Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
sensanaty | on: Trump wins presidency for second time
I'm not a Yank so I've got no clue about the reality on the ground, but is that actually true? Sure, the statistics say GDP is growing or whatever, but do real, normal working people feel the effects of those bumps? Cause the way it seems is that you've got a few extremely wealthy milli/billionares sucking up every single possible cent that can be sucked up while your average Joe gets screwed more and more. Companies are doing great, and so are people in the stock market, but is that representative of the rest of the country? I suspect it isn't
thechao | parent | next
The economic term-of-art is the GINI coefficient. And, yeah, the US's GINI is crazy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

bombcar | parent | next
The average person sees grocery costs rising, and is unable to move because they can’t replace the interest rate on the loan they have. This feels quite squeezing.
timeon | parent
> Cause the way it seems is that you've got a few extremely wealthy milli/billionares sucking up every single possible cent that can be sucked up while your average Joe gets screwed more and more.

Is there hope that this will change under Republican government?

sensanaty | root | parent | next
I highly doubt it, but it obviously also wasn't happening under the Democrats, or at the very least it wasn't being perceived as if things were/could improve.

Eventually people get tired and listen to populists. That's why they get elected, because they'll tell you what you want to hear. Whether they actually have any plans of doing it or not is almost irrelevant when you're dealing with bullshit on both sides.

The only way to beat populists is to have actual concrete plans, which as far as I saw as a non-USAian at least, the democrats barely ever spoke of, and it seems to be the common sentiment across this thread as well.

Denmark is a good example of what I mean, they had a surge in right-wing populist parties due to people's ongoing and ignored issues with Illegal immigration (among other things). Know what the moderates, who were in power, did? They adjusted their policies accordingly with actual concrete plans that they set in motion. And to no one's surprise, the populist parties died down and people calmed down in general once they saw that action was actually being taken.

bioneuralnet | root | parent | next
On the contrary - “Let the millionaires/billionaires do whatever they want” has been a core pillar of their platform for decades.

To be fair, Democrats are historically only marginally better in that regard.