We're in the second longest expansionary period since WW2. No duh a recession is coming.

RNK is probably going to enter the workforce during it (or around the crash), so I hope he enjoys these GOP policies when his graduating class gets 2008'd.

In the United States things are far from good for many. The economy has grown since 2014, and many have benefited, including people in my own family. For that I am grateful.

And yet since the 1970s the middle class in the United States has been shrinking, which has happened as a direct result of policies advocated by the Republican Party. Policies which gutted unions and moved good jobs out of the country.

Which is why the United States has a rate of childhood poverty twice that of our peers in the industrialized world, and why the overall poverty rate also sucks.

Sickeningly we enjoy the peculiar status, in the industrial world, of having mortality rates that are growing worse rather than improving. Specifically the mortality rates of middle aged white men are getting worse. This increase ... (is) largely accounted for by increasing death rates from drug and alcohol poisonings, suicide, and chronic liver diseases and cirrhosis.

Read it and weep, or not as you choose: http://www.pnas.org/content/112/49/15078.full.pdf

The argument is over. It has been over for a long time.

Since when did my risk clone get overrun with lefties? KURWA

@Teamguns. You say we are going to have a crash in 2018 and that economic policy is a result of the decisions 5 years prior. So you are admitting that Trump will suffer a recession WORSE than 2008 and it will be Obama's fault.

I can't wait to see the upcoming mental gymnastics.

@knyte I entered the workforce in 2014. Bought my first car in 2015. No payment or loan. I just bought it using 100% my own money. No parental money. I am currently in college.

@Padraig The middle class is disappearing because those people moved into the upper middle class.

In 1979, 12% of people were in the upper middle class. Today, 30% of people are in the upper middle class.

According to the Bookings institute, a left leaning institute, if you follow these three rules you will not be permanently poor in the United States.

1. Get married before you have kids
2. Get a job.
3. Graduate high school

2% of Americans who followed these rules are in poverty. 75% of poor people who followed these rules are in the middle class. 27% of poor people who followed these rules are in the upper class.

According to Pew, 9 in 10 Americans have a standard of living above the global median. And as stated before America has the 7th highest GDP per capita in the world only behind Luxembourg, Switzerland, Norway, Ireland, Qatar, and Iceland. Unless you live in one of these countries then yours is poorer than the US and you should try to emulate us.

And lets not even consider that all the countries on that list are directly or indirectly behind the US security blanket which costs US taxpayers 611 billion dollars.

Edited 1/6/2018 06:49:18

Trump didn't campaign as a conservative but has governed like one.

well, he campaigned as racist, backward republican, which is probably something else...

Any real conservative wouldn't have voted for Trump in 2016.

so, who else did? and what exactly defines a conservative in your mind?


This game first and foremost appeals to children, which are most of the time egocentric. In an anonymous environment they start to behave rude to draw attention, due to a lack of character development. and trolling is very easy to achieve with offensive political statements. In my opinion this is one of the main reasons for so many right wing hardliners in warlight. and as knyte said:

Nowadays, conservative is just the politically-correct substitute for douchebag.

Edited 1/6/2018 12:21:58

I like your Brookings Inst. rules. They are almost, but not quite, a tautology.

Ya like stories? Here's one for ya.

A women of my acquaintance got married. She followed the "rules". She graduated high school, got married, and had a daughter - who is a charming, attractive, and successful young lady. Unfortunately her husband, who seemed like a decent fellow, was not. One day she did something to annoy him, and he responded by beating her until her skull was fractured. Unsurprisingly her brain was damaged, permanently. Subsequently she has not done so well. She has a menial job, and is living out of her car. Oh, and she self medicates. Perhaps you would call her a drugged up bum? I don't know. What I do know is that the drug use seems to have started after she got her head cracked by her lovely husband.

So if we want to be scrupulously fair, we would have to say that most of her life has been prosperous and she followed the rules.

The remainder of her life? Thankfully our Republican politicians are working hard to defund Medicaid, because that's what Jesus would do.

True story.

Kurwa; one of my Polish customers said it means Miley Cyrus.

What is your point Padraig? Your story could have happened in any country in the whole world.

No doubt she is better off in the United States because she can sue the crap out of her husband for mental and physical abuse and get the kids and half his wealth after the divorce.

And you refused to refute my statistics. Just more moralizing bullshit.

And now this thread turns into politic argument...jwow!

Well, I have a couple points. First off you were the one who introduced the rules discussed by the good folks at the Brookings Institute. My point is that, while 'following the rules' is all to the good, following the rules is no guarantee of financial success. The implication of pointing towards the Brookings rules is a kind of morality tale. Moralizing bullshit if you will. (Your nasty terminology, not mine.) The implication is that those who are not doing well financially in our economy have 'sinned' in some sense. They failed to graduate high school, they had a child out of wedlock, and so forth. Implicit in your argument is the notion that those who are poor deserve every misery that they suffer. My point is that people can, through no fault of their own, be poor. To be poor is not a moral failing. That is your argument, not mine, and that really is moralizing bullshit.

The second point is simply that she is better off then she might be elsewhere, and that the reason she is better off is because of medical care provided by a program which was brought into being by Democrats.

As to your statistics, provide a citation, and I might discuss with you the many facts which you overlook in your panegyric to the wonders of the American economy during the Trump administration.

lmao a high school job ain't "entering the workforce"; consequences aren't really real until you become fully financially independent, and that's when you feel the full weight of taxes, savings, the economy, and everything. The economy doesn't start feeling like an uncaring god until you hit your mid-20's, I think. Or at least that's the age when I think people are able to actually get a feel for how the economy's doing (in their area and/or industry, for their cohort) without having to check GDP statistics or inflation or the unemployment rate. Data is only as meaningful as your ability to put it in context and interpret it, and there's a good reason a lot of people have their political and economic views change non-trivially during their early 20's- and it's not just 'cause of the stereotypical scenario where you get your first paycheck and realize how big Uncle Sam's cut is.

Lots of time left until you get to the stage where the overall state of the economy means something. No matter how confident and capable you are before and through college, no matter what extra steps you take, there's always that one day where the full reality of adulthood hits you. I don't think you've had that day yet. I'm not all that sure I have either.

Saving up for your own first car is commendable, though - nice job

tl;dr blablablabla

@Strategery

I don't think that the economy will crash in 2018, at least not in the next months. I'd say it's more something more like 2019-2020ish, but yea, the only decisions that could have prevented it needed to have been taken a few years ago, now it's probably a bit too late.

I wouldn't put the fault on Obama himself but more on structural problems of the economy that haven't been fixed since the crisis, something you can probably attribute not to one person in particular, but several.

1. Financial deregulation of the Clinton and Bush years haven't been reversed.

2. Bills passed to fix the financial system after the crisis were a big joke, the republicans mostly opposed all of them and not enough democrats supported strong bills when they controlled congress.

3. The Obama administration didn't really raise regulation by the margins it could have.

4. The FED's very expansive monetary policy and quantitative easing just put trillions of dollars into the financial system, that's the fault of Bernanke (Bush nominee) and Yellen (Obama nominee), but then again, this was one of the pillars of the economy recovery, so you can cut short a bit on them here.

5. The FED's constitution doesn't enforce that it must look out for structural problems of the economy, just conjectural ones (inflation+unemployment), so they've taken no steps to look out at financial problems.

6. Interest rates have been too low for too much time, that has boosted the economy but reinforces the financial problems.

7. Banking lobbying prevented any meaningful banking reform from passing.

8. The tax bill passed on is a serious disaster, it will probably only inject more money into finance when this money should be going into the real economy, that won't help a lot when it comes to bubbles.

9. The growing inequalities may soon provoke shortages on demand, that's atribuable to post-crisis economic trends but will also be reinforced by the tax bill while offer will explode thanks to growing companies optimism and the influx of cash provided by offshore money coming back and smaller taxes.

10. Growing debt, both private and public is really concerning, the first is caused by too small interest rates and the second by a lack of will to close the deficit. And the deficit problem is both parties fault, democrats refuse to decrease spending while republicans refuse to increase revenue (and actually fucking decreased it).

And the worst part is that no one is trying to do anything to adress those issues. If one thing the current government is reinforcing several of these trends while claiming that everything is going great and will be even better soon.

The ball is currently on the republican side to fix the issues since they control every level of government at the moment, but they won't. And to be pragmatic, if the dems retake congress this year I doubt they will be wanting to fix economic problems, focusing more on taking out the president than doing their legislative job (just like Republicans under Obama).

+1 Hot Brick

Conservative is a dumb term, ESPECIALLY for Americans.

If you mean Fascists / Traditionalists, you don't mean conservative. We literally oppose capitalism and want to remove internationalist parasites. We can't be bothered with evangelical Christianity.

I'm so far left I make Stalin look like fucking Pinochet.

I just don't talk about it on Warlight forums.

^^

I would not worry too much about anyone thinking of Fascists, either new or old, when conservatism is being spoken of. The Fascist, Alt-Right, Neo-Nazi, world is far removed from conservatism, even if constant efforts are being made to blur the lines. Fascism is very modern, and very radical.

To call it Traditionalist is an act of obfuscation. In the world of politics Traditionalism includes those who follow the political thought of men like Burke and Aristotle. I have a great respect for these people (those who hold with conservative & classic liberal thought) because at the end of the day they are an integral part of the western tradition, and I find many of their views congenial.

In a similar way, the phrase "remove internationalist parasites", is willfully obscure. Not that anyone is really puzzled. The only puzzle is why you don't show a bit more fortitude and plainly say what you mean.

Edited 1/10/2018 03:22:59

Unfortunately, most warlighters are liberals of some sort, including the conservatives (there's not many western lands where conservatives aren't liberal).

Fortunately or unfortunately however, many are beginning to support Caesarist candidates, like Trump. Ofc they still decry the growth of the executive branch, and dictatorship, but that's also evaporating.

For one, I look forward to when warlight fora argue over the American emperor's decisions, that'll be most interesting.

In a similar way, the phrase "remove internationalist parasites", is willfully obscure. Not that anyone is really puzzled. The only puzzle is why you don't show a bit more fortitude and plainly say what you mean.

Destroy capitalism and hang the bankers

^ Glad we'll have you fighting under the American flag very soon. Couldn't think of a better person to send overseas as a representative of truth, justice, and the American way. /s

Edited 1/11/2018 01:26:32

What happens after WW3 will be fun for me ;)