Joe Money, Joe Problems: the November 2021 U.S. Politics Thread

Gas has gone up from two-something to $3.49 a gallon in NJ.

Is prices going up due to supply chain shortages because "just in time" logistics only works as long as nothing ever goes wrong, properly classified as "inflation"? Or just, like, a temporary shortage of a commodity?

Some of the high costs (prices average $3.25 here) have to do with the real supply problems + finding people who want to drive trucks at shit wages + oil commodity traders.

The ideal solution with more than a +1 Senate majority without shit bird legislators like Manchin getting industry kickbacks would've been to keep the stimulus checks coming (they had an effect!) until COVID numbers are severely low (not likely) or, to be cynical, until the '22 midterms.

it really doesn't matter what the reason is, but do we think prices for this stuff are going to go back down? gas, sure, possibly, but i've ... never seen that happen for a food or consumer product in my lifetime. meanwhile there's no evidence of wage increases whatsoever that i've seen. in spite of all this talk of "worker leverage"

many xposts - I wasn't trying to single anyone out, I was just annoyed by the incredulous level of response that was getting, like "this is INSANE can you BELIEVE the UNFATHOMABLE amounts of MILK these oddballs drink". It's definitely a terrible framing for the story CNN was trying to tell and obviously there are ways this particular family could cut back, but acting all shocked like this was some herculean, unheard of amount of milk consumption underscores how vastly different experiences are for people growing up in different pockets of the country.

It's a story made for Twitter.

"young Dalziel" is the actor on McDowell's right, who played the blunt but effective senior detective in Reginald Hill's "Dalziel and Pascoe" tv series.

jon just search and replace "arugula" to get a more coastal perspective

"latte" works in a pinch as well

Whether you're buying one gallon of milk or twenty gallons, the percentage increase is the same, so emphasizing the number of gallons purchased as adding up to "a lot of money" just confuses the issue.

I can't believe I'm still talking about this but...The fact that milk is read as a wholesome, rural countryside-related, all-American product thanks to generations of marketing and farm subsidies is completely obscuring the fact that this is an outsized expense. In another context, we'd all get told that we could solve the financial problems of 70 years of wage stagnation if only we had the self-control to give up lattes.

CNN is so terrible. I mean no surprise but just wow.

xxp THANK YOU

Lads i hear ye are talking milk im only hear to talk milk now

Also is a gallon like 4 litres that would make diesel her about 8 dollars a gallon or so

diesel milk????? no thank you!!!!

diesel her about 8 dollars a gallon or so

a small price to pay for improved performance

am i sorry for this post? a little bit, yes.

this is me resisting the urge to correct for US vs imperial gallons

different unit

thxbye

don't do it. would only raise hell.

lol at anybody choosing to have nine kids and complaining about the price of anything.

i heard there was milk chat going on, did i get here too latte??

Milk Mustaches - did any u.s. politician appear in one of those? Celebs like Arnold that later became political icons don’t count

https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.rogerebert.com/uploads/review/primary_image/reviews/the-straight-story-1999/straight-story-image.jpg

maybe having nine kids is just an attempt to get more milk

aw, caek, I love htat scene.

Like, you know what else is more expensive when you have nine kids? Literally everything.

Do you know how much the $1 value meal at McDonald's is when you have nine kids? $9!

yeah, the milk consumption might be within (the ridiculous) government guidelines. the 9 kids, however.

just watching your chance to ever reach san diego Monster Jam slip away with that 8th sibling

maybe having nine kids is just an attempt to get more milk

If there really was an equivalent left wing media outrage generation ecosystem, this would quickly become a very serious investigation and there would be accusations of trump voters having more children just so that they could buy even more milk

It’s all just so that when they’re putting the tenth gallon of milk on the conveyor belt, they can say “I have many children, and this is getting expensive. The milk consumption I mean”

time for Biden to implement a one child policy

"let's build up a high sensitivity to fluctuating milk prices" a common tinder line from dogs

sounds like a D. Boon lyric

Republicans are forcing cats to breed in order to drive up milk demand even more and crash the sustem

Some are calling Operation Kitty Licks

We’re all a little punchy this week, aren’t we

How much milk do you think Joe Manchin throws away every year

Not so much punchy as a little milky, imo.

If you have nine kids, how do you get them around? Do you drive a fucking bus? How much does a bus cost? Can't be cheap! Plus you need a big car to cart around all those groceries. 12 gallons of milk or whatever, that's like a whole trunk for most cars! How many refrigerators do you need?

What is the optimum number of kids for a person to have and what makes up that number

And they said one kid is a foster, which means they get gov't money that surely covers the milk bill.

The whole point of the milk price inflation story is that the middle class are suffering, dammit. In their own minds, that suffering is undeniably true and they are fed up and would like to have a word with the manager, who is Joe Biden.

optimum number is obviously zero considering climate change and our general impending doom etc., one for "jeez never doing that again" households, two or maaaaaybe three for reasons of having them be well-socialized, keeping each other busy, etc. (to be clear, i was the third and last my parents had, and intend on having no kids.)

trick question, dmac, nice try. it would depend entirely on how much milk you can carry home each day.

1 kid + 1 "old soul" is optimal

it's very tricky because 2 kids or 2 "old souls" is a nightmare

The sooner we instigate a one child policy that ends the suffering of the middle child forever, the better

optimum number is obviously zero considering climate change and our general impending doom etc., one for "jeez never doing that again" households, two or maaaaaybe three for reasons of having them be well-socialized, keeping each other busy, etc.

Actually the optimum number is negative, which is why I try to kill at least one child per year

I dunno about optimum number, but other things aside, probably not so many that you complain about the cost to buy them so much fucking milk.

I mean, the thought of 9 kids gives me waking nightmares even typing the phrase out, but they did mention that not all of them are biologically theirs, so it is possible that some of them might be kids they've taken in for other family members or something. Point being, sometimes it's not always an intentional plan to end up with that many kids.

You start out trying to balance the number of kids with the number of "old souls"

Or maybe they abducted them all, and it's just hiding in plain sight. If only they offered any suspicious clues to the outside world, like buying 12 gallons of milk a week.