2024 ELECTION THREAD

Sarcasm's really not your thing, huh, bro?

Anyway, I find vaping just means I vape and smoke rather than being a replacement. Won't continue the derail beyond saying that.

my friends who swapped to nicotine vaping just seem to vape way more than they ever smoked

@Luciom - Davidoff's actually my favourite brand but they don't sell them in the UK (maybe in specialty smoke shops, but not in general retailers anyway) so I only get to smoke them when I travel.

That's been the exact opposite of my experience with people who vape in the US

In Italy approx 20% of tabaccherie (the only places that can sell tobacco here) had them, and none put them in automatic machines

Obviously because if you want the same nicotine intake it takes an order of magnitude more time with vaping, unless you use those insane chimneys which are very uncomfortable to use unless you basically are at home.

smoking is for pathetic weak-willed addicts

why is this supposedly an election issue?

Because it's an example of a product where pricing is heavily influenced by government and Harris just went about heavily influencing prices in general (with laws) to tame inflation.

Lol at calling people who intake nicotine pathetic btw, especially if you don't say the same for all behaviors that aren't optimal for health

People who smoked and quit make more money in their lifetimes than people who currently smoke and those who never did, interestingly enough.

Is it possible that people with more money who smoke, quit more often than those who have less?

No not even close.

Yesterday's crypto4harris event was a complete dumpster fire sadly. There's a few good Dem politicians at least but hard for them to do much on their own.

We have no idea what Harris' policy towards it is. Without a word from her, can only assume following along with the abysmal Biden path.

Because Kamala is about to stop the government from subsidizing tobacco farms in KY, SC, and TN but will make exceptions to NC, PA and VA.

In her words: "Tobacco can make you blue but if you get too red you might die"

OK. I am just kidding.

The event was simply pandering. There was no one actually in crypto at the event. It started off as a DEI initiative with 4 black females, none of whom have done anything substantial in crypto. One of them created a scam coin.

No one in crypto thought the event was beneficial or showed anything positive about the Dems alleged 'reset' towards crypto.

Still holding breath for Kamala to indicate something positive about it at DNC next week. But given her position as VP, and effectively president since Biden is a wet rag, rather than words and election promises, would prefer her to actually do something now. Actions now is what would move the needle towards gaining a lot of support.

Some snippets of thoughts regarding yesterday's event:

I am assuming "Silk Road BTC dumps" is referring to bitcoin that the feds confiscated from Ulbricht when they shut it down? It's a few billions' worth now, right? They still have all that?

Is that not what you're supposed to do?

At least they're learning?

It's possible but it's also possible it's a purely cultural thing, as the pattern isn't the same in all countries.

In the anglo world in particular smoking has been demonized among the upper classes for a long while already, more than in other places.

But anyway in Japan women propensity to smoke strongly correlates to incomes (among working women) while it basically doesn't for men

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article...

Yes.

I'm not sure how much they have now, but I'm sure the data is out there. They are one of the biggest holders.

But they moved 10,000 bitcoin to Coinbase the other day. This is known not because they told us, but because you can monitor the movement of all coins on chain.

Transparency ftw

Does moving them to coinbase mean they sold them? I know nothing about the actual logistics of buying and selling crypto.

10,000 BTC is like what, 60 mill? That's like 1% if they have billions.

Edit: Oh, it's 600 mill. Muh bad.

That's extremely interesting, but it does not answer my question. I wonder if you could just respond with a simple yes or no to the question: do you think corporate price-gouging on groceries should be allowed?

How can you ask that question without precisely defining "price gouging", an hyper loaded expression with very vague specifics?

no, not necessarily. could be hodlin'.

it is funny that the US govt uses Coinbase, the entity their SEC is flailing at, to custody and/or exchange bitcoin.

If people are going to complain about Harris calling out corporations for alleged price gouging as populist, shouldn’t you also have something to say about Trump saying he will “stop inflation” as if shutting down immigration and increasing tariffs will do that? After all both of these things are known to be inflationary by mainstream economists, but they sound good to the general populace.

Also the notion that he is going to “stop inflation” when he demands that the Fed is no longer independent and he will lower their rates is laughable.

I would love a serious policy discussion about this issue, since it’s not clear to me that there isn’t evidence pointing to corporate greed as contributing to inflation, but let’s not act like Trump’s economic plan makes any sense.

That’s not even talking about him acting like the Biden administration hasn’t made it so that the US is more energy independent than it ever has been, and everything he says about energy prices are laughably stupid and populist.

its corporate greed coupled with oligarchs wanting the stock market to go up

Tariffs are uncontroversially inflationary and I went strongly against them, to the point of mentioning how that was a strong point in favor of democrats, except Biden got crazy recently and introduced an insane tariffs against Chinese EV (like 100%).

But yes tariffs are bad for inflation (and quality of life in general). Too bad both parties love them these days.

That reducing immigration is inflationary though is absolutely controversial even among mainstream economists.

Especially in a country where one of the main drivers of inflation is housing, and housing supply is constrained by political choice not capacity of the building sector.

It's not like there is demand for more housing, but companies can't keep up for physical constraints (including lack of workers), which would somehow make immigration help on the supply side as well. There is demand for more housing, but where desired local politics make it impossible to build enough.

This means that immigration is first and foremost inflationary, as it has a strong, direct causal link toward increasing housing demand at the margin, without contributing to supply at the margin.

There can be sectors where, depending exactly on how much immigration is reduced and/or how many people if any are deported, could face a shortage of workers and so could need to increase wages to attract workers from other sectors, and so prices to make up for it.

But keep in mind that if you want to use that hypothetical transmission channel for immigration reduction being inflationary, you then have to admit that American wages are kept lower than they would otherwise be by immigration, IE immigrants are actual stealing American jobs and materially decreasing the consuming power of american workers.

Which I don't think is a line you want to admit is true, so you can't claim the corollary either.

If more immigration doesn't decrease wages, then less immigration doesn't increase them, in aggregate in the economy simple as that.

The other 3 main determinants of inflation other than housing (which immigrants, as explained, make worse) are energy, educational costs and healthcare costs.

Immigrants obviously make educational costs worse (more demand for their children while they don't supply anything in the same size in proportion as teachers), slightly inflationary for energy (same energy available, more demand for it, and if they stayed at home they would consume less energy, so slight increase in worldwide energy demand) and not that big of an impact either way on healthcare (don't supply too much, but don't cost too much either for now as they are young).

So tell me again why exactly reducing immigration would be inflationary on net?

While deregulating oil and gas extraction (which Trump wants to do) is obviously, linearly deflationary, as is the push for charter schools (cost less per pupil than public schools).

Biden didn't go too crazy on his green policies (against his campaign promises) for oil and gas extraction, but it was the fossil fuel extractiom private sector that improved American energy independence, despite the hatred toward it from many democrats (not too much from Biden himself I agree), certainly not thanks to democrats who in many cases tried their best, explicitly, bragging about it, at the state level especially to fight against "big oil".

Denying that is quite surreal.

As for corporate greed and inflation in general I ask you as I asked others: why now and not every time? why do you think they haven't raised priced the same, but before, if they could? Corporations are motivated by "greed", ofc, but they all are, all the times, that never changed, so something entirely different has to be the cause for something that happened in 21-24 but not that much in 09-19.

Corporations were greedy even before, even with inflation at 1-2%