• 231 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • Yes, but they don’t even mention the yearly target in the article, just broadly allude to inflation not being an issue anymore, even though it has actively driven prices up significantly for pretty much everything for the last few years. It is absolutely a pain point that is often glossed over when talking about the economy, usually when commenting how good it is.

    I’m not sure what to make of this complaint. Yes the article assumes some basic level of understanding of what these terms mean. We had a bout of inflation, meaning prices rose quickly, and then it ended and prices are back to their usual flat or slow increase rate of change.

    As for the job market, I’m in tech. It’s insanely hard to get a job right now, as most places simply aren’t hiring (or worse, put up job ads but have no plan to fill them, as insane as that is). Wages have stagnated for sure, and housing has gone up in price. I haven’t actually seen many high wage growth for a lot of stuff around me either, mostly just adjusting lower end wages so that people can (mostly) afford rent. 2% inflation is better than the last couple of years, but the article linked completely downplayed all of those factors. Which is why I said it was bullshit.

    Ah well there’s your issue right there - tech in particular is not doing so hot right now, but most other parts of the economy are doing great. Got to look at the data on the big picture and not just what you see in your own little niche.




  • That somewhat unnecessary influx of money is what allowed prices to jump, but it’s also interesting that our rate of inflation was persistently lower than many other developed nations, so it may not have been totally unnecessary.

    Isn’t America’s low inflation relative to countries that intervened less the proof that the influx of money was not that cause of inflation? Not so much that spending the extra money actively reduced inflation, but it just turned out to not be a major factor. Meanwhile the extra spending was hugely important for keeping the American economy growing, while underspending held back many other countries.























  • I’m not sure I understand how deepfake porn is supposed to be ruining lives here. From the article it seems like the issue is not any concern that it would be mistaken for real, but instead just people having a very horrified reaction to seeing that sort of depiction of themselves? Mostly it seems like the deepfake aspect is sort of a trivial distraction to the real issue on display there of gangs of men targeting random women for online harassment. If there was no such thing as deepfakes other sexually explicit or disturbing images could sub in easily enough.

    Maybe the new deepfake ban will be useful as a way of going after these harassment gangs that previously didn’t face legal consequences? But it’s sort of an inexact tool for that job, given that there are presumably lots of deepfake images out there not used for harassment, and that’s it’s easy enough for harassers to switch away from deepfakes if using them becomes a major legal vulnerability.