Steve Spencer
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 Re: Fujifilm price increase today | |
cbass wrote:
Steve Spencer wrote:
Please understand that it was the Federal Reserve Board that raised interest rates, not that previous administration and the Federal Reserve Board is supposed to be independent of the President and the executive branch. The members of the Federal Reserve Board are appointed for 10 year terms for that reason. The current chair of the Federal Reserve Board was appointed by President Trump when he was president the first time even though Trump has quite publicly criticized him.
Also keep in mind that the last three elections have been very close. President Trump won in 2016 despite not getting more votes than Hilary Clinton. President Biden won in 2000 with a very slim majority, and President Trump won again in 2024 with another very slim majority. The country is obviously almost evenly divided.
Of course the country as a whole shifted toward President Trump in 2024, that is why he lost in 2020 and won in 2024. The shift was not massive, however. Not even 5%. Trump got 46.9% of the votes in 2020 and 49.8% of the votes in 2024. Biden got 51.3% of the votes in 2020 and Kamala Harris got 48.3% of the votes in 2024. In terms of actual votes Trump got only 3,059,799 more votes in 2024 than in 2020. That is hardly a big overall shift when there were just over 154,000,000 people who voted. Historically the shift was very small, but it had a big impact because the election was so close. And while there were more counties and states in which the shift was toward President Trump, there were lots of counties and some states where President Trump got less votes. Only 6 of the 50 states (Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona) went from a Biden majority in 2020 to a Trump majority in 2024, but that makes a big difference in the electoral college.
I said "they" without specifying the previous administration. The point was that it is also a strategy that hurts main street short term by increasing loan costs for housing and automobiles to try to address a bigger problem: high inflation.
You can argue numbers if you like, but overall there was a massive shift right toward Trump.
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/21/nx-s1-5198616/2024-presidential-election-results-republican-shift
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/06/us/politics/presidential-election-2024-red-shift.html
https://calmatters.org/politics/elections/2024/12/california-election-results-trump-vote-2024/
You can usually see the number hover around 90% or more depending on the source. We can argue numbers, but he won the electoral college and popular vote and there was a shift in around 90% or more counties in his favor. He increased his share in 45 out of 58 counties even in California. He was given the mandate to rule and I am going to give him a chance and see how it plays out. Things were not exactly fantastic under the last guy.
The point of my post was two fold. One to point out that interest rate increase are not a matter of any administration. The are set by the Federal Reserve Board which designed to be arms length from the administration. Neither the previous Trump administration, nor the current Trump administration, nor the Biden administration sets interest rates. That is a fact not a matter of interpretation. Now whether those interest rates help or hurt Main Street is a political question we should not debate here, but let me just say the Federal Reserve Board sets those interest rates to balance inflation and unemployment. Higher rates ward off inflation. Lower rates ward off unemployment. The primary thing the Federal Reserve board does is try to balance those two bad outcomes by setting the interest rate. Whether they have done a good job of that we should not debate here, but what they are trying to do we should be able to agree upon.
I presented the number and the numbers of course are not a matter of debate. Numbers are numbers and as such are facts. We can't argue numbers. That is the point an increase in 3,059,799 votes is not something we can argue about. It is a fact. You are misreporting the facts when you say 90% or more of the counties shifted in President Trump's favor. That is factually wrong. Yes, he did increase his number of votes in many counties in California and the number is 45 out of 58 counties, but that was offset by decreases in many other counties. Biden won California with 61.5% of the vote with Trump receiving 34.3% of the vote. Harris won California with 58.5% of the vote with Trump receiving 38.3% of the vote. That shift was a lot bigger in California than in the country as a whole. In fact, the shift in California was roughly 2 and half times as big as the shift in the country as a whole. Despite that bigger shift, however, Trump did not increase his share of the votes in 90% of the counties in California. As you reported he increased his share in 77% of the counties (45 out of 58).
We can debate what the numbers mean, but we shouldn't. It is a political statement to say it was a massive shift. I don't think such a political statement should be made here. I could evaluate it but I won't. For those who want to evaluate it the size of the shift which is a fact can be compared to the size of the shift in previous elections as one point of reference for whether the shift is big or small. That comparison is also a fact and of course there are shifts in every election, so where does this one rank compared to previous elections? You can answer that question yourself and decide if saying the shift was massive stacks up in that comparison or not. I would reserve the term massive shift for the one we saw between 1960 and 1964 (a shift of 22% compared to a shift of 5% in the 2024 election) which was a shift to the left. Or the one we saw from 1976 to 1980 (a shift of 13% compared to 5% in 2024) which was a shift to the right or even Reagan second victory in 1984 which was a further shift of 12% compared to 5% in 2024) which was a further shift to the right. Note here that across his two terms there was a shift of 25% to the right. Across Trump's two terms there has been a shift of about 6%. You can call that massive, but numbers are numbers.
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