Niece has just lost her job as a direct result of Musk’s edict.

Churchview

In the Bernie Sanders' interview posted on GN yesterday he pointed out that the combined wealth of Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos is the same as that of the poorest 50% of the population of the USA.

How much richer do these people need to be?
Why do they want to make other people poorer and cause public services to fail in their own country?

That is truly obscene.

And, of course, we have all contributed to that one way or another, or most of us have.

Catching a programme about Bill Gates the other day and he said that his children understand he won't be leaving them vast wealth. Enough, yes, (plenty!) but the rest will go to his Foundation, fighting inequality.

imaround

The average cost of a dozen eggs right now in the US is $8, when you can find them.

That's about the same price as the average here in the UK.

Is it?

Tesco - 12 large free range eggs £3.15.

Exchange rate $8 is £6.34.

Silverbrooks

Is it?

Tesco - 12 large free range eggs £3.15.

Exchange rate $8 is £6.34.

Oops, I was using the Aussie dollars conversion in my head!! Automatic, sorry.

The USA has an outbreak of avian flu as well.

^ The USA has an outbreak of avian flu as well.^

I thought that was the reason for the egg shortage, The avian flu has killed millions (?) of hens?

It is very hard to get eggs round here because of that flu. The supermarkets haven’t got any. Maybe that is affecting the US too? The price has gone up if you do manage to find any.

petra

fancythat

I am so sorry to hear that Witzend. It's a personal disaster, which when multiplied by all the other dismissals, will turn into an economic one for the USA. People on benefit cannot afford to spend, except on essentials. Economic growth will flatline and fall.

Depends if those people get jobs in the Private sector instead, I would say.
Or go into other Public service jobs where they can help say the USA some money.In one way or another.

How does the public sector make money?

The government creates money by spending into the public sector.

Cutting public sector spending won’t ‘save’ money because the money doesn’t exist until it’s spent. It will only create an illusion of ‘saving’ on the assumption that it’s cutting the deficit. But as the ‘deficit’ is portrayed as the difference between spending and tax revenue it won’t reduce by much, if at all, because all those people thrown out of work will be paying no income tax and very little sales taxes because they won’t have much money to spend.

But I expect that the figures will be withheld from the public.

I’m not familiar with US unemployment statistics but it is more than possible that there won’t be enough private sector jobs to absorb the jobless former public sector workers.

Once again, I suspect that employment figures won’t be published now.

Biden’s economic policies had been lowering the rate of unemployment but I think Musk’s reckless actions will send it soaring again. I doubt if Musk or Trump have any idea how a national economy works.

Yes, we do have bird flu. It has crossed over into cows and cats at this point. We really don't have a good idea of it in the public though due to the lack of communication and, now, employees at the CDC. The egg prices have always been about bird flu. But MAGA blames Biden.

Trump promised to lower prices of eggs on day 1! That it is why it is so ridiculous that the price has risen almost $2 in the last 4 weeks.

Our normal cost for a dozen eggs is typically closer to $3 a dozen.

It’s another zoonotic disease waiting to happen, isn't it? RFK Jnr as Health Secretary? What could possibly go wrong?

Well he has already stayed he plans to investigate mental health and ADHD medicines and he wants to instead send people to farms to cure themselves through hard work.

He is anti-vax. The anti-vax movement in the US is huge right now. Measles outbreak in Texas, tuberculosis in Kansas. In a town near me, I saw 2 people ask about chicken pox in their kids.

These highly preventable diseases are making a comeback and the children are the worst affected.

I really feel like people have lost the plot.

Give the devil his due, Trump is doing what he said he would do and which he was voted in with a large majority to do. There will be more jobs in private industry such as oil and its related industries which will increase productivity and add to the GNP. DEI has destroyed meritocracy and people don't want it anymore. Plus it has hampered businesses and cost money. It's the big backlash as the pendulum swings and sadly there will be fall out.

The private sector is bleeding employees too. The government fired at least 200,000. United health (yes that one who just lost a CEO to a vigilante) announced today they are laying off 30,000.

This doesn't include the tens of thousands of people who lost jobs because government contracts were cancelled.

There is no where for these people to go to find jobs.

The last time these numbers of people were jobless, Trump added $4t to the deficit to keep them afloat through Covid.

The layoffs alone are going to cause a huge problem for the economy.

I also want to point out that more people voted for someone other than Trump then they did for Trump. This was not a majority of people. It was not a landslide. It was literally about 250,000 votes that got him across the finish line.

If the Green Party had not have ran to split the votes, Harris would have won.

Tough “s**t”

Your turn will come, Arty.

petra

fancythat

I am so sorry to hear that Witzend. It's a personal disaster, which when multiplied by all the other dismissals, will turn into an economic one for the USA. People on benefit cannot afford to spend, except on essentials. Economic growth will flatline and fall.

Depends if those people get jobs in the Private sector instead, I would say.
Or go into other Public service jobs where they can help say the USA some money.In one way or another.

How does the public sector make money?

I didnt explain myself very well.

As in, there are certain jobs where money can be "saved".
Such as a job where the person or team saves money from being spent. By cutting costs.

fancythat

^I am so sorry to hear that Witzend. It's a personal disaster, which when multiplied by all the other dismissals, will turn into an economic one for the USA. People on benefit cannot afford to spend, except on essentials. Economic growth will flatline and fall.^

Depends if those people get jobs in the Private sector instead, I would say.
Or go into other Public service jobs where they can help say the USA some money.In one way or another.

If a person in the public sector, [all salary paid for by the government], then gets a job say in the oil industry, the government no longer pays their salary.

There is no where for these people to go to find jobs.

I think you need to repeat that very loudly, imaround. There seems to be a lack of understanding of the implications of these job losses. Decimating public sector employment and cutting funds spent in the private sector does not lead to more private sector employment.

That’s what the tories did in the UK from 2010 onwards and it was not good. We’re still living with the consequences.

MaizieD

^There is no where for these people to go to find jobs.^

I think you need to repeat that very loudly, imaround. There seems to be a lack of understanding of the implications of these job losses. Decimating public sector employment and cutting funds spent in the private sector does not lead to more private sector employment.

That’s what the tories did in the UK from 2010 onwards and it was not good. We’re still living with the consequences.

Very true.
And am sure the private sector are cutting employment to the bone, forcing the workers they have to keep to impossible schedules. That is how the private sector operates. It doesn’t hire more people, it hires less.

fancythat

petra

fancythat

I am so sorry to hear that Witzend. It's a personal disaster, which when multiplied by all the other dismissals, will turn into an economic one for the USA. People on benefit cannot afford to spend, except on essentials. Economic growth will flatline and fall.

Depends if those people get jobs in the Private sector instead, I would say.
Or go into other Public service jobs where they can help say the USA some money.In one way or another.

How does the public sector make money?

I didnt explain myself very well.

As in, there are certain jobs where money can be "saved".
Such as a job where the person or team saves money from being spent. By cutting costs.

This is exactly what Trump told Musk to do. As we know there is waste in all government departments and the bigger the budget the bigger the waste.
The problem is, Musk took the instruction a tad too far 😱

Certainly the damage Trump has already done to the US and is doing to global markets will already take years to put right. He is like Truss multiplied by a million.

Arto1s

Tough “s**t”

What? What on earth does that mean?

Musk's coding proteges have apparently found vast numbers of people still getting Social Security aged 150. They are whizzkids at coding, but they don't seem to know that it was a leftover bit of coding. If it didn't know someone's date of birth, it defaulted to 1975 - which was a reasonable default position at the time.

Thank God these greenhorns are not searching for the potential 2000 "millenium bug" at the moment - (surely that scenario is one of bits of history that are legendary in coding lectures?) They wouldn't recognise it if it jumped off the screen and bit them, so instead of finding and fixing the bug as did the anonymous and painstaking forensic checkers in 1999, they would have let is stay. The many organisations dependent on the software they checked would have first stopped operating as their systems froze and then been accused of fiddling the books.

(Of course maybe when Musk was informed of these super-elderly social security recipients, HE either didn't know of this default setting or reckoned that the rest of the population wouldn't know how it worked so it was Ok to use it as another stick to batter the government departments with)

Cossy

Arto1s

Tough “s**t”

What? What on earth does that mean?

It means the poster has no worries (yet) about losing his job, so he has no sympathy with anyone who has been thrown out of the window with no warning and no time to start finding another.

Climate change research will be the first casualty of cuts, it’s all very well predicting the affect of changes in climate, there is no evidence that we can control what is happening. We are bombarded with predictions of the consequences, the affect on food production, sea levels, polar bears or coral reefs, but are doing very little about actually changing the way we live.

Elegran

Thanks for explanation.

What a charming character!