Tracking toy tariffs

What's the definition of "a minimal quality of life"? Food is cheaper than ever which is part of the reason obesity levels are so high even among those in poverty.
According to the Ludwig institute: "essential expenses beyond mere survival, encompassing factors crucial to well-being, growth, and upward mobility. This includes not only necessities like housing, food, and healthcare but also education, transportation, technology and more."

Throw in education, transportation, and healthcare and most Americans are one bad week away from being completely fucked. And while some people might claim technology is not essential, looking for work and staying employed without the right technology in the US right now? Uphill battle at best. (EDIT: And add in upward mobility? Ain't nobody got time for that anymore, that's rich people talk.)
 
My favorite for a while now is that he's our first Ferengi president. In fact, here' I'll share a little art with you folks:

He's not the first. He's particularly similar to Andrew Jackson in terms of introducing (or re-introducing in Trump's case) the spoils system that Jackson brought to the presidency back in the 1820s.

And he knows it, too, and has compared himself to Jackson multiple times although there are also quite a few differences between them. Trump had a portrait of Jackson hung in the oval office right after his first inauguration. I think of Trump as the second Ferengi, although there were probably a few more I'm unaware of from the 1800s.

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Food is cheaper than ever? That's news to me, as I now spend as much on groceries for my s/o and me as I used to for a family of four.
And also, I was kind of under the impression that the obesity/poverty connection was because of lack of access to nutritious food (the food desert problem), although maybe by "cheaper" he meant the quality of manufactured food available.
 
According to the Ludwig institute: "essential expenses beyond mere survival, encompassing factors crucial to well-being, growth, and upward mobility. This includes not only necessities like housing, food, and healthcare but also education, transportation, technology and more."

Throw in education, transportation, and healthcare and most Americans are one bad week away from being completely fucked. And while some people might claim technology is not essential, looking for work and staying employed without the right technology in the US right now? Uphill battle at best. (EDIT: And add in upward mobility? Ain't nobody got time for that anymore, that's rich people talk.)

While I'm in favor of everyone having all of those things given where technology has taken us as you pointed out that definition seems VERY specific to the modern era. So every human who ever lived prior to about 150 years ago were all living less than what some of us now define as a "minimal quality of life"?

Mere survival has been the predominant feature of the human species throughout 99.99999% of our existence, so I'm having trouble putting that definion of "minimal quality of life" into historical perspective. :unsure:
 
Food is cheaper than ever? That's news to me, as I now spend as much on groceries for my s/o and me as I used to for a family of four.

If you're buying mostly or all organic then prices are surprisingly close to the same percentage of income as they were a century ago. If you're buying anything where technology has driven the price down then food is dramatically cheaper than it has ever been.

There's a rabbit hole to go down here with the quality of "organic" food that's pretty off-topic, but I will say this--there is no possible way to feed the 8+ billion people alive on Earth right now had we not developed genetic engineering, i.e. GMOs and Roundup. The "quality" of that food is a topic so complex that it has transcended into something more like a religion for the people with strong feelings about it and is better discussed in a separate thread for anyone interested in discussing it.
 
While I'm in favor of everyone having all of those things given where technology has taken us as you pointed out that definition seems VERY specific to the modern era. So every human who ever lived prior to about 150 years ago were all living less than what some of us now define as a "minimal quality of life"?

Mere survival has been the predominant feature of the human species throughout 99.99999% of our existence, so I'm having trouble putting that definion of "minimal quality of life" into historical perspective. :unsure:
I mean, who cares about a historical perspective when it comes to providing for people? Why would you gauge QoL by what was available in a different era vs. the resources we have now? And also, plenty of historical eras had far more than mere survival available for people. Not everything was total subsistence. The biggest difference between now and history is the quality of medical science available; most lifespan metrics in the past are skewed by the difficulty of keeping infants and children healthy, rather than representing the average quality of a full lifespan.
 
I mean, who cares about a historical perspective when it comes to providing for people?

Because defining the majority of people now or almost everyone in the past as having a "minimal quality of life" is demeaning in a way that most of the people living those lives don't think about themselves unless they actually are fighting to survive. It's a level of intellectual elitism that directly led to the exact populist backlash that Trump rode to the presidency.

I don't live in poverty now, but I did all the way up until I was about 24. And I NEVER look back on that time as me living a "minimal quality of life." Neither do my parents. I was grateful that I didn't have to fight for survival knowing that over a billion people were actually doing that every day in the Third World and that most of my ancestors had to do that their entire lives.
 
There's a rabbit hole to go down here with the quality of "organic" food that's pretty off-topic, but I will say this--there is no possible way to feed the 8+ billion people alive on Earth right now had we not developed genetic engineering, i.e. GMOs and Roundup. The "quality" of that food is a topic so complex that it has transcended into something more like a religion for the people with strong feelings about it and is better discussed in a separate thread for anyone interested in discussing it.

I don't want to Well, Actually poverty and quality of life, but here's the data as Americans and the institute contextualize it:

www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/06/13/most-americans-cant-afford-a-minimal-quality-of-life-researchers-say.html



And to keep it on my intended track about propaganda and spin, CBS did reword the headline from the Tweet:

www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/cost-of-living-income-quality-of-life/

Consider they are deploying military force to "chase the homeless out of the city" and even before this have criminalized homelessness, childcare quality metrics, and other factors people take for granted, you can appreciate how this metric of "quality" may be contextualized.
 
And also, I was kind of under the impression that the obesity/poverty connection was because of lack of access to nutritious food (the food desert problem), although maybe by "cheaper" he meant the quality of manufactured food available.
Yeah, obesity is largely driven by the fact that the cheapest food is bursting with salt and sugar, and often scientifically designed to compel you to eat more of it.
 
Minimum quality of life may be too nebulous a concept for what's happening right now, but "can you afford an unexpected medical bill/loss of employment/car repair" all the things that happen to normal people every day without potentially going into debt or ending up homeless is a question that needs to be asked.

And if you don't have access to things like the internet to look for work, to argue for your insurance do its damned job, if you live in a place where if your car shits the bed you can't get to work and have no worker protections to make sure you don't get fired because you can't afford to fix it... I mean, very few Americans are in a good place right now. Way too many people are one bad day away from having tacticool cosplayers drag you out of your tent. We live in a technological world and denying access (hi, right wingers hating public libraries!) you can end up in a hole with no bottom.

(Jesus, Alt bringing up childcare--need two incomes but can't afford childcare and don't have family to rely on to watch the kids? Good luck to ya.)
 
Because defining the majority of people now or almost everyone in the past as having a "minimal quality of life" is demeaning in a way that most of the people living those lives don't think about themselves unless they actually are fighting to survive. It's a level of intellectual elitism that directly led to the exact populist backlash that Trump rode to the presidency.

I don't live in poverty now, but I did all the way up until I was about 24. And I NEVER look back on that time as me living a "minimal quality of life." Neither do my parents. I was grateful that I didn't have to fight for survival knowing that over a billion people were actually doing that every day in the Third World and that most of my ancestors had to do that their entire lives.
I think you're taking the term "minimal quality of life" as something other than what it's intended to be, which is a metric of reliable access to not just basic needs but also to a basic level of comfortable living, growth opportunity, and unburdened participation in society. (In the U.S., that all might mean upward mobility, but that phrase assumes a lot about class divisions that might not reflect other systems or societies.) It's a measure of economic well-being that assumes prosperity as a desirable standard, not some elitist value judgment on the past.
 
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