While true, there is another nuance missing here. The deficit was higher in 2020 & 2021 due to the Covid stimulus spending. Looking at 2017-2019 for Trump and 2022-2024 for Biden probably gives a fairer picture of what happened during both presidencies. It's basically been an upward trend since 2015, excluding the Covid outliers.
Yes, that’s why I prefaced my comment with “technically.” To claim Biden grew the deficit, you would have to explain that COVID was some sort of exception and then argue that it still grew in spirit (rather than technically).
Although without COVID Trump was definitely still on track to have significantly raised the deficit since it was falling in most years under Obama compared to 2008/2009 (before COVID he grew the deficit significantly with his first round of tax cuts, just like he just did with the big beautiful bill), and it isn’t clear that Biden would have diverged from Obama without COVID around.
>I think it depends on how you describe "wealthy". The life of someone who makes $200k a year isn't hugely different from someone who makes $50k. You still have to drive yourself to work and sit in rush hour traffic with every other peasant, for example.
One of the biggest differences between those salary levels is the housing they enable. 200k salary will allow for owning a home in most places (in the US, at least), while 50k will not. From there flows a lot of other things, like crime/safety, schools (if you have kids), etc, and even can improve your example: 200k can get you a place closer to work with a shorter commute, even if some of it still is spent in rush hour.
After fees is a bit tacky, but, at least in the US, I think it is considered good etiquette to tip on the original amount before discounts. I remember this came up a lot when Groupon was big offering a lot of BOGO deals.
I’ve never thought much about it, always consider it’s just a percentage. I am in Canada but it’s pretty much the same. Googling “tipping buy one get one” turns up this snippet from a Quora answer:
> The amount of effort the server devotes to your ordre is the same regardless of what the owner charges for your meal. So tip on the original, undiscounted price. And tip at least 20 percent.
Kind of funny, when it results in a higher tip I should consider the amount of effort.
I expect if I said I was only tipping $2 on a $100 bottle of wine at a restaurant because it isn’t any extra effort to grab an expensive bottle the poster might not agree.
Numerous people (Matt Levine, etc) smarter than me have written about how there was no $1B break up fee. That fee only came into play if something prevented the deal, like regulators blocking it. Him having buyer's remorse was not sufficient to trigger that clause.
This is true, but he could have negotiated a breakup fee with Twitter if he'd wanted to. The board likely would have been more than happy to take $10B from him to kill the deal, which would have saved him a bunch of cash and headache in the long run. But obviously cutting losses isn't how Elon likes to roll; he'd rather burn the company down out of spite.
Sure, but the Congress that approved it never felt its consequences because it took another 200 years for it to become ratified. So the first group it affected was definitely not the same group that voted for it.
When push came to shove, how many Democratic leaders (Reps and Senators) voted against or objected to the electoral college results in 2017? It was less than 10 Representatives and no Senators, meaning none of the objections were even put to a vote[1]. That is a far cry from what occurred in 2021.
Talk about clutching at straws and trying to find any possible metric to deflect from the dangerous 2016 election deniers and conspiracy theorist lunatics.
You can't just pick out some other thing and claim that is what is matters most. Just saying "when push comes to shove" doesn't mean anything. How many times did the Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee lie about something like having evidence for the delusional conspiracy theory that "Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election", dangerously fueling election denial and undermining confidence in the democratic process, like Adam Schiff did? Aside from rhetoric and assertions by partisans and conspiracy theorists involved in the whole mess, where is the evidence to say what one side does is better or worse or more or less "damaging to democracy"? There isn't any.
If you in denial of the reality that both sides question elections and make up conspiracy theories when it suits them, you are incapable of anything approaching an objective understanding of the topic. Sorry.
