XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.guns, sac.politics
XPost: talk.politics.misc, alt.politics.economics
On 2025-04-08, -hh <
recscuba_google@huntzinger.com> wrote:
On 4/8/25 14:01, Leroy N. Soetoro wrote:
https://www.faux...
President Donald Trump said he wants Elon Musk to stay on his team "as
long as possible" during a conversation with reporters Thursday, adding
DOGE had found something "horrible" without divulging details.
Yeah, that "HORRIBLE" thing was that DOGE crashed the Social Security website:
Claims that President Trump inherited a thriving economy from President Biden are not just misleading—they’re dishonest. The Biden supporters measure economic “growth” from the lowest point of the COVID lockdowns in 2020, when businesses were
shuttered and unemployment was artificially high. This makes even mediocre recovery look like booming progress. But if we compare Biden’s economy to 2019—the last full year before the pandemic—many key indicators show not a robust rebound but an
economy weighed down by inflation, debt, and diminished purchasing power.
Real wages are down. From January 2021 to May 2024, average hourly earnings for private-sector workers fell by 2.24% when adjusted for inflation. Even broader comparisons with 2019 show only marginal gains. According to the House Budget Committee,
inflation-adjusted household net worth was still down 4.7% as of early 2025. Meanwhile, inflation surged 15.5% cumulatively from January 2021 through December 2024, with a peak annual rate of 9.1% in June 2022—the highest in more than four decades.
President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, along with the $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act—two of the largest spending and money-creation programs in U.S. history—helped sustain inflationary pressure rather than curbing it.
Employment numbers tell a similarly deceptive story. Biden often boasts of adding 16.6 million jobs, but much of that reflects people simply returning to work after pandemic shutdowns. Job growth also leaned heavily on part-time and public-sector
positions. Of the jobs Biden claims to have created, about half, 8.3 million were part-time, and 1.2 million were government jobs—positions effectively created by executive action, shifting money from taxpayers to government payrolls.
Americans were also borrowing more just to get by. Total household debt hit a record $17.9 trillion in the third quarter of 2024, up 26% from $14.15 trillion in 2019. Credit card debt alone exceeded $1.14 trillion, up nearly 15% when adjusted for
inflation. Delinquencies have surged—9.1% of credit card accounts were delinquent as of Q3 2024, the highest rate since 2011. Auto repossessions rose by 23% in 2023, with an estimated 1.5–2 million vehicles repossessed, a jump from 1.3 million in
2019. Foreclosure activity followed a similar path: filings rose to 357,000 in 2023, still below the 493,000 in 2019 but climbing as post-pandemic protections ended.
The cost of living soared, especially in housing. Average mortgage payments doubled from $1,300 to $2,600 between 2021 and 2024, pushing many Americans out of homeownership, while rents rose 40%. At the same time, the personal savings rate fell to 4%—
down from 7.5% in 2019—signaling that households were draining savings just to cover basic expenses.
Supporters of Biden’s economy often point to headline GDP numbers and international comparisons. In 2023, the U.S. posted a real GDP growth rate of 2.5%, outperforming peers like Japan (1.9%), Canada (1.1%), and the Euro area (0.5%). That resilience,
however, is nothing new. In 2019, the U.S. grew at 2.3% while Germany grew just 1.1%. The U.S. economy has long outperformed other G7 nations thanks to a large consumer base, a dynamic private sector, and global tech leadership. Nominal GDP reached $27
trillion in 2023, dwarfing Japan’s $4.2 trillion and Germany’s $4.5 trillion. But these structural advantages are not new and cannot be credited to Biden. They are the result of decades of American economic dominance—not the product of any one
administration’s policy.
Many of his short-term policies worsened inflation. The administration expanded transfer payments, raised benefits, and temporarily extended programs like the enhanced Child Tax Credit, which expired in 2022. As a result, dependency on government
assistance remains elevated. Labor force participation was 62.6% in late 2024, still below the 63.3% mark in 2019. In 2024, around 36% of Americans—roughly 130 to 140 million people—received some form of government transfer, up from 33–35% in 2019.
Medicaid enrollment peaked at 91.8 million in 2023 and dropped to about 80 million by late 2024, still higher than the 71 million pre-pandemic. SNAP recipients rose from 38 million in 2019 to 40.6 million in September 2024. While unemployment benefits
fell to 1.7 million recipients by late 2023, below 2019 levels, this reflects labor market normalization—not any new achievement.
The homelessness crisis adds another layer of evidence that Biden’s economy is far from strong. Under Trump, overall homelessness remained relatively steady, fluctuating between 550,000 and 580,000 according to HUD data, with gains in reducing veteran
homelessness. But during Biden’s tenure, the number of homeless Americans surged dramatically. HUD reported 653,104 people homeless on a single night in January 2023, and by January 2024, that figure had jumped to over 770,000—an 18% increase in just
one year. Chronic homelessness rose to 152,600, the highest number ever recorded.
None of these comparisons should rely on 2020 data. That year was an anomaly driven by pandemic chaos. The appropriate benchmark is 2019, when the economy was healthy, inflation was low, and wages were rising. Relative to that baseline, many Americans
are still worse off. Costs are higher, savings are lower, and debt is rising. The Biden administration can claim recovery, but not progress. What we’re living through is not the best economy in decades. It’s a fragile, inflation-distorted landscape
propped up by borrowed money, global tailwinds, and a private sector struggling to outrun bad policy
<https://gizmodo.com/social-security-website-crashes-blamed-on-doge-software-update-2000586092>
"The network crashes appear to be caused by an expansion initiated by
the Trump team of an existing contract with a credit-reporting agency
that tracks names, addresses and other personal information to verify customers’ identities. The enhanced fraud checks are now done earlier in the claims process and have resulted in a boost to the volume of
customers who must pass the checks."
Translation:
The DOGE fucktards *moved* where this credit agency check is done, and
didn't load test it before going live ... and golly, they broke it!
But the more corruption based question here is:
WHY did they move where this check is done?
The check existed and had been backloaded, effectively as a final
anti-fraud check after SSA determined that it all looked okay.
As such, the process change does nothing to reduce actual fraud: the
only thing it does is increase the number of transactions to the credit reporting agency ... which means that SSA now has to pay *more*, not
less, on this verification system.
Waste? Yes, this is.
Fraud? Quite possibly so: ; check DOGE relationships w/contractor.
Abuse? We can see this coming now too: this "change" will be spun into
a claim of "look at all of these fraudsters that were caught!" ... even though they were still being caught before.
-hh
If a website crashes under traffic then it is a poorly designed and implemented website.
And you know as well as I that government websites and back office software and hardware
are way behind the times.
--
pothead
Liberalism Is A Mental Disease
Treat it accordingly <
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14512427/Doctors-reveal-symptoms-Trump-Derangement-Syndrome-tell-youve-got-it.html>
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