Why I`m not too worked up on politics

[cmilligan1958g]

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@Packard27 wrote:

RS,

See Aesop’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper.

Enjoy the good times while they lasts. It is early fall, but winter is coming.

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What follows is a very clever story sent to me by a good friend. I’ve edited it slightly, but not enough to change the story. Here are two versions of the famous ant and grasshopper story.

“This one is a little different; two different versions, two different morals. Here’s the old version: The ant works hard in the withering heat and rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold. The moral of the old story: Be responsible for yourself! Modern version: The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving. CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. The insect kingdom is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in an ant community of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green ...’

“A group called ‘Occupy the Anthill’ stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the Reverend Al Sharpton and a group of grasshoppers kneeling down to pray for the grasshopper while he damns the ants. He later appears on MSNBC to complain that rich ants do not care about those insects less fortunate. Former President Obama condemns the ants and blames Donald Trump, President Bush 43, President Bush 41, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper’s plight. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer exclaim in an interview on The View that the ants has gotten rich off the backs of the poor grasshoppers, and both call for an immediate tax hike on ants to make them pay his fair share. Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Grasshopper Czar and given to the grasshopper. The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading grasshopper friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government-owned ant house he is in, which, as you’ll recall, just happens to be the ant’s old home, the house crumbles around them because the grasshoppers don’t maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again. The grasshopper is found dead from starvation, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once prosperous and peaceful ant neighborhood. The moral of the modern version of the story: Be careful how you vote in 2022.”

[sdholloway56]

Real Gross Domestic Product (A191RL1Q225SBEA) | FRED | St. Louis Fed

Sure, 5-7% growth for several quarters will be terrible. 

Actually will present a problem for wildly overvalued financial assets- the premium from an ultra-low interest rate far exceeds any broad increase in earnings likely to accrue.

[rickgthf]

BA, it's a good thing you're not " getting too worked up about socialism" because you lost that battle over socialism in the 1930s with the New Deal.  It's been "don't look back" ever since then.

  And you keep losing that battle almost every day.  Just this past month, you lost the battle in Texas when you left the energy market there to the "un-regulators".  And now Texas and other Red states are going to lose the battle trump lost last summer "all over again" by rescinding mask & distance mandates too soon.

  You keep losing because you don't have enough sense to understand that we're not living in tiny widely dispersed prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups that more often than not engaged in head-bashing whenever they encountered each other.  We live in modern complex societies that put landers on Mars.  This requires levels of cooperation never demanded of any previous society. If you insist on living in a less complex society, you should move to any number of African countries or even Russia, you’ll feel right at home.

[sdholloway56]

The hypocrisy of croppers complaining about socialism never ends.

And ethanol is surely as much an evil big government imposition as are renewable portfolios.

It is my right to have real gasoline!!!!!!

[sdholloway56]

Surely forcing me to buy fake gas is a more burdensome big government imposition than making me wear a mask!

Actually, nobody is making anyone wear a mask- they just can't enter certain places without one. 

[rickgthf]

  I was listening to Janet Yellen a few days ago, she was pretty blunt.  Without a very decided push, the economy "will" fall into a significant recession, vaccine or no vaccine.  Is $1.9 too much, maybe on the high side but $1.5-1.6 would likely not be enough, so it's better to be a little more aggressive than less.  As for the republicans' $600 billion, not even close.

  So tell me, why is it that the republicans and their crowd refuse, once again, to listen to the experts who actually study things like the economy or disease control and take their advice.

  For the whole past year,  the republicans have repeatedly and continually rejected the advice of the "experts" and claimed that they, the republicans, know better than the people who study these things.  Not just disregard the advice, but do exactly the opposite.

  Their's is an arrogance born out of ignorance, willful ignorance even, that's breathtaking in its audacity.

[sdholloway56]

Bad Faith is the middle name of the modern GQP but they could have made a good faith counter offer and participated in the process. They chose not to. They could have made a good faith attempt before the election and perhaps won. They only went in to try to save the Senate but Dennison torpedoed that for them.

Whatever the correct amount is, what they offered was wholly inadequate both from a macro view and in terms of content.

Red states get the same level of aid as blue state. But "cities" were a problem.

Anyone need me to decode that for them?

[r3020]

So then nQx you view ethanol as just another government failure. Yet are are more than willing to accept future mandates from the same government that mandated the ethanol failure assuring us this time Almighty Big Government will get it right. More blue anon logic.