cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/5566633
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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/MechCADdie on 2025-04-04 08:19:11+00:00.
Fun fact! - this is was Ben Stein is teaching in Ferris Bueller’s day off.
Anyone? Anyone?
The Great Depression.
Maybe they should have been more attentive than send all the time preparing an extremely elaborate day of playing hokey.
And then the conservative brain worms convinced him to support the people who did it again.
I heard he became a MAGA though. How ironic.
Surprisingly, he was actually a terrible person BEFORE MAGA.
Not really ironic. The dude was part of Nixons administration. Trump is basically Nixon 2.0. Trumps whole worldview was shaped by Nixon or guys who worked for Nixon.
You are not wrong…
Proof yet again that “business leaders” typically don’t know shit about shit.
This guy is no business leader- he bankrupt his own casinos multiple times and just stiffs people on payment. He’s a grifter who happened to be born into money
It is all 1000% on purpose.
They intend to ride it out and profit from all of this, and we’ll let them due to cowardice and division.
The so called geniuses of business have a better batting average than the average person but they are still prone to the same fuck ups and emotionally driven foolishness as anyone else. I was reading about the Theranos scam and how many supposed brilliant corporate leaders all threw big money at it without taking the time to investigate it first.
If you have Hulu or sail the seven seas, check out “The Dropout” which is a mini-series about Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes.
I had never heard of it before but I now just finished watching it after reading your recommendation and it was really great, thank you!
You’re welcome. Glad you enjoyed it.
They LOVE massive depressions. They buy up real estate and failing companies cheap with their massive cash reserves.
Maybe it is a good idea to get rid of senate seats with new people. 50 years the same people might be a bit too long
How about making more then 2 political parties viable with no spoiler effect via state level electoral reform?
I’m good with lengthy term limits, even, but there needs to be something
It’s not really a term limit, but here in Norway you’re not allowed to work a government job after passing 70.
This also applies to elected officials, so hey at least we don’t have anyone over 70.
34/100 US senators are 70 or older, with another 22 being 64-69 (potentially hitting that mark by the end of their 6 year terms, depending on when they started). The oldest two are both 89.
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If we don’t get these paid actors out of Congress we’re going to lose in ways most people really don’t want to believe
They did not have computerized voting back then, it was paper ballots mostly. Until then I fully expect the same voting patterns as the last generation to continue; yes, democrats will win more at the mid terms. No, little will change. I fully expect democrats to win solid majorities in both houses in 2026.
Americans, as a group, should look at exit polls and understand them, and use paper ballots as the rule, not the exception. Until then, it’s just an oligarchy. And they don’t have our backs .
But I don’t think it will change any time soon
There’s no way in fucking hell that Democrats win the Senate in 2026. Absolutely not. Senate will be GOP majority for the foreseeable future. As for the House, yes, they’ll likely win pretty big there in 2026.
You would be correct if the majority of USA states fairly counted the ballots. But if not, there is no reason to prevent a double chamber majority. In fact, it’s necessary then, because it derails paper ballot efforts.
This is a long game, so to speak. There will still be dem presidents later too.
What people who decry fascism tend to overlook is that the country has not been a democracy for a while. This is all theater on a grand scale, for decades, and we are the audience
I’ll be honest. I have absolutely no idea what you’re trying to say. Dems are not winning the Senate in 2026. There is no way dude.
And that is why I am going to clean up on the betting markets. More seriously, anyone thinking of this exchange only need compare exit polls for all the states, in general and primaries.
I remember when exit polls used to be talked about a lot in the 1970s. But I think most people reading will be puzzled about why I harp on a type of polling.
Likewise I think finding exit poll results might be challenging these days in the USA. Which is a pity, indeed
Great depression, and 2/3rds drop in global trade resulted.
I present also 1828 dementia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_of_Abominations which started southern secessionist movements.
Unjustifiable trade attacks like all wars are bad for unity. If California or Texas has to pay $10k more per car so metal and auto workers elsewhere get high pay, national unity fractures. Everything being super expensive with no jobs because of global trade retaliations, means that Mexicans stop being a unifying problem, and those white Michigan and Pennsylvania blue collar workers cheering for Trump are the problem. Better cars elsewhere in the world become a bigger national unity factor the more protection $ is spent on inferior cars.
… Ford begins furiously colaborating with Lada.
Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.
Orrrrrr. Putin did study history and manipulated the village idiot to intentionally repeat it by telling said idiot it would make him sooper popyoolar (playing on his personality disorder) and also i will throw you out a fucking window if you dont cuz you owe me all your moneez (russian loans).
Let’s not forget that the Republicans are an army of sycophants with zero capacity to think or act for themselves. Trump is a narcissistic pawn and absolute loser, but even at the highest level of power he’s only a problem because the Republican Party are either spineless cowards or deranged cultists.
I have a feeling they learned, and then said “what a great idea to crash the economy. It’s so easy, let’s do it.”
hey asshole, trade wars are good, and easy to win!
i swear to god you can get in line behind our eternally healthy, young, sexy god-king or you can get ooooout
Thats supposed to be cautionary, but to the MAGA Nazis, its a Game Plan.
Yes but only the racist parts. They don’t want to repeat the great depression, but are going to because they didn’t actually learn about history.
Never saw Ferris Bueler I take it?
Is that… What now? Anyone? Voodoo economics?
Smoot-Hawley 2: Electric Boogaloo
Not the second time but some are saying this one is similar to two others including smoot-hawley that triggered a huge economic downturn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_of_Abominations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tariff_laws_in_the_United_States
Someone has either never seen “Ferris Buller’s Day Off,” can’t remember it very well, or didn’t pay attention. This was covered in class!
In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the… Anyone? Anyone?.. the Great Depression, passed the… Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act? Which, anyone? Raised or lowered?.. raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work, and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression. Today we have a similar debate over this. Anyone know what this is? Class? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone seen this before? The Laffer Curve. Anyone know what this says? It says that at this point on the revenue curve, you will get exactly the same amount of revenue as at this point. This is very controversial. Does anyone know what Vice President Bush called this in 1980? Anyone? Something-d-o-o economics. Voodoo economics.
Worth noting Laffers claim had already been proven to be likely true by the time that was filmed. The claim is you can set a tax rate so high that it can encourage tax evasion, avoidance, and fraud and that reducing the rate below this level can bring in as much if not more tax revenue which was demonstrated to be likely true in 1983.
Laffer curve in political practice is BS. It is proven that you raise 0 revenue at 100% tax rate because no one is actually paid to work, then. The political distortion is “therefore, always lower taxes for more revenue”.
No it makes sense it just isn’t scientific nor does it justify any cut after 1983.
nor does it justify any cut after 1983.
That was my point on how it is misused.
proven to be true? that is news to me.
proven to be likely true and you can look at the 1983 tax cuts for evidence of it being likely true.
So the cut that went into effect in '83 was passed in '81, just before a recession hit. So the US seeing an increase in revenue compared to the few years before that where unemployment was up over 8% and gdp dropping, is really more about the economy recovering than tax policy changes.
Except the size of the cut was substantial and we still brought in more revenue because of people moving wealth from foreign banks to US ones. Your explanation doesn’t account for this.
proven likely true means not proven true. Way to many factors. I personally thing the theory has a sorta merit but is very limited and vague (in the sense of there is no identification of where the exact sweet spot of taxation levels are). For example the punitive measures for not paying taxes at very high levels need to be very severe to curtail such behavior. So five figure owning person or mom and pop shop you give a slap on the wrist. Maybe 10% of owed added. Wealthiest individuals and companies get knocked completely out of their level so like 500% of what was owed.
To be clear it isn’t a theory. It really is an idea explained on a cocktail napkin. There seems to be a rate that if you reduce it under you get more recenue which worked once in 1983. There’s nothing to support further cuts though
I would not even say it worked once in 83. Lower rates are one possible reason but like anything with the economy there are plenty of factors including cyclical changes that could explain it.
Or we could just fund the IRS since it’s a profit center.
We could do both?
I watched this movie 3-4 times and even when reading this, I’m still spaced out.
Ben Stein just has a voice that makes me tune him out.
Such a great voice for comedy. Shame he’s anti-abortion, pretty racist, pro-Regan and Trump, weirdly against evolution… So many awful perspectives.
Planet Money interviewed the professor who wrote the book from which Ben Stein is reading in that scene.
It ia an older episode they re-air periodically. I think this one:
https://www.npr.org/2024/12/11/1218506684/worst-tariffs-ever-update
A hero of the right, Ronald Reagan, actually gave a speech condemning tariffs. Yup, I’m actually on Reagan’s side here.
Reagan was a neoconservative, heavily invested in deindustrializing the Midwest to break the domestic labor movement and capturing labor overseas for the benefit of investment capital. He succeeded too well, as his NAFTA and global trade policies birth to large foreign industrial powers that could meet the US as peers instead of supplicants.
Forty years later, Trump looked at the economic landscape and concluded he could undo the Reagan Era by throwing up high trade barriers, because he believed the finance capitalism at home (combined with our large international military) commanded leverage over physical capital abroad. Now we’re gambling on a war over Greenland and a promise that Europe needs Wall Street more than it needs Chinese manufacturing capacity.
But both Reagan and Trump were fixated on global US hegemony. They just went about it wrong, because they were dumb-dumbs surrounded by people more greedy than they were strategic. It’s a double-own goal, from opposite ends of the net.
I think there’s room for reasonable tariff policy, but unfortunately the US is a nuance-free land full of extremists so Trump’s terrible implementation will make tariffs radioactive for another generation if there’s a large public backlash.
It doesn’t need to be absolutely free trade with slavers or tariff man hell. We could raise the standard of living by allowing free trade but imposing tariffs – or even outright bans on imports – from places legalizing slave labor and other close to slave labor conditions. But obviously none of that fits into Trump’s dumbass worldview.
They also didn’t have fox news at that time :/
They had newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst, who pretty much invented the “yellow press”. And whose story is eerily similar to Musk’s, including a sudden swing from progressivism to far right nationalism.
trump won’t for much longer…
Being ruled by billionaires works both ways I guess lol one can only hope.
Even Fox viewers can’t hide from their credit card balance. At least I hope that’s the case.
The largest Senate loss in history yet
Those that don’t know history are destined to have a nice day.
Every day of my life is an economic crisis.
Is this implying if you with paycheck to paycheck it doesn’t affect you? People playing with the stock market can afford to lose. This isn’t going to hurt them nearly as much as those who can’t afford to lose
To me it looks like it sides with the paycheck-to-paycheck people. But you’re getting a lot of upvotes so either I’m looking at it wrong or a lot of people are wearing the same anger glasses as you.
The reason that the stock market cratered in response to this was that regular consumers are about to get hit with a 25%+ price increase on literally everything they buy. If you don’t make 25% more paycheck, you’re going to be cutting your lifestyle by the difference. Companies know this and are anticipating major lost revenue because people won’t have money to spend on their products. The price increases are probably going to be in full swing in 2-3 months, but that’s an educated guess, only.
An even bigger factor to the stock market is that the largest companies get 50%-60% of their revenue from other countries. They are about to get shit kicked.
thanks, I know all that. Back to the cartoon, it looks to me like it’s acknowledging the situation of Everyman in the persona of SpongeBob. So the answer to, “Is this implying if you with paycheck to paycheck it doesn’t affect you?” would be no, it does not imply that. It’s saying people are already up to their necks in shit and oh well, this’ll make things worse but it’s just another log on the fire.
No, it’s not saying people living paycheck-to-paycheck won’t be affected. I think the point is - scary threat isn’t scary, because such people already feel the constant threat of poverty every day. Being regularly pumped full of cortisol over worries of simply surviving, there are no fucks left to give when additional threats are piled on.
Tariff is a consumption tax. The poorest spends most of their income on consumption like groceries, clothing, car parts, etc. The price of all of that is going up.
Next stockmarket wipeout reduces wealth of middle class the most, who in turn reduces spending on services that employee working class people.
Poorest always gets hit the hardest in any negative economic event because they are poor.
When I was struggling in college to eat and people talked about the market collapsing – pal, I was trying not to be homeless. I had a thousand other problems, from bad health issues, uncertainty over if I would sleep in a bed, where my next meal.
Its a awful take to rip into them for not caring that the Dow Jones lost 2000 points or whatever.
Ferris Bueller’s Day off was educational!
Voo doo…economics
