The Trump family, the Billionaires, and the Oligarchs are doing extremely well from the reverse Robin Hood scheme of the Big Ugly Bill by taking resources out of society and into their overseas accounts (or wherever they stockpile their cash). When Trump tells his shell shocked working class MAGAs that the economy is “hot” he does not mean for them!
the comic strip 'the wizard of id' had it's own take on the robin hood ethos of 'take from the rich and give to the poor'-it was 'take from the wretch and give to the peer'
The decline in the number of people working is due to several things caused by Republicans corporations and billionaire oligarchs who are attacking workers to maximize profits such as a lack of good paying jobs, massive deportations of immigrants who are either in detention prisons already gone or afraid to work and AI causing a lack of entry level professional jobs for college graduates and firing many thousands of professionals including what Musk did with Doge. Finally, Trump and Republicans have cut funding for research at universities plus funding and staffing at government labs and departments. No money no jobs available just money for profits and corruption such as grifting and pure theft. And people who were working or looking for work - not undocumented immigrants - are leaving America for a number of reasons including terminations of visas for foreign students after graduation or just being sick of American and Republican politics with ICE violence.
As someone who has worked in manufacturing, did throughput analysis, and consulted in materials, ERP, manufacturing, etc. I will add to your comment. Since the eighties, there has been reductions in Labor input to product. Much of this was not due to labor income as much as the Overhead for Labor. To escape the costs outside of direct labor cost in the product and assembly, they will go outside of the United States.
Automation was one way to cut Labor and its costs outside of direct salary. Reconfiguring plants was another and minimizing Labor afterwards was another way. And finally moving manufacturing to lower cost places in the United States and finally overseas. I believe many times; companies overlook the transportation time by boat from China. Once the product is on the dock, US companies own it and pay then. The company owns the product once it ships and the five-six weeks on the ocean.
It is not that cheap and there are stoopages in the process.
Early in my career I was responsible for creating and shipping the digital automation enabling the first flexible high volume high quality manufacturing systems in factories in the U.S in the 1980s.The Boeing factory in Everett Washington is the largest in the world and I’m glad to see it and how Boeing has maintained a leadership position in manufacturing when others in other industries in the U.S. have not or moved their manufacturing offshore. Part of the problem is marketing. As a consultant who once worked at Intel I told them their strategic marketing was poor and I tried to explain trends in work the Internet data centers new math and data processing as an opportunity to get them to design and build chips for smartphones 5 years before the iPhone was released and again to design and build the chips for graphic processing which Nvidia was doing and is now the core AI processing chip. I had done a PhD thesis in an early form of AI and stochastic information processing with matrix multiplication to model large complex systems and calculate their behavior so I saw the potential for Intel but they rejected my advice.
I would agree with your last comment. I have been in China many times going from plant to plant. They were very kind to me and guided and spent time with me after hours. One head of the US China plants had two of his workers and loaned his personal company vehicle to take us to The Wall. His was not a question, it was an edict that they guide us.
Amazing place to be and see. I have found the people of China to be very cordial and helpful to westerners. I was not a tourist and was US management for the same company. That could be much of the reason.
When they came to the United States, I reciprocated, ate with them at Chinese and also US restaurants (barbeque was their meal of choice).
A world of difference between people and governments.
Donʻt worry, the AI bubble will burst. The AI companies are borrowing too much money, spending massive money, and not making profits. Corporations are finding out itʻs too expensive to use to the level they desire although itʻs not being charged at the true cost.
The City of St. Louis, today, passed a bill to permit a new data center just West of downtown. As reported it included very few environmental and safety measures for power and water conservation. Not to mention the noise factor.
I can hardly wait for the Ai boom to bust and St. Louis ends up with another huge, empty, and useless building to deal with. We already have a giant football stadium that we built for the Rams that barely gets used since they left town in 2016.
The Rams deal was a bust from the start because the city leaders were so desperate for a football team the "gave away the store", so to speak, and didn't protect the citizens investment. We had a football team, the Cardinals, but they didn't like the owner, refused to help him in any way, so he left for Phoenix.
The big corporations and business owners can smell a desperate state, city, town or county a thousand miles away. They send their hucksters, like DT, to swoon over them and promise them the world. As long as they cough up tax money to build out their scheme.
More often than not, the rubes fall for it. The only people who come out ahead are the business owners, stockholders, and bankers. Stupid is as stupid does!
They're also engaging in circular financing (passing the same lump of money around between themselves). That should be unlawful, but it's at least very sketchy accounting.
Funny, in the old days if an individual did that with multiple checking accounts among multiple banks it was called "check kiting," and it was absolutely illegal in most places whether by itself or as a form of fraud.
I am one of the thousands of unemployed from the forklift industry this year because of Tronald Dumps 50% tariff on steel. Customers just won't buy something when it cost 50% more than last year. However, I am not sure if I am considered "unemployed" because the company offered a severance to leave. I was one of the lucky ones. Many were just laid off.
Ask an Unemployment Office a "what if" question. You may be able to apply and wait till your severance is depleted based upon your salary weekly or monthly. In other words, you are still working till that severance is used up.
You can ask questions doing the "what if" scenario." Many will help you understand. If you call in, it may be easier?
The government and government contracting used to be the number 1 stable and good paying job. DOGE, Elon Musk and Donald Trump ruined all of that. If Democrats had one message for that we need to undo every single thing DOGE did Hire as many back as you can. I’d love some back pay for grief and suffering but just being hired back would be tremendous. Also some protections for employees so we never have to fear another DOGE ever happening again. Democrats would score so many brownie points if they guaranteed this.
Government contracts need protection and long term like 5 years at least too. I’d prefer 10 but beggars can’t be choosers. USDA IRAAS needs to be brought back when Trump is gone anf we have a Democratic Congress. No doge firings can ever occur again without 2/3rds approval from both houses of Congress.
I agree with you in most respects. A serious, hard look needs to be taken at the necessary roles of the worker in our government. For example, my family has an ongoing 'conversation' with the Social Security Administration regarding necessary and permitted assistance for our son's needs. However, we are inundated with monthly letters, demanding 'proof' of his continued status, or evidence of his meager earnings at a part-time minimum wage job, and so forth. It is aggravating beyond belief that we have to supply and continue to re-supply the same forms on such a frequent basis, but we're very lucky in that my wife is a master at paperwork and its various trails. We must conduct all business now via telephone, and when we receive a letter with a due date in the next 10 days, we call and have to make an appointment to have a SSA clerk call us back at a certain time on a certain day. We abide by these demands, religiously. But, we also know that not everyone who is subjected to these paperwork demands is as capable or as prepared or as good at paper management, and when it comes to the next person, we can see how these folks are easily left behind by the very government systems on which they must rely. We all can identify the poor management of an over-worked staff with what must be unreasonable demands laid on it by a set of thoughtless higher-ups who tend to see their goal as cost containment or reduction in theft, etc. The blame for this lies squarely in the lap of mr trump and his punitive puppets.
Stephen, my heart goes out to all such parents in USA. You and your wife are diligent, but even then, your lives to protect your son are made more miserable by the hour. Here I am visiting my son and his wife in England. Their special needs 8 year old is thriving, and he does have paperwork to attend to, but he is diligent just like your wife.
Back in New Zealand, I am heavily involved in the emergence of a third party, which has struggled for 10 years to gain recognition. This election, our 4th, we are finally gaining ground and being taken seriously. An important part of our policy package, apart from a Land Value Tax financing a Citizens' Income, is doing away with most of the bureaucracy that humiliates and frustrates the nation's recipients of help to compensate for decades of distorted taxation policies. This includes, of course, those who need to care for people with disabilities.
The fact of more people not able to find jobs that will allow them to actually work, suggests that capital is either replacing workers or able to offer less than workers can or will accept. We have seen this rodeo before, when workers were not able to overcome the greed and self interest of capital. It is clear that capital’s new tool is being financed and rapidly pushed forward to expand the side of capital, without concern for the workers in spite off potential risks. The risks, even the financial ones, are born by all and the masters of capital charge us rent and give us risk without concern for people’s needs. The labor movement and sympathetic progressives in the early 20th century helped turn the tide. That is why the people sitting on their gold toilet seats on their pleasure yachts (and planes) are trying to paint all opposed to their power grabs as communists not patriots. McCarthy tried that and was shut down by a simple question “have you no decency?” His lawyer Roy Cohen also was Trumps teacher. But now we know Trump and his Regime have non decency so the media do not even bother to report his attack on decency, honesty, good governance, the public good etc. news requires more lies and escalating absurdity while the Regime’s death and destruction. I ask the main stream media what you can do with the decency you maintain to reach out to the decency of the American people and make your voice louder than that of the Ministry of Truth.
I believe what you express and I just can't help wondering which consumers are unfazed enough by this to keep on spending and supporting Big Business, Big Food, Big Agri....somebody seems to have more than enough to hold a place in the thinning middle and bottom rungs of the upper classes. Companies like Coca Cola, PepsiCo, etc. keep reporting record profits. I keep having this feeling like my puny purchasing power matters less and less.....just wondering.....hope someone can enlighten me on this disconnect.
It pays, saves, to shop around. Our local grocery chains sells a 7 oz. bag of Lays chips for $6.79. Total of $7.27 after tax. Sometime they are on sale. But even at 2 for 1 they are still $3.64 per 7 oz. bag.
Walgreens sells a brand called Nice. They only have 3 or 4 flavors but at $1.99, $2.13 with tax, for a 7.75 oz. bag who cares! They taste just as good and fresh as Lays.
Just check the levels of consumer debt, and you'll understand it a bit better. Lots of consumables, groceries and the like are going on credit cards, charged by folk in the hope that things will get better and they'll be able to pay them off. It's likely that a lot of credit defaults and bankruptcies are in the nation's near future.
I would submit that there are several factors at work on work: 1) deportation of real workers who were here legally and semi-legally. loss of these workers for agriculture, home care, medicine etc; 2) loss of jobs offshore as some manufacturing goes back to South Asia,(recent reports of same), 3) loss of auto manufacturing as the economy slides, 4) loss of IT jobs due to AI and 5) a return to demands that all work be done ONSITE! And reliance on jobs that are INFLUENCER jobs probably not counted as part of our economy - the get rich quick with a PDF and sell it kind!
I like opts 2 +3, Susy B. I advocated for not paying taxes in 2025 because I saw the direction our Country was being led; but the Dems. and Independents didn't take me up on it. I hope everyone is pleased with how our taxes/debt is being spent: WAR: one we didn't need to be in if our "elected leader" didn't have such a BIG EGO that he couldn't continue anything good previously signed by Pres. Obama. Mark you, the history books will record this one after you're gone,🎺.
The stock market is just another way to legally gamble, and Iʻve always wondered why everyone get so excited about employment rates rising when they donʻt take into consideration unemployment. People tend to base their judgments/decisions on a single element, ridiculous
Correct Robert. That's why the Wall Street thieves always support the GOP who always try to give our Social Security trust fund to them to "invest" for us. Ha! Current trust fund value as of Dec. 2025... $2.56 trillion. If the GOP ever succeeds in moving it to Wall Street those guys will have it all in their bank accounts within two years. Sorry folks, we just made a few bad investments.
Vote Blue and pass stricter laws for Wall Street. GH
You are absolutely correct, Robert! I have two millennial generation kids who have never held a decent paying job. I hear from financial advisors that the millennials are gonna be even bigger and richer than the baby boomers. I don’t know if they actually include the number of young people who are unemployed, living, not only in relatives basements, but often in tents under bridges and in parks. That phenomenon did not happen during the baby boomer generation. I see townhouses and condos being built in every town across New Jersey and I wonder who is going to live there. The long-term implications are frightening.
I am curious Robert about the number of governmental and military jobs that we now have as compared to other recent presidencies? Doge ran so many out and Hegseth continues to chop away. Then we have losses of jobs in education and healthcare and agriculture. For pity sake I should imagine even the tourist trade has fallen. After all, who wants to come to America or take a chance flying to a vacation with ICE at the airports? Now if you want to join the crazy pack of wild dogs known as ICE ,and you have a lengthy sex crime history, that'll work. Or, if you don't mind ruining a communities water reserves and creating an unbearable 24/7 noise while devaluing the property value, there may be jobs opening up with creating Data Centers and ICE Detainment Facilities. Notice that these are all jobs for men. This administration prefers to keep young women bare foot and pregnant and older women....and older men dead. Gee, I don't know why people can't find work?
WHAT DO WE EXPECT: THE FED. GOV'T FIRED LOTS OF FED. WORKERS, HIRED ICE, TOOK NAT'L GUARD MEMBERS AWAY FROM THEIR JOBS, SENT MILTARY OVERSEAS, AND LABELED OUR "DEPT OF DEFENSE" THE DEPT OF WAR...🎺WILL EITHER HAVE FULL BLOWN ALZHEIMERS OR BE IN JAIL- IF THERE IS ANY JUSTICE-WITHOUT EVER REALIZING HE KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT A DEMOCRACY OR MAKING IT FUNCTION FOR THE PEOPLE.
Friends, who are highly talented and had multiple job offs when they changed jobs before, are staying where they are. They have seen this happen to other friends and aren’t willing to take the risk.
Odd, how that's an issue now, since employers were whining about staffing shortages several years ago because people thumbed their noses at the kind of wages and working conditions they'd have to work for and in, while fed-up employees growing sick of their bullshit were quitting without notice. I think it was always driven by cold-blooded employer intent. Just sayin'.
The problem is all these people struggling financially and have lost the their health insurance still vote for Trump.
They don't have an ounce of critical thinking skills, they are not well-educated and willfully ignorant about Trump's policies that are making them suffer. Until that bond is broken, Trump can do whatever he wants with impunity
I believe your comment hit the sweet spot, if you will. America is losing ground on all fronts. It's that simple.
I believe American workers are losing ground on all fronts. The U.S. oligarchs are doing just fine.
The Trump family, the Billionaires, and the Oligarchs are doing extremely well from the reverse Robin Hood scheme of the Big Ugly Bill by taking resources out of society and into their overseas accounts (or wherever they stockpile their cash). When Trump tells his shell shocked working class MAGAs that the economy is “hot” he does not mean for them!
the comic strip 'the wizard of id' had it's own take on the robin hood ethos of 'take from the rich and give to the poor'-it was 'take from the wretch and give to the peer'
True... I can't disagree with that! Thanks.
The caveat is that there will no money for olygarchs to make when the people have nothing to spend.
They already have more than their fair share
Read Stephanie Kelton’s book “The Deficit Myth”
And oilogarchs
Read Stephanie Kelton’s book “The Deficit Myth”
Okay, I'll check it out. Thanks
The decline in the number of people working is due to several things caused by Republicans corporations and billionaire oligarchs who are attacking workers to maximize profits such as a lack of good paying jobs, massive deportations of immigrants who are either in detention prisons already gone or afraid to work and AI causing a lack of entry level professional jobs for college graduates and firing many thousands of professionals including what Musk did with Doge. Finally, Trump and Republicans have cut funding for research at universities plus funding and staffing at government labs and departments. No money no jobs available just money for profits and corruption such as grifting and pure theft. And people who were working or looking for work - not undocumented immigrants - are leaving America for a number of reasons including terminations of visas for foreign students after graduation or just being sick of American and Republican politics with ICE violence.
William:
As someone who has worked in manufacturing, did throughput analysis, and consulted in materials, ERP, manufacturing, etc. I will add to your comment. Since the eighties, there has been reductions in Labor input to product. Much of this was not due to labor income as much as the Overhead for Labor. To escape the costs outside of direct labor cost in the product and assembly, they will go outside of the United States.
Automation was one way to cut Labor and its costs outside of direct salary. Reconfiguring plants was another and minimizing Labor afterwards was another way. And finally moving manufacturing to lower cost places in the United States and finally overseas. I believe many times; companies overlook the transportation time by boat from China. Once the product is on the dock, US companies own it and pay then. The company owns the product once it ships and the five-six weeks on the ocean.
It is not that cheap and there are stoopages in the process.
Bill
Early in my career I was responsible for creating and shipping the digital automation enabling the first flexible high volume high quality manufacturing systems in factories in the U.S in the 1980s.The Boeing factory in Everett Washington is the largest in the world and I’m glad to see it and how Boeing has maintained a leadership position in manufacturing when others in other industries in the U.S. have not or moved their manufacturing offshore. Part of the problem is marketing. As a consultant who once worked at Intel I told them their strategic marketing was poor and I tried to explain trends in work the Internet data centers new math and data processing as an opportunity to get them to design and build chips for smartphones 5 years before the iPhone was released and again to design and build the chips for graphic processing which Nvidia was doing and is now the core AI processing chip. I had done a PhD thesis in an early form of AI and stochastic information processing with matrix multiplication to model large complex systems and calculate their behavior so I saw the potential for Intel but they rejected my advice.
I want rump and his cronies to DIE, sick and broke.
Yes, and China, who is not our enemy, is gaining ground. Their people are ambitious and take advantage of education and training.
I would say that a nation state that routinely mounts cyberattack, disinformation, and espionage campaigns against the US is in fact our enemy.
The Chinese people are different from their government, of course.
Kristopher:
I would agree with your last comment. I have been in China many times going from plant to plant. They were very kind to me and guided and spent time with me after hours. One head of the US China plants had two of his workers and loaned his personal company vehicle to take us to The Wall. His was not a question, it was an edict that they guide us.
Amazing place to be and see. I have found the people of China to be very cordial and helpful to westerners. I was not a tourist and was US management for the same company. That could be much of the reason.
When they came to the United States, I reciprocated, ate with them at Chinese and also US restaurants (barbeque was their meal of choice).
A world of difference between people and governments.
As many countries such as Canada now say about Americans vs current American government. Thankfully.
Well, I guess then that trumpion is our enemy big time since that is all he does to our country!
Dirty 3rd grade Molester drooling Don needs the stiletto in the snout treatment!
That last comment responded to Kristopher’s first paragraph. Thank you.
Except for the Uyghers of course, who get treated like vermin
We are so in decline we’re not even denying it.
training! Wow! We used to do that here. Now they just throw you in the job and tell you to figure it out.
Irksome! We would happily take advantage of education and training!
Dennis--Between "AI" and Trump's goons eviscerating our social agencies, the American worker is now listed as an endangered species.
DH... yep, so true and sad.
Read Stephanie Kelton’s book “The Deficit Myth”.
AI is disrupting jobs like Big Business and stagflation did in the 70s. And Millennials and GenZ will feel the brunt of it
Donʻt worry, the AI bubble will burst. The AI companies are borrowing too much money, spending massive money, and not making profits. Corporations are finding out itʻs too expensive to use to the level they desire although itʻs not being charged at the true cost.
- Karen Cooper
Agreed! The “AI Boomerang” is already happening: https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/i-told-you-ai-isnt-the-monster-to
The City of St. Louis, today, passed a bill to permit a new data center just West of downtown. As reported it included very few environmental and safety measures for power and water conservation. Not to mention the noise factor.
I can hardly wait for the Ai boom to bust and St. Louis ends up with another huge, empty, and useless building to deal with. We already have a giant football stadium that we built for the Rams that barely gets used since they left town in 2016.
The Rams deal was a bust from the start because the city leaders were so desperate for a football team the "gave away the store", so to speak, and didn't protect the citizens investment. We had a football team, the Cardinals, but they didn't like the owner, refused to help him in any way, so he left for Phoenix.
The big corporations and business owners can smell a desperate state, city, town or county a thousand miles away. They send their hucksters, like DT, to swoon over them and promise them the world. As long as they cough up tax money to build out their scheme.
More often than not, the rubes fall for it. The only people who come out ahead are the business owners, stockholders, and bankers. Stupid is as stupid does!
Vote Blue... GH
I wait with bated breath
They're also engaging in circular financing (passing the same lump of money around between themselves). That should be unlawful, but it's at least very sketchy accounting.
Funny, in the old days if an individual did that with multiple checking accounts among multiple banks it was called "check kiting," and it was absolutely illegal in most places whether by itself or as a form of fraud.
I am one of the thousands of unemployed from the forklift industry this year because of Tronald Dumps 50% tariff on steel. Customers just won't buy something when it cost 50% more than last year. However, I am not sure if I am considered "unemployed" because the company offered a severance to leave. I was one of the lucky ones. Many were just laid off.
Robert:
Ask an Unemployment Office a "what if" question. You may be able to apply and wait till your severance is depleted based upon your salary weekly or monthly. In other words, you are still working till that severance is used up.
You can ask questions doing the "what if" scenario." Many will help you understand. If you call in, it may be easier?
so not fair.
The government and government contracting used to be the number 1 stable and good paying job. DOGE, Elon Musk and Donald Trump ruined all of that. If Democrats had one message for that we need to undo every single thing DOGE did Hire as many back as you can. I’d love some back pay for grief and suffering but just being hired back would be tremendous. Also some protections for employees so we never have to fear another DOGE ever happening again. Democrats would score so many brownie points if they guaranteed this.
Government contracts need protection and long term like 5 years at least too. I’d prefer 10 but beggars can’t be choosers. USDA IRAAS needs to be brought back when Trump is gone anf we have a Democratic Congress. No doge firings can ever occur again without 2/3rds approval from both houses of Congress.
I agree with you in most respects. A serious, hard look needs to be taken at the necessary roles of the worker in our government. For example, my family has an ongoing 'conversation' with the Social Security Administration regarding necessary and permitted assistance for our son's needs. However, we are inundated with monthly letters, demanding 'proof' of his continued status, or evidence of his meager earnings at a part-time minimum wage job, and so forth. It is aggravating beyond belief that we have to supply and continue to re-supply the same forms on such a frequent basis, but we're very lucky in that my wife is a master at paperwork and its various trails. We must conduct all business now via telephone, and when we receive a letter with a due date in the next 10 days, we call and have to make an appointment to have a SSA clerk call us back at a certain time on a certain day. We abide by these demands, religiously. But, we also know that not everyone who is subjected to these paperwork demands is as capable or as prepared or as good at paper management, and when it comes to the next person, we can see how these folks are easily left behind by the very government systems on which they must rely. We all can identify the poor management of an over-worked staff with what must be unreasonable demands laid on it by a set of thoughtless higher-ups who tend to see their goal as cost containment or reduction in theft, etc. The blame for this lies squarely in the lap of mr trump and his punitive puppets.
Stephen, my heart goes out to all such parents in USA. You and your wife are diligent, but even then, your lives to protect your son are made more miserable by the hour. Here I am visiting my son and his wife in England. Their special needs 8 year old is thriving, and he does have paperwork to attend to, but he is diligent just like your wife.
Back in New Zealand, I am heavily involved in the emergence of a third party, which has struggled for 10 years to gain recognition. This election, our 4th, we are finally gaining ground and being taken seriously. An important part of our policy package, apart from a Land Value Tax financing a Citizens' Income, is doing away with most of the bureaucracy that humiliates and frustrates the nation's recipients of help to compensate for decades of distorted taxation policies. This includes, of course, those who need to care for people with disabilities.
Don’t forget about all the caregivers. They’re an invisible, invaluable labor force.
The fact of more people not able to find jobs that will allow them to actually work, suggests that capital is either replacing workers or able to offer less than workers can or will accept. We have seen this rodeo before, when workers were not able to overcome the greed and self interest of capital. It is clear that capital’s new tool is being financed and rapidly pushed forward to expand the side of capital, without concern for the workers in spite off potential risks. The risks, even the financial ones, are born by all and the masters of capital charge us rent and give us risk without concern for people’s needs. The labor movement and sympathetic progressives in the early 20th century helped turn the tide. That is why the people sitting on their gold toilet seats on their pleasure yachts (and planes) are trying to paint all opposed to their power grabs as communists not patriots. McCarthy tried that and was shut down by a simple question “have you no decency?” His lawyer Roy Cohen also was Trumps teacher. But now we know Trump and his Regime have non decency so the media do not even bother to report his attack on decency, honesty, good governance, the public good etc. news requires more lies and escalating absurdity while the Regime’s death and destruction. I ask the main stream media what you can do with the decency you maintain to reach out to the decency of the American people and make your voice louder than that of the Ministry of Truth.
I believe what you express and I just can't help wondering which consumers are unfazed enough by this to keep on spending and supporting Big Business, Big Food, Big Agri....somebody seems to have more than enough to hold a place in the thinning middle and bottom rungs of the upper classes. Companies like Coca Cola, PepsiCo, etc. keep reporting record profits. I keep having this feeling like my puny purchasing power matters less and less.....just wondering.....hope someone can enlighten me on this disconnect.
Well, in simple language capitalism can really mess things up, creating huge gaps between the rich and poor, especially when capitalists get greedy.
Thanks Betty.
It pays, saves, to shop around. Our local grocery chains sells a 7 oz. bag of Lays chips for $6.79. Total of $7.27 after tax. Sometime they are on sale. But even at 2 for 1 they are still $3.64 per 7 oz. bag.
Walgreens sells a brand called Nice. They only have 3 or 4 flavors but at $1.99, $2.13 with tax, for a 7.75 oz. bag who cares! They taste just as good and fresh as Lays.
Cheers... Vote Blue... GH
Or, do without junk food altogether. Save on doctor bills.
Just check the levels of consumer debt, and you'll understand it a bit better. Lots of consumables, groceries and the like are going on credit cards, charged by folk in the hope that things will get better and they'll be able to pay them off. It's likely that a lot of credit defaults and bankruptcies are in the nation's near future.
I would submit that there are several factors at work on work: 1) deportation of real workers who were here legally and semi-legally. loss of these workers for agriculture, home care, medicine etc; 2) loss of jobs offshore as some manufacturing goes back to South Asia,(recent reports of same), 3) loss of auto manufacturing as the economy slides, 4) loss of IT jobs due to AI and 5) a return to demands that all work be done ONSITE! And reliance on jobs that are INFLUENCER jobs probably not counted as part of our economy - the get rich quick with a PDF and sell it kind!
I like opts 2 +3, Susy B. I advocated for not paying taxes in 2025 because I saw the direction our Country was being led; but the Dems. and Independents didn't take me up on it. I hope everyone is pleased with how our taxes/debt is being spent: WAR: one we didn't need to be in if our "elected leader" didn't have such a BIG EGO that he couldn't continue anything good previously signed by Pres. Obama. Mark you, the history books will record this one after you're gone,🎺.
The USA is so overdue for a social democracy — and I mean it!
In solidarity BG
The stock market is just another way to legally gamble, and Iʻve always wondered why everyone get so excited about employment rates rising when they donʻt take into consideration unemployment. People tend to base their judgments/decisions on a single element, ridiculous
- Karen Cooper
Gambling with other people's money, too.
Correct Robert. That's why the Wall Street thieves always support the GOP who always try to give our Social Security trust fund to them to "invest" for us. Ha! Current trust fund value as of Dec. 2025... $2.56 trillion. If the GOP ever succeeds in moving it to Wall Street those guys will have it all in their bank accounts within two years. Sorry folks, we just made a few bad investments.
Vote Blue and pass stricter laws for Wall Street. GH
You are absolutely correct, Robert! I have two millennial generation kids who have never held a decent paying job. I hear from financial advisors that the millennials are gonna be even bigger and richer than the baby boomers. I don’t know if they actually include the number of young people who are unemployed, living, not only in relatives basements, but often in tents under bridges and in parks. That phenomenon did not happen during the baby boomer generation. I see townhouses and condos being built in every town across New Jersey and I wonder who is going to live there. The long-term implications are frightening.
I am curious Robert about the number of governmental and military jobs that we now have as compared to other recent presidencies? Doge ran so many out and Hegseth continues to chop away. Then we have losses of jobs in education and healthcare and agriculture. For pity sake I should imagine even the tourist trade has fallen. After all, who wants to come to America or take a chance flying to a vacation with ICE at the airports? Now if you want to join the crazy pack of wild dogs known as ICE ,and you have a lengthy sex crime history, that'll work. Or, if you don't mind ruining a communities water reserves and creating an unbearable 24/7 noise while devaluing the property value, there may be jobs opening up with creating Data Centers and ICE Detainment Facilities. Notice that these are all jobs for men. This administration prefers to keep young women bare foot and pregnant and older women....and older men dead. Gee, I don't know why people can't find work?
WHAT DO WE EXPECT: THE FED. GOV'T FIRED LOTS OF FED. WORKERS, HIRED ICE, TOOK NAT'L GUARD MEMBERS AWAY FROM THEIR JOBS, SENT MILTARY OVERSEAS, AND LABELED OUR "DEPT OF DEFENSE" THE DEPT OF WAR...🎺WILL EITHER HAVE FULL BLOWN ALZHEIMERS OR BE IN JAIL- IF THERE IS ANY JUSTICE-WITHOUT EVER REALIZING HE KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT A DEMOCRACY OR MAKING IT FUNCTION FOR THE PEOPLE.
AI, AI, O! (Intelligent automation, of course. White Castle has been using a robot French fry machine for some time now.)
Friends, who are highly talented and had multiple job offs when they changed jobs before, are staying where they are. They have seen this happen to other friends and aren’t willing to take the risk.
Odd, how that's an issue now, since employers were whining about staffing shortages several years ago because people thumbed their noses at the kind of wages and working conditions they'd have to work for and in, while fed-up employees growing sick of their bullshit were quitting without notice. I think it was always driven by cold-blooded employer intent. Just sayin'.
The biggest elephant in the room!
If Trump rigs midterms what are our options?
Leave the union
Stop paying taxes
Start forming new republics with like states
Start a civil war
There’s only 97 days before voting
The problem is all these people struggling financially and have lost the their health insurance still vote for Trump.
They don't have an ounce of critical thinking skills, they are not well-educated and willfully ignorant about Trump's policies that are making them suffer. Until that bond is broken, Trump can do whatever he wants with impunity
Yep, would say most of the individuals that voted for Dt in November 2024 the second time showed that they can't intellectualize and unstand science.