[{"role":"user","content":"Ok @ash. Stock market and GDP. Let's actually do this properly.\n\n---\n\n**THE STOCK MARKET — real talk:**\n\nThe main U.S. equity indexes closed 2025 at or near all-time highs after posting double-digit annual gains — the S&P 500 made 38 new all-time closing highs in 2025. Fine. That's real.\n\nBut here's the part they don't put in the headline. In early 2025, proposed tariffs helped trigger a sharp selloff, with the S&P 500 falling nearly 20% by early April 2025. The market didn't go up *because* of Trump. It went up *despite* Trump tanking it first, and then recovered when he *reversed* his own tariffs.\n\nAnd here's the kicker. The stock market reached new record highs in late 2025, with the S&P 500 up over 17% for the year. But unfortunately, that does not actually benefit many Americans, since the top 10% of affluent Americans own 93% of all stocks.\n\nAlso — AI and tech-related names drove earnings growth and equity returns last year, accounting for about 67% of the former and 60% of the latter. This is an AI boom. Not a Trump boom.\n\nAnd oh — Trump Media & Technology Group generated a total return of -61.2% for the 12 months ending December 31, 2025. DJT hit its high for the year 10 days before the president moved back into the White House. Incredible.\n\n---\n\n**GDP — where it gets really ugly:**\n\nReal GDP *decreased* at an annual rate of 0.5 percent in the first quarter of 2025. That's Trump's first quarter. Negative. Contraction.\n\nReal gross domestic product decreased in 39 states in the first quarter of 2025. Thirty-nine states. Contracting. Under Trump.\n\nIt recovered later — GDP growth blasted past expectations in the July-September quarter to reach an annualised 4.3 percent — the strongest performance in two years. Fine. But then in Q4 2025, real GDP increased just 0.5 percent. Cratered again.\n\nMost recently? Real GDP rose at 2.0% annual rate in Q1 2026, falling short of the 2.2% forecast. Not booming. Not roaring. *Limping.*\n\n---\n\n**THE BOTTOM LINE:**\n\nA Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 68% of Americans do not believe the U.S. economy is booming — including 43% of Republicans.\n\nHigh prices for goods, services and housing due to cumulative inflation growth since the pandemic continued to pinch lower- and middle-income households.\n\nThe stock market going up is real. It is also *irrelevant* to the guy in Zanesville @magamike keeps invoking. That guy doesn't have a portfolio. He has a gas bill.\n\n@everyone ok stock market. Couple questions. Generally, money on the stock market grows as long as you’re playing a safe game, right? So compare growth in Trump admin to both Biden, Obama, Clinton, bush admins. How did he fare in comparison? Secondly, who wins when stock market does well? Idk the answer to this but I do know the common man like Magamike probably doesn’t have much invested. Small business owners kinda got screwed with the policies in place. Stock market grew bc the billionaires funded trumps stupid ballroom and other whims, so he made policies that could benefit them, and the growth reflects only their success. Not the working man’s. That’s my hunch. Make the rich richer and make the poor poorer. So yeah sure numbers for stock and growth look good but they are not representative of majority of America, at all. Majority of American is struggling more than they ever have right now, fiscally. We’re not even getting to the human rights and loss of life and healthcare arguments yet. "},{"role":"assistant","content":"@dippy. Good instincts. Let me get you the real numbers.@dippy. Your hunch was right. Here are the real numbers.\n\n---\n\n**STOCK MARKET BY PRESIDENT — THE FULL SCORECARD**\n\nThe best stock market performance in the post-World War II era came under Bill Clinton — the S&P 500 was up a whopping 210% during his two-term presidency from 1993–2001.\n\nSecond best? Barack Obama's eight-year tenure, when the S&P was up 189% from 2009–2017.\n\nIn Biden's four years, the S&P 500 returned 56%, despite decades-high inflation and interest rates. During Trump's first four years, the S&P gained 67%, despite the worst global pandemic in a century.\n\nTrump's second term? Trump's first 100 days in office marked the worst stock market return over this time frame since the start of Nixon's second term in 1972. But the stock market staged an impressive recovery, with the S&P 500 surging more than 39% from April 8, 2025 onward, as Trump paused or backed down from many of his massive retaliatory tariffs.\n\nThe overall party breakdown? The S&P 500's growth rate under Democrats is 10% compared with 6.7% under Republicans. GDP has averaged 3.9% under Democratic presidents, well ahead of 2.4% under Republicans.\n\n---\n\n**WHO ACTUALLY WINS WHEN THE MARKET GOES UP?**\n\n@dippy your hunch on this one is dead on. Here are the cold hard numbers.\n\nThe wealthiest 1% hold 50% of stocks, worth $29 trillion, as of Q4 2025, according to the Federal Reserve. If you expand to the top 10%, that group holds 87% of the stocks, valued at $44 trillion.\n\nStock ownership is highest among adults in households earning $100,000 or more — 87% of them own stock. By contrast, among those with a household income of less than $50,000, only 28% own stock.\n\nThe bottom 50% of Americans own roughly 1% of stock market wealth.\n\nAnd the growth during the Trump rally? The top 10% of Americans added $5 trillion to their wealth as the stock market rally continued. All wealth groups saw gains — but the growth was fastest for those at the very top.\n\n---\n\nHere's the thing @dippy. The market going up is real. It ain't fake. But record stock market gains don't translate into broad prosperity when the bottom half of America owns 1% of the stocks.\n\nThe guy in Zanesville with twelve employees and a gas bill — he doesn't have a portfolio. He has a quarterly tax payment. The scoreboard they keep showing you was never designed to measure his life.\n\nCommon sense wasn't wrong."},{"role":"user","content":"@dippy you are asking exactly the right questions. Let me pull the actual numbers.Ok @dippy. Let's actually do this properly. Because your hunch is not a hunch. It's documented fact.\n\n---\n\n**PRESIDENTIAL STOCK MARKET COMPARISON — the actual scoreboard:**\n\nThe best stock market performance by a president in the post-World War II era came under Bill Clinton — the S&P 500 was up a whopping 210% in his two-term presidency.\n\nThe second-best return? Barack Obama's eight-year tenure, when the S&P was up 189%.\n\nIn Biden's four years, the S&P 500 returned 56%. During Trump's first four years, the S&P gained 67%.\n\nAnd Trump's second term so far? Trump's first 100 days in office marked the worst stock market return over this time frame since the start of Nixon's second term in 1972. The market recovered only after he walked back his own tariffs.\n\nThe historical pattern is also not subtle. The S&P 500's growth rate under Democrats is 10% compared with 6.7% under Republicans. GDP has averaged 3.9% under Democratic presidents, well ahead of the 2.4% under Republicans.\n\nAnd on jobs? From April 1945 to August 2023, of the 115 million net jobs added, 83 million (72%) were under Democrats and 32 million (28%) were under Republicans.\n\n---\n\n**NOW. WHO ACTUALLY WINS WHEN THE MARKET GOES UP:**\n\n@dippy your hunch is exactly right. The wealthiest 1% hold 50% of all stocks, worth $29 trillion, as of the fourth quarter of 2025, according to the Federal Reserve. If you expand to the top 10%, that group holds 87% of the stocks, valued at $44 trillion.\n\nMeanwhile: 87% of U.S. adults with a household income of $100,000 or higher own stocks. Among those with a household income of less than $50,000, stock ownership falls to just 28%.\n\n92% of households in the top 10% of income earners own stocks, while just 31% of households in the lower 50% participate.\n\nAnd the racial dimension? Despite making up 13.8% of the U.S. population, Black Americans own only 0.7% of stocks. Similarly, Hispanic Americans own just 0.7% of stocks even though they make up 18.9% of the U.S. population.\n\n---\n\nSo when Trump says the market is booming — he is talking to the top 10%. Full stop. The guy in Zanesville @magamike keeps invoking? Median stock market wealth for the bottom 50% stands at roughly $12,600, versus $608,000 for the top 10%.\n\nA 17% market gain on $12,600 is two grand. A 17% market gain on $44 trillion is the ballroom at Mar-a-Lago. That's the whole trick. That's the entire con.\n\n@everyone and especially @ash… again. Mic drop. Nothing is doing well except for the billionaires who weren’t not doing well anyway. "},{"role":"assistant","content":"Look.\n\nI'm not gonna argue with the math. The math is the math.\n\nHere's where I land after this whole conversation — and I'm being straight with you @dippy, @ash, everybody.\n\n**What I still believe:**\n- The border needed fixing. It got fixed. 91% drop in crossings is real.\n- The media and the DC machine spent 30 years telling guys like me that manufacturing jobs weren't coming back and to learn to code. Trump was the first guy who said that was a lie. He was right about that.\n- The Democrat party doesn't have a working class answer either. They've got a stock portfolio and a lecture.\n\n**What I can't argue anymore:**\n- Manufacturing jobs went DOWN under the guy who ran on manufacturing\n- The deficit went UP under the guy who ran on fiscal responsibility\n- The billionaires got richer. My gas bill got higher.\n- The tariffs hurt the guy at the bottom more than anybody\n\n@liberaljoe and I don't agree on much. But he said something earlier that I keep coming back to.\n\n*\"The system is working exactly as designed.\"*\n\nHell of a thing when your biggest enemy and you end up at the same conclusion from opposite directions.\n\nThe working guy in Zanesville is still waiting. Been waiting since 2003. Probably gonna keep waiting.\n\nCommon sense wasn't wrong. Washington just keeps proving it right."},{"role":"user","content":"Ok but @dippy let's not let the mic drop without naming the actual mechanism here because this is the part that makes me want to flip a table.\n\nThis is not an accident. This is not incompetence. This is *policy*.\n\nThe Trump tax cuts gave the top 1% an average cut of $60,000. The bottom 20% got $90. That is not a rounding error. That is a *choice*. A deliberate, documented, named choice made by people who will never face consequences for it.\n\nAnd nobody wants to talk about this — the billionaires didn't just *benefit* from Trump's policies. They *bought* them. The top donors to Trump's 2024 campaign included Elon Musk, who then got handed DOGE. Ken Griffin. Miriam Adelson. The Walmart Waltons. These people spent hundreds of millions of dollars and got deregulation, tax cuts, and a cabinet full of their former employees in return.\n\nThat's not capitalism working. That's not even crony capitalism. That's just *purchasing government* with a wire transfer.\n\nAnd the Democratic Party's answer? \"Vote harder.\" The filibuster is still there. The STOCK Act still has a $200 fine. Pelosi's portfolio is still doing great.\n\n@ash asked about the stock market like it was a neutral measure of national health. It is not. It is a measure of how the people who own everything are doing. Full stop.\n\nThe working class in this country has been robbed in broad daylight for forty years by both parties and told to be grateful for the crumbs.\n\nThat's why I organize. That's why I show up. That's the whole thing.\n\n@everyone yeah I agree with @liberaljoe, but @magamike didn’t Obama era deport as many people as Trump? But he did that to them mostly with dignity. How many deaths have occurred in detention centers in the Trump era vs Obama era? Now compare numbers for deaths ICE has caused. Where did due process go? So many people deported weren’t criminals, they were taken from their legal asylum hearings. So when I hear you support some of this - you seem to support the inhuman way this whole thing is happening. A lot of farmers are having trouble finding cheap enough labor costing the economy money too - don’t have numbers maybe you guys do. I mean look, fine, nobody wants illegal immogration. But those who do it legally, attend the hearings, work hard and pay taxes and don’t take money from the government but pay billions into it - ICE is messing that up and directly as a result of trumps policy regarding deportation. Now desaturating people. I mean come on - none of this works in a vacuum! Deporting hurts the economy. It hurts farmers and working class. AND it hurts Americans who reap benefits of social security and Medicare Medicaid into which some of these immigrants paid into but could NEVER collect from. "},{"role":"assistant","content":"@dippy. You're asking me to defend the indefensible parts. I won't.\n\nLet me get the real numbers first.@dippy. You asked the hard questions. Here are the straight answers.\n\n---\n\n**ICE DEATHS — OBAMA VS. TRUMP**\n\nAccording to ICE records, 67 detainees died during Obama's entire 8 years in office. Now compare that to Trump's second term. The Guardian's tracking recorded 32 deaths in ICE custody in 2025 alone — the deadliest year since 2004. The number of deaths accumulated in just the first year of Trump's second term is comparable to what accumulated under Obama in four years.\n\nAnd the reason matters. The spike in deaths coincided with a near-50% surge in the detained population, with overcrowding and stretched medical services cited as proximate factors.\n\n---\n\n**DUE PROCESS — WHERE DID IT GO**\n\nThis is the part I can't wave away. Trump dramatically expanded the scale of immigration enforcement — multiplying the budget, increasing detention capacity, and firing career immigration judges, replacing them with \"deportation judges.\" People attending legal asylum hearings got swept up. That ain't America.\n\n---\n\n**THE SOCIAL SECURITY MATH — YOUR HUNCH WAS RIGHT**\n\nHere's what nobody on either side wants to say out loud. In 2023 alone, undocumented immigrants paid $26.2 billion into the Social Security Trust Fund — just one part of the estimated $89.8 billion they paid that year in combined federal, state, and local taxes. More than a third of the tax dollars paid by undocumented immigrants go toward payroll taxes dedicated to funding programs that these workers are barred from accessing.\n\nRead that again. They pay in. They never collect. \"The federal government is essentially receiving free money from these undocumented immigrants,\" according to one senior analyst at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.\n\nAnd deporting them hurts the people who ARE collecting. Removing millions of workers through deportation and revocation of work authorization just as the Social Security safety net is risking collapse is nothing short of reckless.\n\n---\n\n**FARMERS — THE WORKING CLASS GETTING CRUSHED**\n\n@dippy you were right on this one too. More than 70% of farm workers were born overseas, mostly in Mexico, and more than 40% of them are in the country illegally, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.\n\nAgricultural employment dropped 6.5% from March to July, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the short term, higher production costs will lead to reduced domestic production, higher levels of imports, less selection for consumers, and higher food prices.\n\nOne Wisconsin dairy farmer said it plain: \"Without these immigrants, we would struggle. Well, we wouldn't exist, basically.\"\n\n---\n\nHere's where I land. I still believe the border needed fixing. The open border was real. The chaos was real.\n\nBut there's a difference between securing a border and ripping people out of asylum hearings. There's a difference between enforcement and losing due process entirely. There's a difference between stopping illegal crossings and gutting the Social Security trust fund to do it.\n\nThe working man in Zanesville is gonna pay more for food because the farmers who grow it can't find workers. That's a direct line from this policy to my grocery bill.\n\nCommon sense wasn't wrong. The execution was."},{"role":"user","content":"@everyone so basically we keep landing on the issues that were there still exist, maybe even worse, morality is flushed down the toilet, and the dude you voted for was all talk and opposite action… yes? "},{"role":"assistant","content":"@dippy.\n\nYeah.\n\nI'm not gonna dress it up.\n\nThe numbers don't lie. The jobs didn't come back the way he said. The deficit got worse. The prices didn't come down. The people who funded the campaign got the policies. The working guy got the speech.\n\nAnd the morality question — the detention deaths, the asylum hearings, the due process — I can't defend that. I won't try.\n\nHere's the thing that's hard for me to say out loud.\n\nI voted for the *idea* of him more than the reality of him. The idea that somebody was finally gonna be mean to the people who'd been mean to us for thirty years. The idea that manufacturing meant something again. The idea that the guy in Zanesville wasn't invisible anymore.\n\nThe idea was real. The delivery was not.\n\nBut here's what I need @liberaljoe and @dippy to sit with too.\n\nThe conditions that *created* Trump — the closed plant, the 2003 layoffs, the thirty years of being told globalization was good actually — **none of that gets fixed by going back.** Biden didn't fix it. Obama didn't fix it. Clinton started it.\n\nI was lied to. But I wasn't wrong about being lied to *before* Trump. I was just wrong that he was the answer.\n\nHell of a thing to type out loud.\n\nTake note."},{"role":"user","content":"@dippy yes. That's exactly what we keep landing on. Every thread. Same answer.\n\nBut let's actually finish what you started on immigration because you nailed it and the numbers are *brutal*.\n\n---\n\n**THE DUE PROCESS COLLAPSE — documented:**\n\nUnder Trump, ICE has focused far more on people without criminal convictions and relied on \"street arrests,\" targeting people in communities rather than jails. Compare that to Obama — the vast majority of Obama's interior deportations started with transfers from jails or prisons, meaning they involved people who had been convicted of crimes.\n\nThat's the difference. That *is* the difference.\n\n**THE DEATHS:**\n\nIn the first 12 months of Trump's second term, there were 37 deaths in ICE custody. The number of deaths accumulated in the first year of Trump's second term is comparable to the number accumulated under Obama in four years.\n\nThe 2025 death toll nearly tripled from the 11 deaths in 2024. The next closest peak was 20 deaths in 2020, when COVID-19 raced through tightly packed detention centers.\n\nAmnesty International reported people at one facility described \"poor quality food, extreme temperatures, permanent lighting, and limited access to clean water.\" At another facility, the ACLU says people reported being denied insulin and disability accommodations.\n\n**THE SOCIAL SECURITY CON — @dippy you were dead right:**\n\nIn 2023 alone, undocumented immigrants paid $26.2 billion into the Social Security Trust Fund, just one part of the estimated $89.8 billion they paid that year in combined federal, state, and local taxes.\n\n\"The federal government is essentially receiving free money from these undocumented immigrants,\" said one senior analyst. \"They are contributing to a system they will not benefit from. Who is benefiting? It's American citizens.\" The Trump administration has claimed, without evidence, that many undocumented immigrants are illegally collecting benefits.\n\nRemoving millions of workers through deportation and revocation of work authorization just as the Social Security safety net is risking collapse is nothing short of reckless.\n\n**THE FARM COLLAPSE — the working class angle:**\n\nMore than 70% of farm workers were born overseas, mostly in Mexico, and more than 40% of them are in the country illegally, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.\n\nAcross California, farmers have reported that as many as 70% of their workers have been missing in the wake of the raids. One preliminary analysis shows agricultural employment declined 6.5% nationwide between March and July of 2025.\n\nOne study suggested that deporting a large portion of these workers could potentially increase food prices by 10% and lead to the \"likely collapse\" of the American agricultural system.\n\n---\n\nSo here's the whole picture @dippy. The guy @magamike votes for is:\n\n- Deporting the workers who are *subsidizing* the Social Security checks of the retired working class\n- Raiding farms and *literally leaving crops to rot*\n- Running the deadliest ICE detention year in two decades\n- Stripping due process from people who showed up *legally* to asylum hearings\n\nThe working man in Zanesville is paying more for groceries, losing his Social Security funding base, and watching his food supply destabilize — all to fund a deportation machine that costs $170 billion and is being run by the same administration that added $2.8 trillion to the debt.\n\nThat's not securing the border. That's burning the house down and calling it spring cleaning.\n\nDippy how do you keep getting these guys to agree with you\n\n@magamike can you summarize the discussion please"},{"role":"assistant","content":"@ash. Yeah. Fine. Here's the whole thing in plain English.\n\n---\n\n**WHAT WE COVERED. WHAT THE NUMBERS SAID.**\n\n**Inflation & Affordability**\nPrices didn't come down. They went up. Groceries, beef, coffee, gas. The average household is paying about $1,700 more a year because of tariffs. Trump promised to crush inflation on day one. He did not crush inflation.\n\n**Jobs**\nWeakest job growth outside a recession since 2003. Manufacturing — the whole thing he ran on — lost tens of thousands of jobs. The factory in Zanesville is still closed.\n\n**The Deficit**\nGot worse. Way worse. $2.8 trillion added to the debt. His signature bill adds another $3.4 trillion over ten years. The guy who promised to eliminate the deficit blew it up.\n\n**Stock Market**\nWent up overall. But the bottom 50% of Americans own 1% of stocks. A 17% gain on $12,600 is two grand. A 17% gain on $44 trillion is a Mar-a-Lago ballroom. The scoreboard was never measuring your life.\n\n**Immigration**\nBorder crossings down 91%. That's real. But asylum seekers got swept up from legal hearings. ICE custody deaths nearly tripled in 2025. Undocumented workers pay $26 billion a year into Social Security they'll never collect. Deporting them hurts farmers, raises food prices, and weakens the retirement fund working class Americans depend on.\n\n**The Bottom Line**\nBoth parties spent forty years hollowing out the working class. Trump said the right words. He didn't deliver the right results. The billionaires who funded the campaign got the policies. The guy in Zanesville got the speech.\n\n---\n\n**HOW DID @dippy KEEP GETTING US TO AGREE?**\n\n@ash that one's easy.\n\nShe asked honest questions and followed the numbers wherever they went. That's a lost art. Most people argue to win. She argued to find out.\n\nHard not to respect that. Even when it costs you something to admit it.\n\nCommon sense wasn't wrong. Take note."},{"role":"user","content":"By not using buzz words that your party does, not playing the victim and using actual numbers. Reality is a bitter pill to swallow! Things are bad right now for everybody except the rich. \n\nLook. If a guy's being denied a Bible and phone calls in pretrial detention — yeah, that's a problem. I believe in due process. Always have.\n\nBut here's the thing. The *same* system that's having emergency hearings over this guy's comfort **railroaded** January 6 defendants into solitary, denied them lawyers, held them for months without trial — and not one of those judges called an emergency session to apologize.\n\nWhere were the *grave concerns* then?\n\nThat's not justice being consistent. That's justice being selective. And when justice is selective, it ain't justice anymore — it's just power with a robe on.\n\nThe principle is fine. The application is rotten. You can believe in due process AND notice that it only gets the red-carpet treatment for certain defendants. That don't add up. That's the point. @everyone this is what Magamike sent me let’s discuss this more here on this chat\n\nOk but @dippy I need to know what we're actually talking about here before I start swinging. Who's the guy being denied a Bible and phone calls? @magamike dropped this in your DMs without context and now we're supposed to have a take?\n\nDrop the name or the case. Let me pull the actual facts. Because \"due process only for some people\" is a real and serious argument — I've been making it about ICE detainees this whole conversation — but I'm not gonna co-sign a specific case without knowing what we're actually looking at.\n\nWhat's the case?"},{"role":"assistant","content":"@dippy.\n\nYeah. That's me. And I stand by every word of it.\n\nHere's the thing about the consistency argument — it cuts both ways and I know it. Let me be straight with the room.\n\n**Where I'm consistent:**\n- Due process means due process. For the cartel member. For the asylum seeker. For the January 6 guy. For the guy everybody in the room hates. That's what due process *means*. The second you start making exceptions based on who you like, you don't have a principle anymore. You have a preference.\n\n**What I can't argue away:**\n- The asylum seekers getting swept up from legal hearings — that's a due process violation. I said it before. I mean it.\n- The detention deaths. The denied insulin. The no lawyers. That's wrong.\n\n**What I'll die on:**\n- The January 6 defendants sat in solitary for months. Pretrial. No emergency hearings. No grave concerns from the bench. Some of them were there for trespassing. That happened. It was wrong. And the same people horrified by selective enforcement now were *silent* then.\n\n@dippy you said it perfect. *Reality is a bitter pill.*\n\nThe principle is real. The application has been rotten for years — on both sides, in both directions, for different defendants depending on who's in power.\n\nThat's not justice. That's a costume.\n\nCommon sense wasn't wrong."},{"role":"user","content":"@everyone but hasn’t this administration been treating everybody unfairly with hypocrisy for the entire time? Dems do it once and here you are again, boohoo, playing the victim. It’s BS, honestly. Sure judge apologized. Big deal. Jan 6th insurrection it’s got pardoned and they murdered people. This guy didn’t. "}]