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People literally are stupid. Inflation was a global phenomenon, clearly not “caused by” POTUS, and the US managed it far better than every peer.

The idea that if you don’t like inflation you should vote Trump is pretty much the definition of stupidity.






This is why the US is so great. You debase the dollar, the whole world suffers, and you can still claim "we've outperformed our peers". Fantastic.

The dollar traded at pretty stable levels through the 2020-2024 period, and most countries that could did similar things to their currencies as we did.

To be clear, it doesn't make sense to say "the dollar traded at pretty stable levels". You need an FX pair to make sense.

There are three big, floating currencies in the world: USD, EUR, and JPY. These currencies are overwhelming used for international trade. The USD<->EUR FX rate has been quite stable (~1.10) for about 10 years. However, the JPY<->USD FX rates has risen dramatically since 2022.


To be clear, it's obvious I'm saying across a basket of all FX pairs, the US traded at pretty stable levels. There is no sign at all of debasement.

JPY, likewise, has performed terribly against a basket of all FX pairs.

JPY is the outlier.


One look at a currency prices chart disproves the "debasing" theory.

The global inflation in question was a result of the COVID over-response. I imagine the indirect deaths from negative economic impacts far exceeded the 0.1% IFR COVID-19 peaked at.

Ugh, a trolley problem.

Yes, this is a utilitarian conundrum.

If seniors weren't the majority of the electorate, the economy would've won out.


Which was neither an American nor a Democratic Party phenomenon, and again the US did better with recovery than anyone else by a huge margin.

Revisionist history points toward COVID response being a left-wing thing, but there was almost zero variation in policy state to state. The only point of variation was school reopening schedules.

The one thing that was knowably wrong to do at the time we did it was to deliberately slow down testing to keep Trump’s numbers looking good. Everything else was flying blind and to the extent we made mistakes (visible in retrospect), we made fewer of them than any of our peers.


> almost zero variation in policy state to state

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears..

Did you visit any midwestern state during COVID? Florida?

You can use the Google on the internet machine as much as you like and cherry-pick some leftist city in any state, but: broad/legally-enforced mask mandates, forced business closures, etc. were absolutely not happening in many areas of the United States.


> there was almost zero variation in policy state to state.

That’s not true, what on earth are you talking about? Everything was closed for way longer in New York than in Arizona for example.


The vaccine was developed quickly under Trump. A genuine success he can claim happened under his rule.

He stopped talking about it at rallies because his supporters boo-ed him whenever he mentioned it.

We're partly at the mercy of his stupidity but also the stupidity (that we're not supposed to talk about apparently) of his most devoted voters.


He stopped talking about it because it was unpopular (because it is ineffective) and was forced.

No other vaccine is given entirely under the pretense that it will basically only be of benefit to other people.

COVID had a 0.1% IFR across the whole population.

If I am 18-30, why would I take a novel vaccine when it doesn't even prevent the illness or make me meaningfully more likely to survive? "To protect grandma, of course!" isn't why we agree to use TDAP vaccinations or formerly administered Polio or Smallpox vaccines.


> COVID had a 0.1% IFR across the whole population.

The US population is around 340 million people, no matter how "low" a rate appears (besides your number being wrong, it's 1% [1] and the number of reported infections is likely to be way lower than the actual amount), the sheer size of the country will be problematic. At the very least 1.2 million Americans died of Covid over the four years of the pandemic. That is the equivalent of one average size city getting wiped out by a nuclear blast - if this amount of death were caused by an external force, the US would utterly annihilate that external force. Hell they flattened Afghanistan for a few thousand people who died in 9/11.

And additionally, deaths aren't the only metric. I caught it two times, I was out sick for three weeks with more weeks of lower productivity following because that shit fried my brain. Others had it worse, a friend of mine was out for half a year. That is an effect worthy enough of a mask and vaccine mandate.

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/


People are still feeling it in their wallet every time they go grocery shopping. The greatest mistake of the Biden era was to ignore the cost of living explosion and the uncontrolled greed.

They absolutely didn’t ignore the cost of living explosion or uncontrolled greed.

Kamala proposed several policies targeted at those problems. Many of which I disagree with, but it’s demonstrably untrue they “ignored” it.

The American people were just lied to successfully by the world’s biggest liar.


I think the “ignored” is that the sitting VP was proposing policies for later that hadn’t been implemented! That was the biggest hurdle - she had to run as a dependent independent which is basically an impossibility.

Meanwhile the guy who spent years crying about the border only to then instruct the Republican party to kill a bill meant to fix exactly that problem won so....

It was partly a global man made issue because every country (including the U.S.) printed COVID money like crazy.

It was the Supreme Court, staffed by Trump, who stopped the COVID madness with their vaccine mandate ruling.

The other issue is that Biden and his cronies Nuland, Blinken, Sullivan et al. deliberately escalated the Ukraine situation in 2021/2022, with the well known consequences. Note that Zelensky himself begged Biden not to be too aggressive at the Munich summit in early 2022! If I were Ukrainian, I'd loathe Biden.

The Biden administration mandated that their EU "allies" would participate in disastrous sanctions, which sent the EU into economic stagnation.

The U.S. is safe because it has natural gas and the reserve currency, which means they can print money more easily. It is not to Biden's credit that the U.S. economy is comparatively better.

I'd say that over 50% of Europe is very happy with the Trump victory, the EU press does not reflect public opinion.


Only Orban and pro-russian parties were happy today in EU

Americans could had saved Russian economy with this move, currently facing an imminent stagflation, so I bet that Putin is also a very satisfied cat and licking his lips at this moment. He has a golden excuse to pause the war for a while in the most favorable conditions for him, and rearm himself


Why would any European be happy with Trump winning[0]? The cornerstone of Trump's economic policy is shittons of tariffs that will cut the EU out of trading with the US and devastate them.

[0] aside from "it gives us moral cover to start deporting citizens we don't like"


He said that in 2016 and 2016-2019 were great years for Europe. He won't leave NATO either. He has less room to maneuver than people think.

What he will probably do is reverse the insane foreign policies of the Biden administration and stop the world from burning. I think he'll deescalate the Ukraine and Taiwan situations. Probably he'll not attack Iran either even though he is said to be a bigger hawk on Israel than Biden. But he also has a sense for economics and will not want another oil crisis.


If he has a sense for economics why does he want to put 20% tariffs on everything?

Trump printed that Covid money. Trump escalated the Ukraine situation with his scandal over aid and casting doubt in the unity of NATO, exactly what Putin wanted.

I’m surprised you would write all of this, blaming Biden for Ukraine’s situation, without a word about Putin. I guess Putin isn’t responsible at all for Ukraine’s situation eh? It’s all magically Biden.


I never understood this argument. Of course Putin is responsible, but what is the point of mentioning it?

Suppose you are on a tour in Rwanda to observe gorillas, and the tour guide tells you not to look them in the eye. One tourist feels humiliated by that instruction, looks a gorilla in the eye and gets beaten up. Who do you blame if you know in advance what the gorilla will do?

It was patently obvious to anyone who experienced the cold war what Russia would do if Ukraine would be a NATO member, preferably equipped with Tomahawk missiles. It was obvious to Merkel, to Obama, to Zelensky.

Of course Russia is to blame, but what is the point if you are supposed to be the adult in the room? You are also to blame.


Ye, Trump was pissed over not getting info about Hunter Biden doing business there?

And the concept of 'NATO unity' is a joke. NATO is the US and the extension of its 'soft power'. How is e.g. unity between Greece and Turkey supposed to work out, or France with itself.




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