needed to consume the time of the boss and the senior employee. Taking them away from their work and making them less productive. So my friend told him "when you can do the job in less than 5 hours and do not need any of my time or the time of the other employee I can give you a raise". If my friend was required to pay this employee some "minimum" level of compensation that exceeded what he could produce he wouldn't have hired him. His unskilled status wouldn't have fit his businesses "cost model". Nor would that employee have been provided the opportunity to gain proficiency at the task and increase his earnings potential. I think that nicely supports your premise of "pricing" low and unskilled workers out of the employment market. Also, I think we (you and I) would agree minimum wage jobs are not intended to be lifetime employment. They are basically entry level jobs where employees can gain experience and expertise to increase their earnings potential allowing them to climb up the job and skill ladder. But like I said in previous posts the rungs on the ladder above the minimum wage are broken. Policy makers should concentrate on fixing the broken steps on the job ladder and not on the bottom rung.

Thanks for the well articulated response. I actually have an undergraduate degree in economics. I spent some time earning an okay living in the discipline before moving on to other adventures that in all honesty paid a lot more. I can tell you the most important thing I learned is that you can design a study or some economic model to produce pretty much any result you want by tweaking the inputs and jiggling the assumptions. I'll wager the study you cite was paid for and run by somebody advocating a raise in the minimum wage. No surprise our beliefs are confirmed by the study! Conversely, I can find studies that show it will drastically raise unemployment sponsored by people against raising it. No surprise our beliefs are confirm by our study too! Lying with statistics is one thing its been called. But don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I'm correct and you're incorrect. However, if the minimum wage jumps to $15 or some adjusted level of $25 be prepared for a real-life outcome much different than any studies predict pro or con. I think it was Yogi Berra that said "In theory, theory and practice are the same, in practice, theory and practice are different"

The pattern is game "back on" as Trump's not President anymore so nobody is going to piss and moan about this or raise any concerns.

If it was only that simple as the problem is the dynamic nature of changes in business conditions. And how it impacts the people running and working in these businesses. Its about changes to the "rules", in this case the minimum amount of pay per hour you are required to pay out, and what adjustments are necessary to stay in business. So you need to adapt to the changing rules of the game. Businesses constantly face these issues. Input costs like a restaurants food costs rise and rarely fall for example. But the root of the problem isn't about what the minimum wage should be as I'll get to at the end. Although labor costs are a big component of the "costs" of running a business there are other factors. Other inputs, fixed and variable costs, taxes, regulations. specific costs and attributes of the business, along with specific costs and attributes of the market. The simplest response to raising the labor cost would be to raise prices to compensate the business for the additional costs. Or shrink the product and hold the price like make the Whopper smaller. Absent that you'd need to either increase productivity (measured in the value of output per hour) or cut costs somewhere else. A fundamental question is how do you pay somebody that generates $10 of value per hour a pay rate of $15 per hour? Over the course of a year you'll lose about $10K per employee. The more people you employ the more you lose. Its like being in business to sell a dollar for 90 cents. So the challenge is to get at or above a $15 value generating level per hours per employee. Most likely you'll try to pass on the additional cost by raising prices and if that doesn't work then you'll be left with the undesirable task of letting somebody go. Or given a rise in labor costs entertain the idea of some sort of automation which now becomes more attractive from a cost perspective. IMO the minimum wage debate is an exercise in political misdirection under the guise of helping the unfortunate minimum wage worker. A distraction because it avoids any discussion of a fatal structural problem with the US economy of today. These minimum wage jobs aren't designed to be lifetime jobs for people. But for many that is the current reality. This is entry level work to get people into the labor force to get experience and skills that can be leveraged to move up the ladder. But the rungs above minimum wage in the employment ladder have been removed by outsourcing and eliminating these opportunities through one way or another that are too detailed to go into here. So just by looking at the large number of people stuck at the bottom there's no where to go for most of them. They are stuck here without a lot of viable options. Rather than devolving into a debate about the governments plan to dictate wage levels to small employers maybe they should focus on the things that the government and their corporate master have enacted and done in order for powerful corporations and Wall Street to strip mine US workers of their jobs and dignity along with putting millions of small businesses out of existence while raising their profits and incomes to obscene levels?

You're insinuating some racial motivation to stop people of Latino decent, specifically Mexican to enter the country although most of the recent "undocumented" are from Central American countries. Countries where the US spends billions supporting unpopular and typically oppressive and corrupt regimes. Assuming they really care about human rights vs. acquiring political power by bitching about things but taking no action to stop bad policy maybe the left should focus on eliminating the dictators our government bankrolls and supports which abuse human rights and inflict suffering on their people. But what you're suggesting is that because most Canadians are white they get a free pass. The go-to move of the left. Have no proof or facts or hard data, pull out the race card. That we all know explains everything when facts are inconvenient. But I think the reason there's no talk about a norther border wall is because there is no problem to address. Unless there's some problem with a big number of Canadian street gang members sneaking across the border and politely forcing American's to watch Curling and eat donuts. I don't think so.

In principal I tend to support the idea. But I'm not really sure why a study is needed. Most likely the committee will be packed with like-minded individuals already concluding reparations are necessary and a good idea. I doubt a single voice expressing any reservations or concerns about the proposal will be heard. So with the outcome never in doubt the only reason to assemble a committee is to provide "cover" for politicians so they can say it wasn't their decision but rather that of a group of "experts" on the subject. So their recommendations need to be accepted and the country needs to move forward with the committee's recommendations. Plausible deniability in case something goes wrong one way or the other. As a skeptic I expect the most likely outcome of the government enacting the program that pays out several trillion dollars in reparations is noting much changes. After a historic spending spree by recipients of the payouts almost everyone is back at the starting line with the exception of the most industrious of the recipients that use the funds for endeavors like starting a business or pursuing higher education goals. There could be a lot of social benefit all around for targeting monies to productive outcomes like these and not some consumer buying binge. So in the end almost everyone will be no better off and they'll come back to the wishing well demanding additional handouts for perpetuity. Along with this the parties behind the "end systemic racism" movement will never admit that the goal has been achieved. Even if I am wrong and it all works out great. Never. Because achieving the goal will mean the battle has been won and therefore there is no legitimate reason for the group to continue to exist. So the group will disband and surrender all the power and influence they have built up and acquired over the course of time and call it mission accomplished? Yeah right.

I hear what you're saying and think you're on the right track here. And from the posts we don't usually agree. A distinction to our views might be you may perceive this as some type of negligence rather than how I see it as a conscious choice. In my view you get what you pay for? Right? If you want to live in a state that provides its citizen's "more freedom" from government oversight and over-reach and interference in every day life and as a result has little regulation and low/no state income taxes and a cheaper cost of living vs. liberal nanny state States and limited government authority which leaves a lot of things to the private sector to sort out and determine then you need to at least understand and acknowledge what potential risks and rewards that set up might produce. So if the residents of Texas want to pay for the "risk mitigation cost" of taking the precautions of insuring this condition never occurs again they can do that by putting up the funds in one form or another to eliminate the risks. Reminds me of what we say in project management, good, fast, or cheap. Pick 2.

Please spare us all the plug on the virtues of socialism. People help others on their own. They don't need the government to tell them or force them to do it. They do it on their own. Voluntarily. As witnessed by many charities and other non-government sponsored ways citizens help other citizens. I know people in Texas and many with power and water are taking in friends and relatives that have neither. They didn't need some government official to advise or direct them to take action. It doesn't matter that the people they help are Democrats or Republicans or Liberals or Conservative. The core principles of Socialism are not about "helping people". Its been an abysmal failure everywhere. Socialism is an economic system that in theory seeks to divide the output of society in some "equitable" fashion. In practice its a two tiered system with "insiders" are more equally treated than outsiders. Outsiders being the common people not affiliated with the ruling class. In that respect its fundamentally the same as our current system where DC insiders set all the rules we rock and roll to without much input from the peasants. The failure of the socialist system eventually falls to a fundamental problem. While it focuses on an equitable distribution of consumption or rewards it avoids any mention of an equitable distribution of production and work. Which at some point raises the question, if I work hard and produce 20 units of output then why do I only get 2 units of consumption which is the same as the guy that products 1 unit of output and gets 2 units of consumption? Why am I working so hard for nothing? I'm going to dial back my work to 2 units of output. That way I get out what I put in. Pretty soon everyone that's productive gets the same idea and the whole thing goes to hell and people have to eat zoo animals and their pets like what went down in Venezuela. So if you're really into socialism don't forget to hang on to those grill Husky recipe ideas. In a couple years you'll need them..

Based on specs I've seen an average solar panel can produce 1.5Kw per day. And in Winter the number of panels needed to produce some "base" level of power increases with a lower Sun "angle" and less daylight hours available. So far its use has been limited to supplementing base power loads or home based systems that benefit from generous subsidies and tax credits to replace a portion of power coming form the grid or even going back into the grid when surplus power is generated form these arrays. Plus a few times our power was knocked out by storms the solar panels were useless. Because they generate DC power and there is a need for an inverter which convert that power to AC. As the inverter runs off the grid when the power is out the inverter is out. In my opinion rudimentary solar and wind power is never going to replace the power produced from natural gas, coal, and nuclear power plants. There needs to be some big jump in efficiency. If the decision is to go that route with current technologies then some major downsizing of civilization is going to be required. Ideas like replacing the entire internal combustion fleet with EV's is a fantasy unless there's an expectation of lower levels of mobility and use. As 1 gallon of gasoline produces 44Kw of energy and 1 solar panel produces 1.5Kw of energy and we currently consume about 9.3M barrels of gasoline a day the mathematical result of how many solar panels would be needed to replace all that gasoline consumption is staggering. Along with all that petroleum and petrochemical inputs required for the manufacturing process. I don't know but do solar panel and wind turbine factories run on solar and wind generated energy or do they run on things like natural gas?

Back in the days of the Carter administration NASA and the DOE initiated a research and development project called the Solar Power Satellite System (SPSS) designed to build and deploy space-based solar collectors that would constantly beam power down to Earth based collecting stations. I was envisioned the system would be scalable and would provide uninterrupted and potentially unlimited amounts of electrical energy. The system consisted of multiple large collectors in geosynchronous orbit beaming down power to one or more collection stations that would connect to the power grid. But the Reagan administration killed the project when they took power after the 1980 election. Most likely the desire to continue with the oil based economy and multiple lobbies and special interests hastened its demise too. The biggest technical obstacle was the means of beaming down the power to the Earth based stations. Microwave, laser, some kind of Earth tethered connection like the space elevator concept. A physical constraint was the amount of lift capacity needed and the expertise and manpower needed to assemble such large structure in space. One possible solution would have been a massive expansion of the shuttle program. Budget and cost constraints also posed issues. But 40 years ago a group forward thinking "out of the box" scientists and politicians saw a long-term solution that if followed through might have had us in a good position going forward.

Central governments and powerful monopolies do fade away or get removed or replaced. History is littered with such examples. Governments, empires, corporations, whole industries. I suspect citizens of Rome or Egypt or the Spanish and British empires, the Aztecs when the conquistadors arrived, or hundreds of Monarchs throughout history had expectations of power and control into the future forever. Then the Huns showed up at the city gates or the public lost faith and looked to other arrangements. Complex systems fail. Sometimes they fail because the cost of maintaining and running them exceeds the benefit. Sometimes they fail because people just lose faith in them. What is more inefficient and ineffective than the US government? How much faith do we have in the government to get anything right? I completely agree with you regarding Electric Vehicles. But I don't see the issue of where all this power generation to "fuel" the EV fleet is going to come from being discussed a lot. Just by doing some simple math. The US consumes about 9.3 million barrels of gasoline daily. At 44 gallons per barrel. One gallon of gasoline produces 44Kw of energy output. A standard 2x4 solar panel produces 1.5Kw per day. Ignoring efficiency factors one way or the other it would take 29 solar panels to replace the output of one gallon of gasoline. If my math is right it would require 269.7 million solar panels to replace one days gasoline consumption operating at spec to 1.5Kw. And as I'm not an electrical engineer or an expert on the efficiencies or inefficiencies of EV or the internal combustion engine I'd leave it to those experts to derive an exact number. Whatever the specific number might be its a big one. As such I think the 100% EV fleet idea is a wild fantasy absent some massive amount of new uninterruptible generation capacity.

LOL. We all know the truth. The distinction is you have the courage and independence to speak it. Others pretend to believe something else. Like a friend of mine said "its okay to lie to me but don't lie to yourself". In this case believing the media is fair and unbiased is lying to yourself. The media won't even acknowledge there is any inconsistency. Or challenge anything. They will pretend contradictions don't exist, maybe rationalize it away. They have their heads so far up Biden's ass they think its always nighttime. Typical questioning - Question: "President Trump, why do you continue to support White Supremacists and racists?" Question: "President Biden, what brand are you feeding the White House dogs?" Only softball questions will be asked of Biden. No WH correspondent will challenge or question anything. Obedience and submission to the cause is necessary for continued membership to the DC insiders club.

20 years is a long time. And I'm no futurist. But I don't share some bleak and grey vision that people will simply serve no purpose other than to exist. I expect there will be enough thinking and independent individuals that will choose to make a different type of society. But in 20 years I don't think the Democratic or Republican parties will exist. I see the central government being and becoming more ineffective and losing a lot of its power so I don't see the "big brother" scenario playing out. Shopping malls will disappear. Some large scale war will have occurred or be in progress. We still won't have flying cars. Oil and gas will still be around. Green energy will be important but will not replace fossil fuel sources. A revival of nuclear power will present itself. All the social issues of today will appear unimportant and trivial relative to the challenges of the time. "Hard" skills will be a must. Globalization will give way to localization. Technology in science and medicine will continue to make progress but technology will not be revered with any God-like qualities to replace human interaction or control.

I would agree that's one potential future but I'd ask you to consider the concept that human history and evolution is not linear but rather cyclical. Civilizations rise and fall like the grandeur of Roman Empire was followed by the depths of Dark Ages and then the enlightenment of the Renaissance. Economic booms are proceeded by economic busts and so forth. War leads to destruction while the following peace leads to a rebuilding. Progress does not follow some straight line extrapolation. That's why most forecasts of the future are wrong. The forecasters are thinking in a linear fashion and their models reflect this thinking. What you're describing is an evolution in not only technology but in the amount of energy that can be made available as more efficient and abundant sources become available. From brute force human labor all the way to petroleum and nuclear leading to the "green energy" movement of present day. I'd recommend reading "The Long Emergency" by Kunstler. The premise behind most of the authors conclusions is the oil age presented the human race with a one time endowment of an abundance of energy and once that is gone none of the available alternatives will replace it much less provide more energy for future expansion. While I don't agree with all of his conclusions it does raise a lot of interesting questions.

I'm in a similar position. For context I live in an upper middle class single family home neighborhood. Most of the residents are either professionals, small business owners, or mid-level managers in one of the many corporations dotting the region. Most have advanced degrees, Masters and PhD's. The demographics of the area are diverse, white, black, Asian (Chinese & Indian mostly), Hispanics. Same for my work environment. My natural instincts now are to not categorize or label anyone in this manner. With experience you learn everyone is looking for the same thing. A decent opportunity and a good life for themselves and their families and to see their kids do well or better than they are. My grandparents were immigrants to this country. My parents were working class people that saved and sacrificed to provide their kids a better life. We grew up in a working class environment and my lifelong values and character were molding by this environment. Its impossible for me to comprehend how much different it is growing up surrounded by relative affluence. The kids think my stories about growing up are quaint but don't really understand the realities of hardship. People living in my area are completely insulated from the civil and social stiff experienced and witnessed by others on the ground. Most I expect lean to the conservative side of things. In the Summer there was a demonstration by local school aged kids protesting against injustice and inequality. it was very orderly and polite as I would expect. While I supported their efforts I wondered how they could even conceptualize of injustice and inequality. Most are truly children of privilege. But that privilege is derived from wealth and income and not race. I expect few if any have experienced any of those situations or know what it means to be poor or want for things (growing up I came to know these things). I laughed to myself as I thought it likely the biggest problem in life they've faced is something like a weak WiFi signal. In my view our social issues are not about race so much as they are about income and education. Poor people just don't get treated very well in this country or maybe anywhere no matter their skin color. The cops in my area are as unlikely to hassle affluent blacks as the are to hassle affluent whites. I think the American way of life is exemplified by you work hard and see your kids do better than you. You pull your weight and expect the same of others. I think one of the problems today is there is less and less opportunity to do that given how the economy has changed over the past 30 years. Even college graduates have less opportunity and lower expectations of income. There are a couple big demographics that don't see this way of life as possible. Most "blue collar" jobs have disappeared in manufacturing & the supporting industries and businesses decimating a lot of small towns and cities in the process. These people see little to be hopeful for. The majority of them were Trump supporters. They are not inherently bad people but rather they have lost faith in either of the major political parties to do anything for them. After all, both presided over the elimination of their livelihoods. Coastal liberals don't understand them. But coastal liberals have been beneficiaries of globalization, financialization, and the information economy. The majority are poor whites living near or below the "poverty level". For these people the better life is a fantasy. The other big disadvantaged group is the inner city poor. There have been programs and actions for 50+ years to end inner city poverty. Most of them administered by politicians claiming to be supportive of these citizens. And to this point without a lot of success. The problem with these programs is they create government dependents rather than independent people. I believe at their core people generally don't want handouts but rather a helping hand. But the current craze is more handouts. Guaranteed incomes and other things. Free stuff that requires no effort or work, just proof of your existence to qualify. This creates a lot of people that just get by but have no opportunity to reach their potential or do something great. I believe the left/right divide is creating a lot of noise but not doing much to move towards solutions. In many respects its a false conflict fighting at the margins for some meager prize. The elites control 98% of the middle while the peasants on the left or right fight for the 1 or 2 percent at the margins. For the most part the left uses the later (inner city poor) and the right uses the former (working class white) in their political efforts claiming to care but not doing much of anything for either. Meanwhile the real powers skate through the center unnoticed because of the left/right conflict and diversion they created.

The original PPE problem in early 2020 was not the result of "low" inventories or anything Obama or Trump did or didn't do. There were adequate stocks in the US in late 2019 but China simultaneously withheld evidence and information on the virus in late 2019 while importing lots of PPE from the US and curtailing Chinese exports to other countries. When the outbreak hit the rest of the world there was a lack of protective equipment here and in other countries as a result. But we're not allowed to criticize China about anything!

You're right to point out it wasn't a fiscal issue at its inception. We all lived through it so we know what happened and I'm not surprised there's some historical revisionism going on given the idea appears to be a failure. The Defund movement was launched as a result of misconduct such as the George Floyd killing. These events also brought the BLM movement to prominence. And although it got support from local government officials in many cities the idea of defunding and eliminating police didn't play to well with the citizens in the cities. Polls showed a vast majority wanted either the "same level of policing" or "more". As the BLM/activist movement expressed their ire and hate towards the police many choose to pack it in, take retirement or leave the force. This left cities shorthanded and short-shifted in patrol numbers and coverage. It seems like crime rose in proportion to those cuts. Of course the citizens in the communities the activist targeted for "their help" suffered the most (maybe a lesson to avoid activists!). A core concept behind the idea was many types of situations the police were responding to were inappropriate for law enforcement and their presence only escalated the situation. Such as domestic disputes. The idea was to substitute community and social activists for the police in these cases along with others that were equipped to handle these types of issues, It might be a good concept in theory but it doesn't seem to be getting much traction to this point.