After all, you're certain it is true.
Is the US producing more or fewer widgets? Are we generating and consuming more or less energy? How are imports and exports?
If inputs and outputs are staying the same then it would support the narrative of increased efficiency and elimination of BS jobs.
'normal part of the business cycle'
It is not a bad one. You can definitely argue it both ways.
I personally think there is a lot of self-inflicted pain ahead and position portfolio accordingly.
But seriously, antagonizing all of your trading partners and visitors so that tourism dies, your booze industry gets severely wounded, and making things expensive so the world's most efficient kleptocracy can keep feeding itself has some consequences, I guess.
Add to that the people who don’t understand that they are being fleeced and who’ll continue to support theire heroes because of pride, hatred, nihilism or misinformed idealism.
There is a vocal minority in the last bracket, but I’m convinced they are being amplified by an army of bots.
however due to the incompetent and corrupt powers that be - a lot of the news has been suppressed, and even the head of BLS fired.
everyone is struggling - but I guess the economy is doing well coz of the "stock market" as we're told
Vaccines don’t cause autism
But Oprah and Jenny McCarthy spread enough bullshit that it led to more cases of children dying because they were out there distracting from the real problem which is not enough vaccination
Real job losses come from company heads fundraising on the promise of automation and then with that additional capital they lay people off
in the same way funding funds research and development or offshoring fund “efficiency improvements” and the externalities of that are higher unemployment
Really? Anyone here feel like the job market is thriving right now? Anyone surprised?
Bc I was like - yeah, totally, makes sense, not surprised at all.
If anything, I am waiting for that dreaded "business update" calendar invite from HR. I am already researching and taking notes on trade schools. Ready to punch that ticket any day now.
The longstanding heuristic is that the most important metric of how bad things are is if ADP < BLS. If government employment is declining it will make the BLS estimates look poor no matter what the rest of the economy is doing. I expect ADP will be negative too but it remains to be seen if it is higher or lower than the BLS number.
Not sure what number you are referring to here? 92K losses does _not_ show the full picture but no number that I know of is saying the half a million jobs are being added to the workforce every month.
A full picture of what? The metric gives us a full picture on how many jobs were added or lost in the month of February.
Let them eat cake.
BBC is really full style right wing propaganda machine now. This time propaganda by omission (like those articles about Brexit where they never gave "no Brexit" as an option).
Zero commentary on tariffs, zero commentary about tourism and ICE, nothing about other policies.
There are lots of people who have expected these tariff and immigration policies to have a negative impact on the economy. Who wasn't expecting this? Right wing supporters of Trump. Thus the pretty reasonable claim that this is a right-wing slant.
https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-infl...
His net worth has grown over $4 billion since taking office again, and that doesn't count his sons or other insiders that have been taking bribes and making insider trades.
The single most corrupt politician we've ever had, with a family full of criminals.
As always with these losers, the Biden Crime family was purely projection.
In the recent Epstein releases, Epstein told Thiel that the best deals come from a system on the way to collapse. I think at this point it’s reasonable to consider that this is what Trump and his allies are trying to do. Crash the US economy so severely that they might use their ill-gotten wealth to buy an outsized portion of it.
Right…
Do you have a "three letter" reference?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/07/us/politics/d...
1. blame your predecessor
2. blame your staff
3. write 3 letters...
Most of the world is not visiting the US right now which means projects and planning that was made in anticipation for summer has probably been halted or heavily reduced.
Now instead they pay for the plane tickets to bring my nephew up to Canada.
December 2025, statscan calculated that cross-border auto traffic was down 30% (mostly same-day trips).
Air travel is only down 11%, and air travel to other countries is up 13%.
https://globalnews.ca/news/11679293/us-canada-travel-rates-d...
They didn't break down how much of that was tourism vs work.
(Asking for a friend.)
I live in Switzerland, and literally everybody I talk to in our circles - bankers, doctors etc. despises US right now. The idea of going there as a tourist is immediately laughed at or met with puzzled look. Professional reasons or conferences are not even brought up, its automatic no and employers usually don't even try suggesting those.
We ourselves with kids wanted to do the trip either this or next summer, but hell will freeze sooner. Some meager +-10k from us, I know just a drop in the ocean but there could have been many such drops. Other, less hostile economies deserve these way more.
That said, I do think some people are doing things for the wrong reasons and there is some manipulation of the masses at play here. One example is I expect most people don't really understand the tariff situation between Canada and the US and that most goods are still exempt from taxes and the agreements hold. I think some people want to punish the US for tariffs that don't exist.
As a Canadian we should push back strongly against attacks on our sovereignty. We should also be somewhat concerned about the direction our neighbor is going in general. But it's also a reality that the US is very very close to us both geographically, culturally, and economically. That's not going to change. It's not an "enemy country" despite their very questionable choice of leaders. I think the correct long term direction is open borders and open trade, somewhat like the EU, and we shouldn't lose sight of that because a bad leader is in place today.
It's very weird to me to see all the focus on US policies in the Canadian discourse while not enough focus on Canada. That feels like political distraction.
But to judge?
Okay
edit: The truth hurts apparently.
Meanwhile it's perfectly acceptable, if not a point of pride, for Canadians to go to Cuba, which is not only run by an actual, kleptocratic dictatorship that imprisons dissidents for decades at a time, but is also the number #1 destination in the Americas for sex tourists, including child sex tourists, with the industry even tacitly sanctioned by the dictatorship ("jineterismo").
Just a observation from my personal life, my friends who aren't broke, are still going to Florida, etc.
I recently went back for a funeral, and I had to spend a moment reminding myself that it would be fine for me.
For people who don't have my passport, I wouldn't feel comfortable telling them "it will be fine", though I would still tell a European "the odds of a problem are relatively low." But I couldn't in all honesty say "there's nothing to worry about."
Your passport does not matter, the colour of your skin does:
"US citizens jailed in LA Ice raids speak out: ‘They came ready to attack’":
* https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/05/us-citizens-...
"A U.S. citizen says ICE forced open the door to his Minnesota home and removed him in his underwear after a warrantless search"
* https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-u-s-citizen-says-ice-f...
But seeing my engineer freak out about flying in a plane, despite passing Diff Eq and knowing the probability of a crash... Feelings/emotions do matter.
This is why populist demagogues win elections... ugh...
I WISH governments would be for the people and not for the powerful who can buy "justice" .. for themselves.
Unfortunely my home country has too many fanboys of older times, aka Chega, so I hope you still manage a good time there.
These recent job losses are probably not attributable to tourism since that’s unchanged year over year.
I’m not saying tourism is not a factor or denying anecdotes about people not visiting the US, but I don’t think it’s the explanation for the February 2026 job losses.
One thing worth noting is that the tax structure of American cities can be more based on sales taxes than property taxes, and so if tourism is down, and sales is down, this will begin to impact city budgets, which can have rippling effects elsewhere. For example municipal cutbacks to landscaping budgets could impact private contractors etc.
This is accurate. This thread is people emoting. I get it, might as well let it out. Tourism being major part of the US GDP feels like countries whose GDP depends on tourism, projecting. I get that too, if that is the paradigm you live in every day, that is the lens you view things through.
Tourism is probably affecting local economies at the margins, and there is a real loss there for those communities. The US GDP as a whole? Not even a rounding error.
I live in a border state with Canada and this is having a huge impact for my community and those around us. I can't imaging it not impacting at least 40,000 Americans.
I wonder how many Americans of means are vacationing abroad instead of domestically just to get some respite...
I would love to emigrate to Europe. One of the nights in Amsterdam, I couldn't sleep and spent the night frantically researching how to legally emigrate.
As a US citizen who has daydreamed about moving to a Dutch city like Ultrecht I'm curious what they found, and how it feels to be an immigrant in the Netherlands.
It does all seem to be too much.
Reminded me of COVID time...
Sure, there will always be die-hard fans that will show up not matter what, but with so many teams, I bet we'll see empty stadiums for some matches.
Some of the main categories (page 8 of the pdf):
- Construction: -11.0k
- Manufacturing: -12.0k
- Transportation and warehousing: -11.3k
- Private education and health services: -34.0k
- Information -11.0k
- Leisure and hospitality -27.0k
Let's raise tariffs again.
It's rather more like someone going "based on the daily footfall numbers in my store, I expect sales to be up 1% this month" and the actual data being down 2%.
Well it's about to turn from theory to reality very soon.
https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.c...
This is nonsense even if we calibrate to North America and the EU (versus the American voting public).
Within America, Democrats are center left. Internationally it’s a hodgepodge of left-wing social, centre right-wing foreign and across-the-board economic policy.
It’s fine to say the part is right of your preferences. But it doesn’t help your argument to be delusional about where other Americans stand.
Obama dealt with two pandemic-level threats: H1N1 2009 and Ebola 2014. He made it look easy.
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (4.0 percent), adult women (4.1 percent), teenagers (14.9 percent), and people who are White (3.7 percent), Black (7.7 percent), Asian (4.8 percent), or Hispanic (5.2 percent) showed little or no change in February. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)
The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) changed little at 1.9 million in February but is up from 1.5 million a year earlier. The long-term unemployed accounted for 25.3 percent of all unemployed people in February. (See table A-12.)
Both the labor force participation rate, at 62.0 percent, and the employment-population ratio, at 59.3 percent, changed little in February. These measures showed little change over the year, after accounting for the annual adjustments to the population controls. (See table A-1. For additional information about the effects of the population adjustments, see the note at the end of this news release and table B.)
The number of people employed part time for economic reasons decreased by 477,000 to 4.4 million in February. These individuals would have preferred full-time employment but were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs. (See table A-8.)
The number of people not in the labor force who currently want a job changed little in February at 6.0 million. These individuals were not counted as unemployed because they were not actively looking for work during the 4 weeks preceding the survey or were unavailable to take a job. (See table A-1.)
Among those not in the labor force who wanted a job, the number of people marginally attached to the labor force changed little at 1.6 million in February. These individuals wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months but had not looked for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. The number of discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached who believed that no jobs were available for them, decreased by 109,000 in February to 366,000. (See Summary table A.)
We’ve been digging ourselves a giant AI-inflated hole in the economy for months and folks have just been playing musical chairs to grab as much money as possible before the music stops.
Hard to believe it’s taken this long. I never wanted to live through the late 70s / early 80s economically but I guess I’ll have my chance!
The reason the numbers are down should be pretty obvious.
Unless it is stopped the job losses will be absolutely massive, and a tiny tiny footnote to the massive human suffering that the stated mass deportation is intended to cause.
I really wish people would realize that prolonging this farce is not in their best interests. The energy potential of the inevitable blowback just keeps building.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/03/us-israel-iran...
The bigger question is the impact of immigration policies- the US population is smaller than expected due to immigration effects, so some of the extrapolation typically done may be skewed. I doubt this will make the numbers look better though. These numbers may be volatile for some time until the true effects of the lack of immigration are understood and modeled properly.
> Payrolls in the US dropped by 92,000 and the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%, according to the latest official figures, surprising analysts who had expected hiring to remain stable.
I'm not in any way suggesting the economy isn't taking a shit, but I'm curious about the actual expectation and reality. I know it says analysts expect hiring to be stable, but hiring isn't the same as job losses.
Makes a big difference.
It seems like a stretch to say anyone was pro-actively fired on the speculation that a war could break out in the middle east; so the war is probably unrelated. That said, if the Strait of Hormuz stays closed for any length of time then something pretty drastic could happen to employment in the future tense.
Every person has their own lived experiences, I think it should be common courtesy to at least give someone who puts in the effort into writing a, respectful non ai generated, comment a fair shot and being read.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE
I'd ignore the headline number and wonder what the longer term trend means because this isn't normal.
This stat makes a lot of sense for the most part. A stay-at-home parent isn't really unable to find work so shouldn't be counted in unemployment stats (for example).
But sometimes you miss the folk that have become disheartened. I know a few of those folk right now in the tech industry who want to look but just aren't. Our stats miss "mood" in a sense (hard to quantify of course).
But right now the mood is bad.
Apparently all 130k jobs came from the health care sector with everything else having no growth.
I wonder what a further breakdown of the data might show. The older (leading) boomers are starting to die off, so there might be a decline in needed care in the trailing boomers or something like that. Demographic change.
And we have a lot of economic, political, and geopolitical uncertainty.
So, if anything, I would be surprised if we don’t see this level of job reduction consistently for at least the rest of the year.
What is less clear to me is whether it will accelerate or whether it will continue for a few years.
I used Anthropic to analyze the situation, it did halfway decent:
The democrats lost the elections because of the economy. Gas prices were too high during Biden term.
It was a disgusting self own. I wish the Democratic Party would accept responsibility for that duplicity.
My paranoia conspiracy theory is that somehow US will declare war on Iran at some point and elections will be postoned.
This is the new utopia.
You mean full of AI spectators.
2. International Tourism in the US is not that big. Total international visits were expected to fall from 72.4 million (2024) to about 67.9 million (2025). https://www.ustravel.org/press/us-travel-forecast-2025-modes... So visitors to the U.S. dropped about 6% in 2025. I've seen some crazy numbers in this chat. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fewer-foreigners-visited-us...
More than 1.5 billion tourists spent $11.7 trillion on hotels, cruises and flights last year, according to the data from the World Travel and Tourism Council.
A fall of $12.5 billion is a lot but not something that will alter anything significant.
The majority of the people that are declining to travel to US are Example drops recorded:
Germany: ↓ 28% Spain: ↓ 25% UK: ↓ 18% Canada: ↓ 17% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_the_United_States
3. Some states and some countries are going the opposite (Argentina, Israel, two examples). https://skift.com/2025/12/29/us-international-travel-which-s...
4 .There is an offset by Americans traveling inside the US as well. https://www.thetravel.com/how-and-why-us-international-touri...
Overall, this is a small macro impact.
BTW, the irony is that they decided not to go to the US, but they are victims of the danger caused by the US anyway.
That said, I do see a lot of ads for domestic tourism to places that ordinarily would really have no need to advertise. Disney buying YouTube spots to persuade me,a US resident, to visit Florida seems remarkable. I suspect things are not rosy?
“Tourism” is not a separately-tracked sector in the data, but would be reflected in several of the tracked sectors ("Leisure and hospitality” particularly, but slices of the tourism spend would be in several of the other tracked sectors.)
With that said, I’m sure the US Iran conflict is going to have all kinds of fun effects.
Also of note, all four of those states are ‘Conservative’ havens…
tl;dw - They say Vegas visitor numbers are down, but profits are actually up. This is because the tourism industry there has refocused on higher end clientele
Here is much better quality reporting from NBC News with a breakdown per industry at 02:01 in the video:
"The U.S. economy lost 92,000 jobs in February, stoking labor market worries" - https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/2026-labor-market-s...
The most hysterically funny take on this is Cramer..( who else) and CBNC saying its AI...its NOT.
Only right now? The US touristic cities have been and continue to be the most expensive places in the world to visit by far, so most of the planet will never visit the US out of cost reasons alone, regardless of their views on $CURRENT_POLITICS.
Foreign tourism probably isn't large enough part of the US GDP to be making a dent in the US economy as a whole.
@WarmWash: where is the dollar collapsing? USD:EUR and USD:GBP are on par with where they were 10 years ago. Hardly a collapse. The people who can't afford flights and boarding in Vegas, Santa Monica or NY won't get any massive benefit from current currency fluctuations.
And international tourism supports local tourism. I think Las Vegas will continue to be a shell of what it was until international tourism rebounds.
BEA used to have these cool interactive tables on GDP by industry, but they’ve now been discontinued. It really feels like our current administration just does not like public data.
Contracts were heavily affected by cuts in federal programs that are critical to some rural regions, and uncertainty caused by inconsistent messaging about the future of such programs. Some areas are very dependent facilities that can only survive with public funding.
For example in nursing categories, CNOs (Chief Nursing Officers) would be requesting more staff, but CFOs would block those requests due to changing budget forecasts. The unpredictability of the fed is causing chaos downstream.
There is also a continuing trend to "realign" staff levels post-COVID, but that now is much easier to forecast for compared to the political chaos. In 2026 healthcare, that would not be a reason for attrition at these levels.
So that part could just be a blip. The rest seems on-trend.
The fact that it's such big part of the economy is a really bad thing because it's "overhead" or "broken windows" for the most part.
And it's falling because people are stretched thin so they're not going to the engaging healthcare unless they truly NEED it. Even if you have "great" insurance contacting that system still costs you money if not every time then on average.
I'm probably missing something here, but those seem quite unrelated categories, and I'm not sure why anyone would pay for private education these days when we all have access to free AI private tutors?
Plus cuts to the department of education, non profit spending in general.
That’s just a guess though.
Sadly my first thought was not to trust this report. The article even notes further down:
>> The US central bank would typically respond to a weakening labour market by cutting borrowing costs, in hopes of giving the economy a boost.
Our fearless leader has put enormous pressure on the Fed to lower interest rates from day 1. They keep refusing, and following the data so it makes sense (if you don't care about reality) to alter the data to get the desired result.
1/ the confidence interval for the monthly change in total nonfarm employment from the establishment survey is on the order of plus or minus 122,000
2/ the report is based upon a survey of establishments. There is no obligation to respond and many do not and ability/desire to respond may be impacted by company health as well.
oh and make old/ill people somehow work until they are sixty-five to get any food or medical assistance
that should fix things right up
xmas economic implosion inbound
They don't just fudge numbers a bit. This is a bad number for them because it's probably the correct (or best available, really) number produced by the existing bureaucracy that does things via the same rules it always has. Doesn't mean it won't be revised later (note that there's also a big downward revision in this report of previous numbers). But it's likely trustworthy.
Along with Big Lie polemics, you also need to recognize that the administration is very sensitive to market motion (sort of a variant kind of democracy, I guess). And markets HATE when the government messes with the economic regulatory aparatus.
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/11/nx-s1-5323155/economic-data-r...
That's direct pressure now to fudge/push the numbers before they come out. At the department level, there is usually a long culture of objective process to overcome, so it will probably start off subtle/small, but once they clear the old guard away they will report anything they want.
> the administration is very sensitive to market motion
Not exactly. The administration (Trump) is sensitive to embarrassment and criticism from his own side. Tanking markets are such an embarrassment, and while he might back down when markets tank, he might also do the the other thing he does to deflect embarrassment and criticism, which is to perpetrate some new outrage so that everyone complains about the new thing instead of the old thing.
And, of course, the markets will adjust. Iffy government numbers will get priced in.
You might like to believe there's a rational actor there, but there isn't. It's a guy moving from one gut reaction to the next, where his gut reaction is often to push everyone's buttons.
If someone can find this post, please link it here, because this person was no fan of Trump and I considered it a matter of considerable personal integrity that they looked into the matter and determined they still stood by the numbers, instead of taking the easy win on Bluesky and denouncing them.
(There is a separate issue where for the last 2-3 years, the BLS's later revisions to jobs numbers have been almost entirely downward, instead of evenly distributed like they used to be, indicating some kind of systemic methodological issue, maybe some secular change in how labor markets work post-covid. The February numbers could mean maybe they've fixed the problem, or maybe they haven't and this will later get revised to something even worse. But that issue predates Trump.)
The Biden administration pulled out all the stops (without resorting to outright corruption, like Trump) to get ahead of the fact that we briefly entered a recession in 2022 (which would not have been as brief if it had been correctly identified as the recession that it was). They changed how they calculated inflation around this time, which coincided with headline staying below 10% even though it had been trending higher and likely was much, much higher for parts of the country. I have no issue with the notion that they also changed the way that they calculated job growth and then, surprise, numbers are good (but then get revised down later when no one cares anymore).
The "official" unemployment number, the one now reported as 4.4%, basically only counts the "percent of people actively looking for work that can't find it, who have been looking for work for more that 15 weeks.
The number you are trying to capture is what the BLS calls "U-6". That number is defined as:
> total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers.
In other words, anyone that would like more work but can't get it. I encourage you to read the entire definition and footnotes at the link I shared. It's very interesting!
Right now U-6 is at 8%. During the 2007 recession it peaked at about 17%. [1]
Washington is being buried in indefensibly bad legislation that is extremely hostile to large companies and tech companies of every size for openly ideological reasons. It has rapidly become one of the worst business environments in the country when it used to be one of the best. Many companies have stopped or reduced hiring in Seattle and are moving operations to other States; there is a new announcement in the news every other day.
I know several longtime residents that have recently moved out of State or are no longer domiciled there as a consequence. There was an article in the news just this week that housing prices are starting to decline rapidly in Seattle.
It is looking like they couldn't help themselves and killed the golden goose.
_Oregon_ has bad policies (10% income tax on all, upwards of 14% on high income earners at 400k); schools are in a rough place, their legacy pension system is a disaster. But Washington seems fine imo. TX and such states will always be a draw while their cost of living is low, if you don't mind the heat and general lack of outdoors (relative to PNW). IMO the weather and housing prices are the main tradeoffs between WA and TX.
The tech companies killed the golden goose that was handed to them. They got too greedy. Amazon basically got carte blanche to build in Seattle, and plenty of tax credits to do so.
Amazon and their founder then told WA gov that they were going to relocate to Florida. WA gov said "well, we paid billions for your infrastructure, so if you're going to leave, please partially refund us" and Bezos whined and whined and whined. Imagine, a guy worth (at the time) nearly half a trillion dollars being told that he should have to pay a few hundred million dollars for his broken promises.
Imagine being given incredibly generous tax incentives for decades that allowed you to build a multi trillion dollar company, and then whining when the giver of those incentives asks for a tiny portion of that to be paid back when you tell them you're leaving.
There are a few very angry, emotional, and vocal opponents of this in most corners of the internet, although very few of them actually make a million dollars and there are many million+ income people supporting this.
Demographically, there are over 3 million households in WA, and only 20k of them would be affected.
They've been boiling the frog with increasing job requirements since at least one or two decades ago, and AI is conveniently aligned towards this goal.
Companies move in a group, if you're the only company doing layoffs you look weak and predators will pounce and the board will ask uncomfortable questions, but if everyone is doing it, they'll ask why you are NOT.
This assumes infinite demand which is not a good assumption imo. Especially if people are losing their jobs.
That said I don't think there is a ton of productivity growth yet with LLMs that would show up in the numbers that are getting thrown around. Companies are just finally seeing that they have a bunch of people not doing much at all and cleaning house
Like companies have been doing the RTO "stealth" layoffs for years now, it's not even news anymore, this was already well underway.
There is also the obvious priapism of owners and investors to finally do to the remaining white collar workers what they have already done to everyone else. Whether or not AI actually can replace all these workers is nearly moot, they have fantasized about business without labor for so long they can't tell the difference from reality anymore.
like what more clear point do you want?
Whether or not you believe that this is a good or bad move, correct or lying move, whether AI is capable or not,
“AI” is the reason that CEOs are utilizing to cut roles
The timing of this is based on the fact that Capital is striking from deploying money to anything else outside of the largest deals that include AI as promise of higher profits
But ultimately it comes down to the fact that the people in control with all the money believe that the future is gonna need less human workers and is prioritizing giving money to organisms that will shed their workforces in order to run an experiment in AI capturing value on behalf of investors without having the additional overhead of personnel
And perhaps Dorsey has a long enough of a runway for something to come along to save the company from eventual collapse. Maybe not, since firing 40% of a company tends to put a damper on innovative efforts that would massively grow revenues.
If Block is really so much more efficient, while doing well, they should invest that talent into expanded products and services. But that’s not what we’re seeing.
Some things:
- They acquired AfterPay for $29bn. Their market cap today, after the big AI bump, is $40bn. BNPL did not pay off the way payments companies thought it would.
- They have a weird internal combination of Cash and Square and AfterPay internally. They’re not as unified as they ought to be.
This feels more like Jack coming to terms with a company that’s hugely inefficient organizationally. It’s easier to clear out thousands of people and rebuild.
Even something as simple as crossing the road is unnecessarily complicated in America. Some roads you seem to need a car to get from A to B. It just doesn't seem peaceful but very chaotic and intense.
Unsurprisingly, most people don't like hearing they might go to prison for no real reason.
It's simple, as a technologist, you live in Europe if retirement isn't important for you. Because you'll have almost nothing to show for it after 30 years in tech in Europe.
Wouldn't the robust social safety net found in many European countries offer a dignified retirement for most people?
Some of those jobs will just disappear (resulting in job losses, which is what the headline is about), but unemployment (people looking for jobs and not finding them) is up.
It does mean economic contraction, but that's yet another number. That would show up in GDP, but that number is really slow to collect. Data so far is actually pretty smooth, but that's to be expected.
https://www.epi.org/blog/immigrants-are-not-hurting-u-s-born...
Yes, for jobs that Americans don't typically want to do.
Indiscriminate tariffs means deindustrialization, unpredictable tariffs means stagnation (inability to grow).
Blatant corruption means stagnation.
Aggressive international relations means disruption of any market that touches the rest of the world (with loss of wealth). Active war means the same thing as mass deportation and non-productive spending, so more contraction.
Trump has an incredible ability to hit all the targets.
Trump is completely captured by business interests and is not America First. Mass immigration is the billionaire first position.
Younger generations understand this, so we likely won’t see some change for a bit, but it is coming. And it makes sense - they’re the ones suffering most from unfettered immigration. Their birthright is being handed out to cheap labor, because the billionaires running our society see us as cattle.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE/
I'd say the article overstates its point somewhat. The numbers (rise in unemployment) don't look to be caused by Trump alone (trend started before), but he most certainly did not improve the situation in his first year (numbers grew worse instead of better).
But the absolute numbers (<5%ish unemployment) are not especially concerning for now despite trending in the wrong direction (and all of Trumps policies seem to make things worse so far).
So there's not much mystery to it.
I work with a a decent number of Americans who either moved here or are here temporarily, and I can't say there has been any tension. I think most Canadians who are staunchly anti-US are also aware that plenty of Americans aren't happy with their government. I can't say I've seen any vitriol towards the average American person.
You don't need the bumper sticker, or to apologize. As long as you aren't wearing MAGA gear or being bombastic about Trump, people won't really think much of it. I assume anyone visiting Canada isn't a Trump supporter anyways, as most polling shows they've decided they don't like Canada.
Some even go as far as booking a trip to Europe for a music concert instead of going to the US.
The line between "it's expensive" and "the current situation in the US sucks" is blurred.
https://globalnews.ca/news/11075088/canadian-snowbird-couple...
Granted, as someone who lives ~40 km from the border, I'm broke and can't afford to travel, but I'm also avoiding the U.S. and have been further than 100 km from home on a number of occasions in the past year.
Florida was always a budget option for us. It's always been a quick, easy (you can drive), low risk break to get away from the cold. I just don't feel like dealing with CBP and random MAGAs right now to be honest. Wife is low-key stressed about the idea. I mean at best it's a hassle... so why bother?
There are many reasons people might have, none are good. There is for instance also a risk factor of being harassed and detained by ICE. Cruelty and incompetence are a feature of authoritarian governance, not a coincidence. So anyone going there takes a kind of risk. As has been shown, even Europeans aren't safe from the whimsical paramilitary.
EDIT: I don't think that tourism is a big factor, but as I said elsewhere, it could well be the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
Probably not our friends anymore.
I'm sure it has nothing to do with the Gestapo. What a lovely time to be a foreigner travelling in the US...
Gestapo is ... bullshit and FUD.
Yes, we see the news about ICE.
https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/border-crossing-data-annual-rel...
In 2025 there were about 18M personal vehicles and about 300K pedestrians crossed from Canada into the US. So yes, it's down (like 10%) but it's still a lot of people. Out of those the number of people that run into problems with the "Gestapo" is approximately, within rounding error, zero. You're a lot more likely to die in a car crash or get robbed or something.
Why does everything today have to be about hyperbole? You don't want to visit the US (like me) ... well don't. You don't like Trump ... fine. You disagree with the immigration policies, enforcement whatnot... fine. But enough with this bullshit fear mongering.
Sure, if there's potential for using this situation for political gain it'll maybe make a political impact, but there will not be an economic one, not above the SNR of what else is going on.
It's 12% of the international market. That is the segment. Any business is going to pay attention when they lose 12% of a market segment. Travel is 2.5% of GDP, above agriculture (0.9%), mining (1.3%), and utilities (1.5%) so a very outsize industry. Straight 10% of that (international travel) makes the rounding error market segment 20% of the size of our entire ag industry.
That is your 'rounding error' a segment that brings in 20% of the entire United States ag industry.
Tourism is also 15 million jobs so a 'rounding error' to such a large industry isn't necessarily a 'rounding error' to our population. 10% of that would be 1.5 million jobs. The entire US agriculture industry employs 812,600.
Again, the party that makes ridiculous claims for political impact is the one so concerned over 40,000 coal industry jobs but unconcerned about the fate of 1.5 million US workers because it's a small 'rounding error'.
https://www.squaremouth.com/travel-advice/us-tourism-statist... https://www.bls.gov/ooh/Farming-Fishing-and-Forestry/Agricul... https://www.trade.gov/feature-article/december-2024-internat...
Edit: My bad if you felt attacked. Everything just gets hand waived away as too big to do anything about nodays. I don't buy it. I'm a software developer. I was mentored on the montra 'how do you eat an elephant? one bite at a time'. It's the only way to create complex software solutions, and it's the only way to address our complex world. We shouldn't waive things away as rounding errors when they are part of a complex system. Especially when you consider the US Federal system. If you lose all the border states (most tourism comes from Mexico/Canada) you can easily lose control of the Federal government.
Well, I guess, they might have been auctioned off to some billionaire at that point so… the tickets will probably be pricier but the facilities should be shiny and new.
If you spend money in Canada, then you are taking stuff from Canadians. If you spend your money in the US, then you are taking stuff from Americans.
You might wonder what happens at the limit - why don't Canadians just spend all their money in the US and take all America's stuff (just a thought experiment)? Because currencies adjust. Canadians would need US Dollars to buy stuff in the US, and as more and more Canadians try to do that, the exchange rate would change to devalue the Canadian Dollar against the US Dollar, effectively making things more and more expensive for Canadians until they are forced to get their stuff elsewhere.
When you spend Canadian dollars at a business owned by a Canadian, you're sending that owner and the Canadian government your money, in exchange for their goods or services, normally at a surplus of value for them. You are 'helping' them; you are 'investing' in the Canadian economy. You are justifying the existence of their business and the jobs of the people who work there.
Especially insofar as you're making this choice versus American options, you are putting money into the hands of Canadians rather than Americans. This is the underlying concept behind boycotts and voting with your dollars or feet.
Edit, didn't realise it was this bad:
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/260223/dq260...
We don’t care because we are the only people who live there mostly year round and only leave during spring break and the summer when domestic tourism is high.
It's probably not bottomed out yet, some of those trips were booked months in advance and not cancellable without taking a financial hit.
This is also why capital-M Moderate Republicans (who have a near circle overlap with the "Never Trump" movement) are so attractive to Republicans and Democrats alike in purple states.
So job “growth” is overstated because much of that growth is macro demographic replacement.
But them being out of the workforce entirely shows up in the looking for work numbers decreasing. Therefore their leaving is accentuating 1 and dampening the other.
So more non-producers, who require non-productive health care means that lower unemployment doesn’t feel like a good economy. Thus their leaving healthy post covid number but other measures seeming bad.
Neither has the US. Trump specifically disavowed that every time he was asked (by the CBC). Meanwhile Cuba sent thousands of mercenaries to kill Ukrainians on behalf of Russia.
> punish Canada economically
Frankly, even as someone who opposes tariffs as uneconomic, given Ottawa's long-standing "constructive engagement" with the regime in Havana, even after they hosted Soviet nuclear weapons pointed at the US, even while they put AIDS patients in concentration camps, and even while they ran the island as a giant, open-air prison refusing to allow anyone to leave, it's really speaks to America's forbearance that it hasn't attempted to punish Canada economically, until now.
> A reporter asked if he was "considering military force to annex and acquire Canada."
> "No," replied Trump. "Economic force."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/donald-trump-canada-51st-st...
"The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State. This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear. Canadians’ taxes will be very substantially reduced, they will be more secure, militarily and otherwise, than ever before, there would no longer be a Northern Border problem, and the greatest and most powerful nation in the world will be bigger, better and stronger than ever."
"If Canada merged with the U.S., there would be no Tariffs, taxes would go way down, and they would be TOTALLY SECURE from the threat of the Russian and Chinese Ships that are constantly surrounding them."
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/03/19/trump-canada-annex/
We're into "reject the evidence of your eyes and ears" territory here.
I am interested in seeing some natural scenarios and also experiencing the American culture and way of living in mostly middle and small cities.
It's not like this is the first time in recent history that region has been somewhat unsafe for travelers. Or the second time, or third, or fiftieth.
[1] https://open.substack.com/pub/stayathomemacro/p/trust-in-num...
The parents that stuck their kids in front of a TV in the 80s or handed them an iPad to shut them up in the 2010s think this is a great idea today. Namely, it’s not an AI tutor. It’s an AI babysitter. That’s fine. Parents need breaks, particularly ones who can’t afford childcare. But branding it as anything but a way to mindlessly occupy one’s child is dishonest.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/172835/the-diamond-...
I know human teachers aren't perfect, but they seem much better than these things.
Just watch, he'll address with with Big Lie politics like he always does. He'll stand up on a podium, throw his own Labor Department under the bus, and announce that they're lying and that the economy actually gained 200k jobs or whatever. But he won't dither on whether it's -92k or -112k.
I don't have a more recent statistic, but in 2018 half of Uber rides were provided by drivers working 35+ hours per week: https://www.epi.org/publication/uber-and-the-labor-market-ub...
So while I was perhaps too harsh on the work of the BLS, I do think that newer metrics are warranted.
Yes, but "AI replaces people by improving productivity by 20-50%" is clearly a case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy. So maybe the "people are losing their jobs" is just totally unrelated to AI . . . but people keep repeating that "companies can do same work with fewer people thanks to AI" nonsense, so there will always be a need to remind them how actual economics work.
Trump fears the people, but if it were slightly more popular there would be even more people hired by ICE and we would be seeing the consitutional abuses that happen today in Minnesota in far more places across the country.
This is absolutely false. It was always mass deportation of all illegal immigrants. The "worst of the worst" rhetoric is new.
Here's a source, but there are many: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/9/trump-lays-out-agen...
> Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Trump reiterated his intention to deport every person who had entered the US without authorisation.
The reason it's "daydreaming" is that we're not yet ready to give up on New England, but I'd still like to start getting our ducks in a row in case there's a rush for the exits and we have to move quickly.
> He's now making half of what he might make at home, but he's happy.
Sounds like what we're looking for.
If all of the undocumented people in the US spent this much time trying to emigrate legally, the US wouldn't need ICE and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
1. Should we deport illegal immigrants? While there are some debate here (sanctuary cities, immigration reform etc), it's not the primary cause of the current ICE repulsion.
2. How deportations are done currently. Mass round ups, targeting everyone, including those with no criminal record, the violence involved. This is what most people are against.
Many of the "undocumented people" (what an Orwellian phrase) that have been rounded up by ICE are picked up during court hearings or immigration interviews. An easy way for agents to meet their quota without doing any actual investigative work. Say what you will about them but there's no denying those people were by definition "trying to emigrate legally." This has been widely reported.
Yeah. Also "Illegal aliens" used often by US government officials is even more Orwellian.
The irony is rich here. Country X is bad for enforcing its immigration laws. So let's run off to country Y and dutifully follow its immigration laws.
Ultimately, it would have been quicker, easier, and cheaper (and in the end, just as legal as my immigration) to come here on a tourist visa or the VWP, marry her in spite of the prohibition thereon, and ask for forgiveness and apply to be able to stay anyway.
When it's those three things versus "legal immigration", and other factors, I rather empathize with many of those people.
And as for your comment, it's more and more apparent that Trump intends for ICE to be his cudgel for all manner of opposition, not just immigration issues (witness the attempts to extort Minnesota into handing over state voter rolls, "We will move ICE enforcement out of the state if you do") so no, we'd still be having it.
Emoting and wishful thinking is exactly right, and I say that as a Canadian who is participating in this boycott. I'm not doing it to hurt the US economy, because I know it won't matter one bit even if we all stay away. It'll hurt some border destinations, but will hardly register in most places. Facts are facts.
The US economy is driven in part by coal which employs 40,000 people. Rounding errors have impacts and are part of policy discussion all the time. It only gets shut down with 'rounding error' when it's referring to average people issues without clout.
Calling things rounding errors is the US equivalent speech as russian style apathy propaganda.
Having established that, you know the firm upper bound on economic (not cultural or political or podcast-topic-generating) impact that international tourism boycott will have on the US. Same for putting tariffs on US goods. If you ignore this, you'll be surprised by how little this matters in the end, economically. Conversely, if you keep yourself firmly grounded in reality you can still in fact be against these policies on different grounds - on the fact that over time their cumulative economic and non-economic effect will hurt, on the fact that a lot of the reasons for these policies are fanciful nationalist bullshit (no, manufacturing jobs aren't and won't be coming back). But don't expect us staying away from your country, or putting a tariff on your shitty cars or cucumbers or whatever, to make a difference. Why is that controversial?
If you believe the administration, it's been because BLS "has the wrong numbers" or that they need "interpretation" or "adjustment"...
... or it's because they've been garbage for a while now and trending in this direction because, shocking, I realize, maybe Trump isn't the economic mastermind he likes to cosplay as inside his head.
US citizens are, of course, allowed in even if they refuse, but they will confiscate a citizen's phone in exchange for a custody receipt (Form 6051-D) and they are supposed to return it to the US citizen after they break into the phone / crack the encryption. If they can't crack it, they can choose to never return the phone to the US citizen. And it can be a very stressful situation in which citizens may not know what their rights are in the moment (or can't afford to replace their phone or lose access to it because how would you even get an Uber from the airport or coordinate a pickup if you don't have a phone).
You can choose to bring burner phones or make sure your phone is freshly factory reset, but if you're a non-citizen that can also be a reason to be refused entry, and if you are a citizen that can "get you on a list", leading to getting "SSSS" stamped on every boarding pass for every flight you take, in every country in the world, for the next many years. If your boarding pass gets "SSSS" written on it, you will get pulled aside by security and all your bags get individually hand-searched prior to every single flight (even transfers/connections/layovers).
Non-citizens are also sometimes asked for a list of your social media accounts and the passwords to their social media accounts. Refusing to provide your passwords can be used as a reason to refuse entry to the USA. If the USA believes you have a social media account that you failed to tell them about, that can also be a reason to refuse entry.
Also, as of recently, visitors from 38 countries have to post a ~$10,000 bond just to be allowed into the USA.
https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2023-09/Test_Results...
I've visited a lot of countries in my life but I've never been treated as rudely as on the US border.
In short, the thing is that countries like UAE are predictable. Follow their laws and don't mess with them, and they won't mess with you. The US has become unpredictable, hence more dangerous.
Less than 0.01% of travelers to the US have their electronics screened. A similarly small fraction of travelers get turned away at the border. It's remarkable how big of a story it is for how much of a non-story it is, especially when you consider the fact that similar laws exists in the UK, France, most of the Middle East, East Asia, and more. The only story here is that America is (regretfully) becoming more like the rest of the world.
The Trump admin acts like it is on cocaine. Many people - and I think this can be a highly rational preference - prefer predictable more evil of chaotic less evil.
2022, gained 678,000 jobs in February (Doesn't really count, global economy was emerging from Covid shutdowns.)
2023, gained 311,000 jobs in February
2024, gained 275,000 jobs in February
2025, gained 151,000 jobs in February (This seems to be the point of discontinuity with gains only about half of what were typically expected.)
2026, lost the 92,000 we're talking about. (Obviously, we had expected a gain.)
A security guard picked up his bag from the carousel, handed it to him, and very emphatically said "Welcome home, sir!".
I'm well aware the color your skin matters a lot, but your passport also matters, especially at the border.
You're better off with white skin and a US passport than with white skin and a British passport, but you're also better off with brown skin and a US passport than brown skin and a British passport and that's still better than brown skin and a third-world passport.
And yeah, even if you're a white man with a US passport, you still might end up shot by ICE if you're in Minneapolis (doesn't mean you're less likely to be targeted).
The way things are currently operating, the border is probably the place you have to worry the least as it's staffed by CBP folks which have probably had training: it's the rest of the country with ICE randos running around that seem to be the worrisome areas. Just ask the South Koreans:
* https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/sep/12/s...
> You're better off with white skin and a US passport than with white skin and a British passport, but you're also better off with brown skin and a US passport than brown skin and a British passport […]
Are we talking at the border or the rest of the country? At the border with CBP a US passport would probably be best. With the rest of the country, with ICE, white skin and a British (or any) passports would probably be 'best'.
But also, look carefully at the comparisons I offered. I didn't include all the combinations, because I only was including comparisons that were obviously true without any room for ambiguity or nitpicking.
As you noted, a black citizen might be treated better at the border and worse during a traffic stop compared to a white foreigner.
I meant to say "doesn't mean you're not less likely to be targeted".
Tell me you're not an American without telling me you're not an American.
I hate to say it, but to many (racist) Americans, brown skin < anything else ... and ICE has a disproportionate number of those people, because they deliberately hire them.
2. Reread what I wrote, it's not contradicted by what you said.
It is definitely easier to immigrate illegally for a large portion of the world population, and probably most illegal immigrants. Rational actor then would immigrate illegally.
I think this also very much depends on the country. Only a total idiot would try to "legally" immigrate to Argentina as their constitution essentially grants citizenship just for surviving for two years, and meanwhile there is essentially no immigration enforcement and fairly onerous visa process to do it "legally." On the other hand, you'd have to be an idiot to illegally immigrate to China in anything but the most dire circumstances, as they have an Orwellian surveillance apparatus and getting a legal business visa is fairly straightforward particularly in some special economic zones. On the Argentina<->China scale I would rate America as further towards the Argentina side, albeit with no path to regularization of status for most illegal immigrants.
Having a dogmatic adherance to the law leads to irrational actions. But also having a dogmatic disdain for the law also leads to irrational actions. Everything has to be considered in context. In the context of the USA you mostly have to be an idiot to try and immigrate legally if you are low skilled poor person from a 3rd world country with no connections. In the context of an educated American going to Europe, the rational choice is probably to immigrate legally.
From this lenses I don't really see any logical inconsistency in the fact the same person might pick illegal on one path and legal for another. Although yes if they are leaving the US because they hate immigration controls and dogmatically following immigration controls overseas in someplace like Argentina where it doesn't even make sense to do so, then they are definitely hypocrites.
I appreciate the way you phrased that, "what the legal system says" rather than "the laws," since it's important to keep in mind a lot of what we're talking about is mercurial executive branch policy rather than statutory law. (which is why US immigration has been such a shitshow for such a long time)
On the other hand, you're apparently ignorant of what's actually happening, and it's making you write stupid things. The Trump administration's policy changes when he took office immediately made a lot of people, not my choice of words, "illegal" immigrants instead of "legal" immigrants. Maybe you support that, that's your business, but to claim those people were not "trying to emigrate legally" because the new administration changed the rules is simply dishonest.
[1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hr/31000-kaiser-worker...
Workers on strike are classified as not employed, so yeah we should ignore that category
The conspiracy part is that after war is declared Trump will use this power to postpone elections and basically give himself a 3rd term.
... anything. Just does what he wishes without regards to legal limitations.
Calling bombing dozens of cities of a country anything but a war is being duplicitous.
It’s both. Like transportation and construction. And whether you think it’s a profit or cost center doesn’t change that it contains paying jobs.
I'm getting more benefit than the cost of that healthcare (I'm asserting that this is true, I feel a lot better with the medicine) and that ends up feeding into the economy.
I reckon I'm trying to think about the dependency graph of necessity. I suspect you are too.
A monetary economy has productive sectors and non-productive sectors. Most healthcare is non-productive from the point of view of an economy. Healthcare for workers and future workers is economically productive (from an economy's point-of-view). Maybe my conceptual cleaving is poor (black n white binary splits are usually misleading).
Of course ultimately most of what an economy delivers to us individually is monetarily uneconomic (is art or entertainment necessary?). Me confused.
Now I feel bad that I've wandered off into philosophy (which I usually find interesting but non-useful).
For Block's case they have had multiple layoffs over the last 5 years, hardly the sign of an AI apocalypse and more of a sign of a business leader that only survived because of free money.
For instance, I could live with allergies, and all my ancestors just had to, but I have the option to spend money on allergy testing services, medicines, treatments, etc. People spend money on in-home professional care to get better treatment than going alone or relying on family, or spend money on care facilities as appropriate for their circumstances.
We have medicines for depression, anxiety, restless leg syndrome, ADHD, birth control, acne, weight loss, low testosterone, ED, poor sleep, eczema, psoriasis and a million other issues which people in the past, or people in developing countries today, simply had to live with that we have the privilege of having access to treatments for to improve our quality of life.
I know people who are affluent and outwardly "healthy" who spend thousands of dollars per year in the "healthcare" category that's entirely discretionary, but lets them keep looking young and playing tennis at 70 years old, or helps them juggle work, family and fitness at 40.
Humans weren't designed to last forever, and it's inefficient to push against that constraint, you run into fast diminishing returns, and it leads to maladies and stratification when done at a societal scale. It doesn't matter how much we spend on health care, we're not going to live forever.
Reading the reports "beyond just the headlines" implies that you're still just taking them at face value, when the problem is that the methodology was likely compromised by a desire not to see bad numbers roll out. Nonsensical susbtitutions in the CPI basket, which just happened to understate the price hikes most Americans saw c. 2022. Suspicious timing of changes in the efficacy of initial jobs reports when compared to later revisions, as you yourself brought up, in part because the Biden admin failed to better fund BLS surveys and better incentivize responses. Stuff like that.
So while I appreciate that you would like to dismiss, out-of-hand, the concerns about the Biden admin's economic reporting, it's not so easy. They're real and this lacto-ovo progressive is not the only one bringing them up.
Good Luke verbal cosplay, though. /s
I figured he was going to drop sanctions on them sooner or later but that was quite the ploy
The problem is zero consequences for anything he does now, completely isolated, so it's one country destroying choice after another
> by force
part, which is the part Trump repeatedly disavowed (as your own post demonstrates).
https://www.kff.org/medicaid/implementation-dates-for-2025-b...
It looks like some of the big ones landed Jan 1 2026.
I ran the team that maintained our business analytic data, and was also on weekly calls where feedback from our clients about the situation was discussed. There was direct correlation between uncertainty and both a decline in new job postings, as well as a lack of renewing existing job contracts.
When comparing our numbers to those of our publicly traded competitors, all the data showed the same trends.
>Yeah, screw DEI!
lmao I'm talking about wars; sprawl; advertising and consumerism; wasteful or gatekept luxuries; feet-dragging on any number of technologies and policies that could have mitigated the damage, just to please incumbents.
We temporarily made life spectacularly better for like 5-10% of the population, and doomed everyone to either generations of toil, or a hard reset in the form of a "burn it all down" revolution.
When interest rates go up, money floods out of higher risk higher return areas like company formation, and floods back into buying bonds, so investors can collect the low-risk interest that didn't exist before.
Just to drive the point home, in 2019 the total VC market was ~$300 billion. To date, roughly $235 billion is tied up in just OpenAI ($168b) and Anthropic ($67b)
To say this a tiny unimportant segment that isn't worth talking about is ridiculous. Again especially considering the consideration the Republicans give tiny industries like coal which employs 40,000.
It's worth talking about a segment that employs 1.5 million in a discussion about 92k job loses.
That state desperately needs to restructure its finances but the legislature is almost complete captured by clueless ideologues. Washington isn't California. Most of the attraction of living there historically was its extremely business-friendly environment.
I've lived a large fraction of my life in Washington and I'm watching the State commit suicide in real-time.
How old are you? What propaganda told you this? In my generation (young millennial/genz) the attraction of living in Seattle, which pulled me and almost a dozen professional friends at this point has been:
- high quality urban living in a temperate environment. Including access to great parks, waterfront, bikeability in the city
- access to great outdoors and regional amenities like skiing, ocean fishing, hiking, wine country
- liberal policies and general friendly society (it’s friendlier here than the east coast)
- no state income tax (we’re all very high tax bracket)
- a high enough income population that you can find a plethora of high-end products and services that cluster around high income earners (only a few us cities have this stronger than Seattle I feel)
That doesn't explain everything, obviously, but I think you need to take it into consideration. For decades I've heard this in some form from people: "Oregon is amazing, but I had to leave when I couldn't get a job." Meanwhile the Sea-Tac region has had amazing growth, packed wall-to-wall with a range of companies.
A. Their job is only available here
B. No state income tax
(C?). They REALLY love skiing/hiking
People have always regularly left for NYC/Bay Area, but I predict it will start to happen in droves over the next few years as A rapidly fades and legislation begins to threaten B.
The budget expansion is almost entirely by medicaide.
Looking at 2019-2023
* Human Services: +~50% nominal → ~+22% real — biggest absolute dollar growth, driven almost entirely by Medicaid expansion and COVID enrollment
* K-12: +23% nominal → ~0% real — flat in purchasing power
* Higher Education: +~20% nominal → ~-2% real — slight real decline
* Government Operations: +~30% nominal → ~+6% real — modest real growth, headcount/compensation driven
* Natural Resources: +~25% nominal → ~+2% real — roughly flat
* Total Budget: +43.5% nominal → ~+17% real
But maybe the right way to frame it is it wouldn’t be felt as much nationally, but international tourism drops are pretty catastrophic to local economies of some of our biggest cities like New York Miami and Los Angeles Angeles.
And what types of jobs are those 15 million? High paid high skilled or low pay low skilled?
Because from what I can tell you about EU tourism jobs, most jobs tourism creates over here are low pay, hard labor, unskilled jobs, mostly filled by minimum wage migrant seasonal workers who then send the money back home, meaning the biggest beneficiaries from those jobs are the wealthy land/business owners who exploit cheap mirant labor, and not the local workforce who mostly suffers gentrification as they don't work in low pay tourist jobs and have to deal with increased rents from tourism on top.
Plus, the massive black economy tourism creates where a lot of the money is under the table and avoids the tax man further compounds to the problem. So I doubt much of the US working class will suffer from a tourism stagnation.
@HEmanZ: Did you read anything I said? Who's losing their job when almost all tourism jobs are done by foreign seasonal workers? The locals mostly aren't losing any job because they don't work in tourism due to pay and work conditions.
Are you using the same logic to cry for the western workers making clothes and sneakers who lost their jobs to Asian sweatshops? Do you think they miss that type of jobs and would want them back?
Probably all of it since tourism was 11% of total GDP in 2023, a third of that being international tourism would be on par with european averages.
Are you using the same logic to cry for the western workers making clothes and sneakers who lost their jobs to Asian sweatshops? Do you think they miss that type of jobs and would want them back?
The actual problems: we’ve made it impossible and insulting to get a tourist visa. And we’ve made pissing on our tourism partners our foreign policy.
This isn't a counterpart because nobody is trying to explain a significant drop in tourism numbers to Paris.
Actually there isn't much to explain. Every single person I know that has been to Paris has been disappointed by it and complained how there are way too many people everywhere. Maybe there were just too many tourists in Paris?
I can. Again, this is like refusing to visit CDMX because you heard about gang violence or avoiding Sicily because there is crime. Those singular events aren’t false. But they don’t make up the majority of the context. Someone refusing to travel because of these low-probability events (note: because of fear of them, not out of protest, which is separate) is almost certainly behaving irrationally.
I can. Again, this is like refusing to visit CDMX because you heard about gang violence or avoiding Sicily because there is crime. Those singular events aren’t false. But they don’t make up the majority of the context. Someone refusing to travel because of these low-probability events (note: because of fear of them, not out of protest, which is separate) is almost certainly behaving irrationally.
Where your argument might have purchase is in America having previously been a good tourism destination for someone with such anxieties. But the truth of the matter is folks like that don’t tend to travel in the first place.
Depends on which big tech. 15 days of vacation, BTW, doesn't even come close to comparing with much of Europe.
And I didn't mention London. London is crap. Probably all of UK is.
Most Europeans I know in certain countries travel a lot more than Americans at big tech.
My first SWE job was at an older fortune 500 company where tech was not its main focus. You started with 14 days of vacation and slooooowly worked your way up to 4 weeks after like 20 years of service lol.
My point is, in the U.S. your experience varies WILDLY based on your employer. Not saying the U.S. is perfect or does things the right way. Just pointing out that you’re off base with your “15 days of vacation for big tech” comment. That’s a false generalization for big tech. Accurate for white collar jobs in general though!
I think something was lost in the telling. I could see a kiosk worker saying this or similar.
And then you have a litany of new business regulation across every sector of the local economy. My recent favorite, which fortunately did not make it out of this session due to heavy lobbying by tech, was requiring data centers to turn-off power during periods of high electricity demand. It's insane that this is even being seriously considered.
Oregon is also a mess but it has always been a mess.
Texas isn't the only alternative. Turning Washington into California with worse weather even makes California relatively attractive.
None of this matters. We have been hearing how California is doing the same shit for years and people are moving out in droves, but turns out California house prices are still high because people are staying there and its still a very good place to live and work on the average, despite way higher cost of living.
So Washington is going to do just fine.
It soaks the “rich” with an income threshold that isn’t indexed to inflation and kicks in at an income level where preschool is still a major affordability challenge.
And then you pay PFA and don’t get preschool for your kid because we’re still years away from having enough seats for everyone.
So it is preschool for some (multco paying for seats in existing preschool, aka kicking your kid out of their preschool spot) paid for by the broad middle class.
Even Kotek was ragging on it.
2020’s 125k/200k thresholds should be today’s 150/250 thresholds. They are not.
https://www.opb.org/article/2025/06/26/kotek-multnomah-count...
Establishing free universal child care as the norm that everyone agrees we have to find a way to provide is the real virtue here. Detractors like you are missing the forest for the trees.
I suggest not dying on this hill, it isn’t worth the emotional turmoil.
The majority of states have one so it's not that big a deal, but it'll be less often said "I'm going to turn down this higher SF offer for Seattle b/c of lower COL...".
I'm not sure where the next refuge will be. Austin? Memphis?
Current government is using it as toilet paper, first by introducing capital gains tax, and now income tax.
I see in another comments though that you argue in bad faith by dismissing opponent arguments as “small amount”, “talking points”. If you don’t have anything real to say, don’t bother to answer.
—-
https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=1.90.100
RCWs > Title 1 > Chapter 1.90 > Section 1.90.100
RCW 1.90.100
Personal income tax prohibition.
Neither the state nor any county, city, or other local jurisdiction in the state of Washington may tax any individual person on any form of personal income. For the purposes of this chapter, "income" has the same meaning as "gross income" in 26 U.S.C. Sec. 61.
——
https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim...
Gross income defined (a) General definition Except as otherwise provided in this subtitle, gross income means all income from whatever source derived, including (but not limited to) the following items: (1) Compensation for services, including fees, commissions, fringe benefits, and similar items; (2) Gross income derived from business; (3) Gains derived from dealings in property; (4) Interest; (5) Rents; (6) Royalties; (7) Dividends; (8) Annuities; (9) Income from life insurance and endowment contracts; (10) Pensions; (11) Income from discharge of indebtedness; (12) Distributive share of partnership gross income; (13) Income in respect of a decedent; and (14) Income from an interest in an estate or trust.
Just to remind you that he's still indeed an Establishment Democrat. He won't drown us in fascism, but he sure isn't fighting for the working class.
Genuinely, if you can't handle discussing a basic political disagreement without becoming apoplectic, you should take a breath and wait to respond. This is the opposite of what HN is for.
Care to share your stats?
This sounds like more of "I don't like this president, therefore what he's doing is wrong"
2023: 2.36T (i misread and took 2024 prediction)
https://www.statista.com/statistics/188105/annual-gdp-of-the...
2023: 27.7
2.36 / 27.7 * 100 ~ 8.5
so 8.5 percent, not 11
I don't have a paid access to the website since 2021, so i can't look at the primary/secondary data, but it never failed me, and doesn't have the bias more political economic institutes has, so i mostly take data from there. If you have different data i will take them.
Another interesting anecdote is that I know many people who work remote for companies all over the world who moved to the Seattle area once they had a remote job. I am one of these people who moved once I got a remote job. Im not sure what kind of impact this has long run. I think the flywheel drawing high skill people to Seattle is still very strong.
If you're not too high an income earner, the Oregon income tax is worse than California's.
And no, Washington's sales tax doesn't come close to the Oregon income tax.
However, if you’re a noncitizen you might be refused entry, and if you are a citizen you might never see that phone again. The phone will be stored for years until/if Cellebrite finds a vulnerability in that iPhone model, and then it will be searched. Also the government might target your future phones for Pegasus-style remote attacks, so if you present your phone to CBP in lockdown mode, you may want to leave lockdown mode enabled forever.
Modern iPhones are very, very hard (impossible) to crack today if they’re locked down properly: strong password, biometrics disabled, and/or lockdown mode.
Getting a very good lockdown mode requires both owning the entire stack (Apps + OS + Silicon) and being willing to sacrifice repairability (swapping chips/cameras/displays/touch controllers is a good way to help hack into a phone), and willingness to spend a lot of money on something that few people would actually pay for. Apple is the only company that's even positioned to take on this challenge.
AndroidOS has to work with a bunch of core functionality chips that Google/Samsung don't make. Having a bunch of different code paths/interfaces for a bunch of different SoC's, cellular modems, touch controllers, and cameras is not a winning recipe for security. Both Google and Samsung also use their own SoC's (Google Tensor G5, Samsung Exynos) but Samsung also uses a lot of Qualcomm Snapdragons ... and if you're using someone else's SoC there's no chance in hell of coming up with a proper "Lockdown Mode". Samsung or Google might be able to come up with a fully integrated solution someday, each have invested in parts of this. Beyond SOC's, Samsung has their custom silicon which helps them lock down security for their combo touch/display controller. Samsung has also invested a lot into customizing their Knox Secure Folder solutions (and everything else branded "Knox" as well, which is all mostly industry-leading for Android options). Google has the Pixel with their own Titan M2 security chip, and obviously they own the OS.
But it's a lot of work when so much of your engineering is dealing with changes that other companies are making. Google has to keep up with Samsung's hardware changes, because the tail wags the dog there, and Samsung spends a lot of engineering time figuring out how to deal with / customize / fork changes to AndroidOS that Google pushes (while the dog still wags the tail, too). Both have to deal with whatever Qualcomm throws at them for cellular modems, and it required a monumental effort/expense from Apple to only just recently bring up a replacement for Qualcomm's modems.
You are in legal limbo before you enter the country.
The thing is, bad and expensive health issues can literally come upon you over night. You can get hit by a vehicle or get beaten up with no perpetrator to be held accountable, you can develop an aneurysm, get food poisoning, get pregnant unexpectedly (with all the risk that comes with, including healthcare not being accessible because of anti-abortion BS), or you can simply fall over a step in your own house.
There has to be SOME point where the constant muggings aren't worth it vs the risk, otherwise they would simply demand all our money, knowing we won't say no with our life on the line.
Aneurin Bevan
What I think we have now is the most non-market like sector of the economy, with 1/3 of all citizens already receiving government funded healthcare.
Realistically catastrophic revolving temporary insurance plus managing what you can in Mexico, plus occasionally paying out of pocket would mitigate the vast majority of yours risks while keeping expense relatively low.
They'll only treat you until you're stabilized, though. They won't give you chemo or routine care. If you need to be admitted you're also not covered by the EMTALA.
All emergency medicine, not just that triggered by the EMTALA, is 5-6% of all healthcare spending in the US, so while it contributes, it's not collapsing the healthcare system.
The real problems with it are that it's an unfunded mandate by Congress, just adding to the financial tangling of the healthcare system, and that it's way too often used to treat things that could have been much more cheaply treated in a clinic, but then there are no clinics nearby that take Medicaid and are actually open, so instead, like with so much of our health care system, we choose to solve it the stupid way instead.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/21/karen-newton...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-travel-detentions-1.7489525
Statistically speaking, it's very safe for a white American to go to Dubai/Doha these days.
Would you fault them for not going?
What if I told you, that even mentioning this shows how little free time people get in the US?
There is actually no SWE job (and I do mean actually 0 positions, I watch job postings way more than average person) in CZ that offers less than 5 weeks of paid vacation. When you look for companies that give actually nice benefits you can get 7-8 weeks, big chunk of it being sick days that you can claim whenever you want.
And that all is on top of MUCH longer parental leave, often shorter work week (lol @ 40h a week being noteworthy), much more leeway given to people with health issues and generally shorter commutes.
Not even mentioning difference in cost of living . . . The values are just different here.
That’s all i’m pointing out. I agree that the U.S. really lags in terms of taking care of its people. I am NOT recommending the U.S. as a great place to work for most people.
Acknowledged in my original comment. The key word is "some".
And my point is that people earning half that in Europe tend to go on more vacation travel than those earning the same amount in the US.
Yes i’ve run the numbers and that’s possible even in a HCOL city. Could probably retire at 45 if i moved to europe (i have dual citizenship). Cheap healthcare and college goes a loooong way…food is cheaper too.
so i’m not sure i understand the joke but that’s fine. I’ll continue enjoying my 4+ weeks off a year and retiring early. Cheers :)
If you want to bring stats into it, the baseline is to try to disprove what everyone already knows.
Assuming something is false just because it makes Trump look bad, in your eyes, is a very biased take on the world. Just listen to his own words, he's not ashamed of the racial nature of the deportations, it doesn't "make him look bad" because its a feature not a bug.
Thus solving the problem.
I know the economic idea, but it is not a good mechanism for society.
The only way this can make sense mathematically is if you're including children, seniors, and/or the ill—populations who are unable to work. What is your reference?
These numbers are incommensurate in a way that may not be obvious.
7% of the population doesn't tell you what population fraction is covered by such policies.
36% coverage is even harder—every child in the US is eligible for Medicaid, and such children may not always need it, or may move states after using Medicaid, in a way that makes them doubly counted.
80% of the working population is also less clear; is that 80% of policy-holders get their own policy through their own job? Or 80% of working-age people have a policy through some workplace, even if they are not working?
So, if health insurers want to start charging premiums I suggest they send their bills to Superfund sites first, then to regular toxic cities like Flint, Camden, Hinkley or Picher, then to producers of known-carcinogenic substances (like Chrome-6 or Roundup), and then to advertisers of known-harmful products like alcohol or tobacco. Only when they run out of those targets can we have a discussion on individual lifestyle choices.
There's very little tobacco advertising anymore so we're not going to squeeze many dollars out there.
https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/products-guidance-regul...
Absolutely, but there are lots of working, existing models that are better than ours in practice, so this isn't much of an excuse.
For one example there are some positive aspects to the Japanese system in that they achieve good outcomes (on average) at lower costs. But that's partly due to the "Metabo Law" aka "fat tax" which voters in other countries might see as punitive or discriminatory. I'm not necessarily arguing for any particular approach to lifestyle-related health conditions but any choice involves trade-offs.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/07/japan-solved-obe...
For example Some people want to see a specific doctor they know in a private session to discuss life and family stresses. Others only go to urgent clinics if they need an immediate medication.
Is it? An existence proof multiple times over actually seems extremely important in debates about the future of healthcare in the US.
Realistic in this administration? No. They will keep taking and taking from the working class and pitting them against one another. There's no solution there when the government is actively looking to sabatoge the system.
Arguing over tobacco premiums is pennies on the dollar. Pretty much every other civilized country has figured something out with regards to universal healthcare. I'm sure there's dozens of solutions out there to choose from. The only real steps to take right now is to have Americans stop licking the boot and actually push for something that helps them.
Short of voting, protesting and getting into arguments with MAGA people I don't know what else I can effectively do.
If you go south you get sun and beaches. The coastal regions of Canada will be comparable to the coastal regions of New England and the Pacific Northwest, so there's no need to go all the way there if that's the sort of beach you're looking for.
Likewise your outdoors, your cities and restaurants and museums are all going to be about the same as the options available in the US, just further away. It's not really "exotic".
We don't really have the same emigrant relationship with Canada; my grandfather's family spent a couple generations in Canada, but my mother only found out about it after he died. He considered his family to be Irish and to have come from Ireland; that they came to the US via a couple of generations spent in New Brunswick was never a part of the family lore.
So there's no real "visiting the home of my ancestors" sort of feeling you'd otherwise see.
Living on the west coast, Vancouver's the easiest to get to -- I love Vancouver (and Victoria), and I've been both places several times, and I've gone to Whistler a handful of times as well, but, again, it's a lot like where I grew up in Seattle.
I really do want to visit Montreal sometime, but I also want to visit Chicago and Memphis and a lot of other "domestic" locations that I somehow never find the time for.
Also, when you grow up in a country you have a lot of local knowledge from culture, friends, television, education, so we just know a lot more about domestic places we haven't (yet) visited. Plus, a substantial number of people don't have passports. We used to be able to visit Canada easily without one, now we cannot.
As a film lover, I've been to the Toronto film festival many times, it's an unmatched experience--so many things to see, and watch films with a very engaged festival crowd just makes them better. (In the same way, even if you don't love Star Wars, going on opening weekend, with the most enthusiastic fans, makes the experience better.) And given that nearly half of Toronto's population was born outside of Canada, it makes even New York feel a little parochial.
* Montreal - it's a big-ish city, without piss in the subways. Also the restaurant scene is good, and the old town is worth seeing.
* Quebec City - again, the old town is worth seeing. There's not much else in the US/Canada like it.
* Alberta Rockies - The corridor between Banff and Jasper is beautiful. Also, Waterton is decent. It's right across the border from Glacier NP in Montana, but less crowded. And for skiers, the Alberta Rockies also probably had the best snow in North America this past year.
1. A lot of people can't afford vacations right now
2. For people in the US, socially and culturally, there's not much of a "drive" or desire to visit Canada. I've worked for Canadian companies, etc. I've never once in my entire life heard somebody talk about visiting Canada. It's always someplace warm and tropical or it's Europe or Asia.
Not surprised they want to keep safely within their "East-USA" territory and go nowhere. No one wants to be disappeared in Ecuador.
The Canadian people I met as we travelled were all amazing. I was humbled that they took time to talk. And were less interested in identity than issues. One older gentleman, who saw us pull into the McDonalds with Washington plates approached us in the foyer and wanted to tell me that despite what others might say, I was welcome there. It was on one hand kinda weird and at the same time really touching.
It's not hard to imagine people like these extending their good will to foreigners, even "hostile" ones.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2026/03/05/in-25-countr...
In contrast, "The United States is the only place we surveyed where more adults (ages 18 and older) describe the morality and ethics of others living in the country as bad (53%) than as good (47%)."
There might be a bit more hockey ribbing for the next few weeks, but I know there's a ton of respect for Canada's team.
At the end of the day, the idea of "My problem is with the government, and not the people" is as old as time.
Also:
Give money to organizations that are doing the work on your behalf. Lawsuits are still important.
Call or write your reps *frequently*. They use software to automatically tabulate voter positions. (And they look at it--they want to keep their jobs!)
>effectively
these are mutually exclusive
https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/recall-of-state...
Beyond that, my state is not the problem.
The conditions of TSA and the immigration system are...not independent of politics (or even independent of the top tier of most divisive partisan political issues in the current American context.)
If the system decides to screw you over, that your average Cali resident disapproves doesn't stop you being in a holding cell for weeks.
I try not to let them influence my behavior too much, but at the end of the day, getting thrown in immigration jail on false accusations (yes happened to me despite presenting US passport) or detained for 12+ hours (also happened several times) puts constraints on vacation plans.
We just had to wait 3 hours in line to get into Costa Rica.
The administration could not do any of this without the support of Congress, which has not wavered. That support is unwavering because those elected officials are not getting negative feedback from their voters and donors, so they have every expectation that staying this course will work out just great for them.
This administration's actions only continue with the approval of their party who put them and keep them in power.
"But the party just ran a bad candidate!"
"Egg prices were too high!!"
"Kamala would've been just as bad for Gaza as Trump!"
No, sorry, voters don't get a pass because they're apathetic or love being the "enlightened centrist" that lets fascism takeover.
If you've never experienced a real winter or done neat things like winter sports then visiting Canada in the winter is a great travel experience.
That it was my/our fault such views propagate because we're not "willing to understand their perspectives".
The thing is, their perspectives are a lie. And in many cases, they know they're a lie, they just don't. fucking. care.
So they can go online and whine about being dismissed or criticized, or pat each other on the back for "knowing the truth". There's a subset who, I'm sure, see such things as actual literal truth, and that's a different issue altogether, but not sure it's my responsibility to solve, or that failure to engage on my part makes the current situation "my fault".
> It's not really a choice but a demonstration of intelligence and empathy. Still, if you deliberately decide to remain ignorant, or simply fail to understand the opposition's position even despite your best efforts, it shouldn't surprise you when you also fail to convince people your position is the correct one.
Like huh? It is okay for them to be objectively dishonest, and have zero shred of empathy, curiosity for my position, but refusing to engage on a good faith basis is a failing of mine?
> Once you reach this stage, your commentary pretty much just becomes elaborate whining, which makes a poor impression of yourself and actually pushes people away from your position.
This is literally Idiocracy in the making.
If I make a poor impression on people by repeatedly shutting down their horseshit about doctors performing "abortions" up to a week or a month after birth, or that babies are being harvested in the basement of a pizza parlor for their adrenachrome, and you're more concerned about how I should be "understanding" of that perspective, again, you're also supporting the idiocracy.
The president would do basically nothing for four years, which would cause some things to move slowly. But it would be a very stable environment. No random tariffs via executive order, no random wars or invasions, no governing via tweet.
Ham sandwich would maybe be one of our better presidents. Top 50%, probably.
If you mean North East US, that whole area is a different thing. You guys (US NE + Eastern Canada) are practically neighbors compared to Miami, Houston, or Los Angeles folks :) Also probably more used to the cold!
https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/recall-of-state...
Half of America loves what's happening and the other half doesn't believe the first half loves it.
Especially in Vancouver, most people should be pretty aware that anyone with Washington/Oregon plates (which I'm guessing is what you have) probably hates Trump more than they do.
I've never understood why somebody behind me on the road would care at all about what my political views were anyway. I guess I get it during an election, maybe (in a grammar school "inventor contest" which happened to be during the 1980 US presidential election, I invented a bumper sticker sleeve that attaches to your car, so you could swap out political bumper stickers after your candidate lost. I didn't win the contest.) But in the end I don't really understand putting any sort of social signaling of any kind on my cars, though it seems hard to avoid even by just the kind of car you drive.
Closer to topic, I've always thoroughly enjoyed my trips to Canada, and can't imagine why people think "it's just like the US, so why bother" as seems to have been expressed ny some in this thread. I somewhat recently drove up to Roberval, Quebec from my home in New England, and it was absolutely nothing like the US. I find the rural Quebecois very odd, refreshingly direct, and enjoyable to hang out with.
Perhaps in the white vs black experience lens that most of my US friends seem to see every world conflict through to relate to their own history (wild conversations about Middle Eastern politics there being racial), it's like wearing something racially inflammatory to the wrong neighbourhood. If one's blowing $$,$$$ on bespoke fly in tourism you can probably get away with it with a polite topic change as tourism keeps food on the table, but park a Trump sticker on a residential street I'd be surprised if even in the nicest neighbourhood there isn't some damage to it. Likely from a teenager goofing off with friends in the current environment.
To the second individually most Americans are nice in my experience, if you are seen as a person and not anonymous in the crowd. I've had a family member get a rifle leveled at them for stepping over a property line in the US where clearly they weren't seen as a fellow human... what can I say to that or the normalization of it.
In my 20+ years of regularly travelling to the States, I've almost always had great interactions with the people I've met in all parts of the US I've visited, and I've been all over. "Warm and welcoming" is a very good description.
I hope to be able to visit again in the future.
If not, please send help or accept our political refugees because we will have become permanently screwed if this behavior continues past our current orange phase.
I beg to differ, seeing that the US had free and fair elections - media bias aside.
But I'm a pretty optimistic person anyway.
In other news, a mouse and an elephant are both mammals.
If only there was some obvious way to tell the difference between them.
My swing-state vote was stupendously easy to get. (a) don't commit a genocide (b) give voters something big and material like free healthcare (c) don't cover up COVID and Long COVID
They didn't even try.
https://www.axios.com/2026/02/22/dnc-2024-autopsy-harris-gaz...
Sorry. I don't intend to downplay genocide and I don't want to come across that way.
What I'm trying to critique is (so far as I can read it from your post) your inability to see that two things can be the same in one respect - but apparently not notice that one is much bigger than the other.
If it helps, I'm not American and don't have any option to 'win' as far as US politics goes. I think you are right that Kamala Harris was facilitating genocide. But I also think you are wrong to not take into account that Donald Trump is a whole order of magnitude worse.
So they voted for the side committing genocide and who sees free healthcare as an atrocity in itself to everything the US stands for? What did the Dems do to "cover up" COVID? You know versus "It's nothing worse than the flu, it'll be over in two weeks" while privately being aware that neither of those things were true?
I mean, they didn't do that (and I think the DNC, DWS and their ilk have a lot to answer for the current state of affairs), but your "swing state, stupendously easy to get" decided instead to vote for the side that openly doubled down on those things, not really a ringing endorsement for expectations of voters there.
That's before we even get to the general issue of an electoral populace so ignorant of the political landscape that the number one search on Election Day on Google was "Did Biden drop out?"
I don't know about "exotic", but for anyone living in the northeast of the US, the easiest way to visit Europe (sort of) is to drive up to Montreal/Quebec.
Having been to Europe, no comparison.
Nothing prepares you for walking along a city street then “oh fuck, a castle…” and learning that it is now, the city’s government building. Cool… (Stuttgart, you’re awesome)
But, I think there some unique things worth seeing for an American: The old parts of Montreal/Quebec city, and the Alberta Rockies, especially the corridor between Banff and Jasper.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fr...
The only thing you know about them is that they did not vote. Even using your assumption of their beliefs ("both sides are the same"), that position is generally affiliated with disapproval, not approval.
This wasn’t a bad candidate vs worse candidate situation, it was someone who supports breaking apart the trust and foundation of the country solely for personal gain versus someone who at least believed in providing a veneer of civility.
"I'd rather be dead than friends with a liberal", and such tropes.
If the election was held tomorrow it’s likely many people that voted for Trump wouldn’t go, and many people who didn’t care enough to show up would.
Doubtful. The faithful will always be idiots. But around them are vast seas of folks who change their minds and even switch parties. Between foreign policy, vaccines (weirdly, not being nutter enough) and Noem turning ICE into a pageant show, a lot of Trump voters feel betrayed. It’s why the House flipping is almost a given.
Compare with Kier Starmer, who as of this writing has not sent armed goons into his own cities, wrecked all of his international trade and tourism, alienated his allies, or once again invaded the Middle East. His approval rating is about 20%!
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/trump-calls-uks-chagos-...
If you had 1000 coins and put them into two piles one of 440 and one of 560 it would be "about half"
But if your argument is that only 154 million people support this government and that's fine because if it was 174 million there'd be a problem, then sure.
To the degree some non-voters say they don’t care, that’s still deeply complicated, enough that even taking someone’s word for it is a bad idea. Non-voters in the U.S. are not uniformly distributed, and thus there is evidence suggesting that not caring is already a function of class, race, education, gender, and age, among other things.
If you actually care about voting and about the truth, it does yourself a disservice to jump to a assumed conclusion that all non-voters are saying something unambiguous, that they’re all saying the same thing, that they all have informed choice, that they understand all the tradeoffs and implications, and that they really are fine with any outcome regardless of what they say.
Look around you, COVID is still everywhere and the scientific literature is pretty dismal. The Democrats lagged about 6 months behind the republicans, now most people believe what was far-right in 2020. It's true fewer people are dying, but most people do just think it's a cold. The democrats shut down reporting, didn't fight for worker protections, and basically were most invested in the economy over health. They also were never clear about the airborne method of transmission and so people ended up believing masks didn't work because they would wear a surgical mask and still got sick. They didn't "follow the science".
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/VC/VC00/20220302/114453/HHRG...
big states that always vote one way like CA where a non vote is the same as a blue vote
states where voting is such a tedious process that opting out is a reasonable choice, even if it doesnt place a big burden otherwise
states with voter id laws, often large chunks of the eligible population do not have an id
disabled people, people with hardship, etc., felons
It’s really weird logic to lump massive chunks of the general population these things apply to in with the same people that explicitly support this. It also ignores the fact that these elections often come down to a few thousand or fewer votes in a handful of battleground states. Not voting in those places, I would tend to agree more with the gist of your point, but it is no where near a big chunk of the population.
Like, if you want to see a rain forest or a thousand year old Buddhist temple or a pyramid, there's not really a substitute in the continental US.
But if you've two options, where you can go to the pretty good option domestically or drive past it and continue on to the much better option in another country ... most people will be happy with the closer option, even if there's some small number of people who want the best or have seen all the closer options before and want something different or just whimsically like the idea of going to the further-away one none of their friends have been to.
Minor nitpick, but there are temperate rain forests in the continental United States. What we don’t have are tropical rain forests.
And a few months ago America was endorsing the plan
Worth nothing that this was a Tory inititive -- Truss and Sunak did pretty much all the work, it was their idea.
If Republicans turn 2 places they win by 130:100 plus a big city they lose by 100:130 into three they expect to win by 120:110 then if on the day Democrats turn out as usual but about 10% of the Republicans stay home across the board they lose all three 108:110.
My concern in the 2026 cycle is that there just won't be fair elections, and so this doesn't end up mattering.
But when it comes to elections, first, somehow “we” get 2 bad choices every time. This last time, I personally feel they were 2 incredibly terrible choices. Then the fumbling from the other side basically assured orange man’s victory. It was a disaster of an election (but sadly appropriate as it seems like every thing we do is a disaster now.)
We also have a low voter turnout. So the result isn’t really complete and probably has some bias.
We also have an electoral college which means the winner can have less than 50% of the popular vote and win.
I could probably go on but I feel the point has been made that election outcomes are not the proxy you think
https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker
> I could probably go on but I feel the point has been made that election outcomes are not the proxy you think
The purpose of a system is what it does. There are not many grassroots efforts to change the many negatives you listed. Tacit approval - whether through nor voting or not fixing what is broken - does not lessen culpability. The outcome is still accurate representation on the aggregate.
If 4 housemates always have a dirty kitchen, it's a reflection on all of them. It may fall short of their ideals, or they can blame Bob for not doing dishes, not fixing a problem whose root they know is an indictment, not an excuse.
With its proximity to Canada, and relative cheapness, likely pulls in quite a few tourists from up North.
One additional South Dakota attraction (although lessening interest as of late) is how much hunting/fishing is available, and how much the community is interested in the ‘visiting’ hunter.
https://sdvisit.com/sites/default/files/2026-01/2025-Economi...
Like you will go to an election, and your choices will be
Republican candidate: "I support deporting your family, I will not only not support cleaner energy but will actively work to increase coal usage, and I think your trans cousin should be forced to transition back even if it makes them commit suicide."
Democratic candidate: "I think all of that stuff the Republican candidate said is crazy and wrong. If elected, I will strive to make all your guns illegal, so that eventually Republican-supporting institutions like the police and military, and Republican states, are the only ones with guns."
“I like taking the guns early, like in this crazy man’s case that just took place in Florida … to go to court would have taken a long time,” Trump said at a meeting with lawmakers on school safety and gun violence.
“Take the guns first, go through due process second,” Trump said.
Not sure what that has to do with what I said though.
The opposite is true of Republicans: their party platform is literally "whatever Trump wants", and Trump has actually articulated circumventing the second amendment entirely by "taking guns first".
Moreover, his current administration's stance is that lawfully carrying citizens protected by the 2nd amendment who are obeying the law are at risk for summary execution if his agents feel threatened enough. This makes the 2nd amendment inoperable (no need for a second amendment at all if they can just say they were scared and kill you for having a gun).
If you're going to characterize Democrats as (a lesser) evil, at least be honest about why.
Yes they will allow me to have a deer rifle with a 5-10rd capacity.
So you were not talking about your guns, you were talking about all guns. You can amend your position if that's really what it is, but that's not what you said.
But again, that doesn't really have much to do with what I said?
However minimal Republican support of gun rights may be, they don't have increasing gun control as a major part of their platform like the Democrats do.
The relevant point is that the line for gun ownership pushed by the Democrats (at least where I am) is way far away from the line for gun ownership pushed by Republicans.
And when stating that line, it strikes me as an odd position to take when I'm also simultaneously being told that Republicans are going to go even farther hard right / authoritarian/ take-over / w/e, while also keeping the fairly pro-Republican police armed to the teeth (again, with modern rifles).
Trump supporting red flag laws or not seems kinda like a distraction. Trump supporters saying they can shoot protestors is exactly what I'm pointing out - if that is what we're scared the future will hold, why push for giving up modern rifles?