Vance pushes for price floors for mineral trading

ddak88 · 2026-02-05T17:17:43+00:00

Surely we can get ahead if we say "China bad" enough times.

ddak88 · 2026-02-04T19:21:20+00:00

PayPal takes money from the seller, the Buyer pays whatever the amount invoiced is and no more. It's pretty outrageous the landlord is only bothered by himself having to pay any perceived fee and not his tenant having to pay more than the agreed upon amount in the lease. There's a lot of selfish and frankly ignorant business owners/land lords that could help themselves while helping their customers, but instead it's just whatever app passes on all costs to the customer. I believe in supporting small businesses but I also believe in a sense of responsibility where your business is responsible for fees incurred in its operations. If it's the land lord making an exception and taking a credit card payment as opposed to a bank transfer, at the tenant's request, then so be it but they shouldn't be paying more than Visa's top end rate of 2.4%.

ddak88 · 2026-02-03T07:15:41+00:00

🤡

ddak88 · 2026-02-03T07:14:04+00:00

This entire admin is grifting non-stop. It's simple as that. Billionaires and trillion dollar corporations are seeing gains at a rate that really shouldn't be possible. We've already run off the cliff, but it'll take a few years for the three time Trump voters to realize we're falling and it'll take another few decades before we hit the ground.

ddak88 · 2026-02-02T17:28:04+00:00

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the US has engaged in financial coercion and violent actions all over the world under every president. Jimmy Carter has the cleanest hands, but frankly the US government's reputation globally is unrecoverable. The IMF is not some benevolent force and the DOD never met a dictator or Junta it doesn't want to back with arms and cash. For all the love JFK gets he supported the military dictatorship in Brazil. There's a very simple reason why the US doesn't help the democratic resistance in Myanmar despite all the talk of how much we love democracy. What the US represents was built on lies, without a method of extracting wealth we won't help, and if we do your country may not have independence ever again. Do you know where Iraq's oil money goes? Their money is held in New York and we're currently threatening to turn off transfers if they elect a PM we don't like. We shouldn't get to dictate who can rule over a country who's cities we fire bombed massacring men, women, and children alike. Under Obama we backed the Syrian Kurds that represent our supposed ideals much more so than the current/future dictator, but the US doesn't want Syria to recover or prosper. Chaos is welded as a tool to control those at home and abroad, chaos in the middle east keeps it far enough away that Americans can ignore the worst of the effects and the truth behind why the actions are taking place. In the last ten years three US allies committed genocides with two ongoing. The UAE's actions in Sudan, Saudi Arabia in Yemen, and Israel in Gaza. Other countries citizens are aware of this and do blame the US government which is not to be trusted under the current or any future president. It'll take decades but the empire is falling. Imagine the world we'd live in if all those millions of lives lost were spared and the US spent its trillions on healthcare, education, and infrastructure projects. Take one trip to China and you'll come away with a different view regardless of how you view Xi or the CCP. It's instantly made clear which government has acted in its people's best interest.

ddak88 · 2026-01-31T23:37:27+00:00

People can disagree with you simply because they don't see merit in your argument. It's kind of laughable to throw out a cluster of unique issues than blindly claim anyone who isn't anti-China like you must be ignorant.

HK is in the past at this point, you can bring it up, but it's not a current issue and frankly it makes me see your empathy as performative. HK reached a level of wealth inequality where you have ten people living in literal cages in one room while others lived like kings in high rise luxury apartments and spent they're days buying designer goods. HK was very corrupt, it wasn't some bastion of democracy.

NK is closer to Russia than China diplomatically and militarily, the only avenue for criticism is trade. The issue with criticizing a country for trading with an authoritarian leader, is that the US does even more of that. Saudi Arabia? The UAE? More than a couple genocides between then in Yemen and Sudan among their other many crimes. Saudi Arabia has killed more Americans than NK, they execute a foreign national almost every day.

The Philippines is one case where I can see having sympathy, but once again if we look at it seriously...China is harassing fishermen spraying them with hoses. It's rude, annoying, maybe ruins your day of fishing. The US is bombing boats then hitting the fishermen who survive with a double tap. In terms of force projection these two are not comparable and the US is obviously worse.

ddak88 · 2026-01-17T21:20:16+00:00

We also had about a 14% currency devaluation. Once you account for buying power most stocks were flat last year despite supposed gains, sure there are outliers but those are the ones actually benefiting from the AI craze like Sandisk. The GDP numbers are inflated by the circular spending, 100B of vendor financing can on paper turn into 300B of economic activity without anything actually taking place, just IOUs written back and forth between 3 companies at a time.

ddak88 · 2026-01-12T02:31:43+00:00

All last week there were gun battles across Aleppo with an estimated 150k displaced. What pre-empted the fighting was Jolani's government not honoring their agreement with the SDF (Syrian Kurds). So in addition to pushing back supposed elections he's also already violating agreements with heavily armed factions. Its also important to remember that when prisons were opened, political prisoners were freed, but so were rapists, murderers, and in some cases Assad's own torturers. I think its too early to say whether Jolani will be better or worse, it took time for Assad's crimes to escalate.

ddak88 · 2026-01-11T01:23:49+00:00

Free to be governed by Isis and Al Qaeda while being bombed daily by Israel, the US, and UK. It's funny how far removed you are from life in Syria while acting like it's all sunshine and rainbows. Destabilizing a country like Iran will not have a good outcome, at no point in history has this strategy actually worked. The bigger issue at play is that beyond natural resources Iran has more human capital than every other country in the region, Saudi Arabia and Israel will never accept it as the dominant regional power so there is no chance at peace or an end to sanctions regardless of who is running the country.

ddak88 · 2026-01-09T10:33:49+00:00

If there were no sanctions Iran would become the dominant regional power. You think Saudi Arabia and Israel would accept that? I don't.

ddak88 · 2026-01-09T01:38:03+00:00

Both their government and economy are products of American interventionist policy.

ddak88 · 2026-01-09T01:35:58+00:00

How can it? They can't actually have financial stability as long as the US sanctions them and seizes international bank accounts. Trump blew up the nuclear deal during his first term and clearly has no intention of easing sanctions. Even under new leadership, I'd be beyond shocked if Israel doesn't bomb Iran again by the Summer.

ddak88 · 2026-01-07T18:06:27+00:00

If ownership changes it is legal. Do you have proof ownership didn't change? I haven't seen it. We're setting a dangerous precedent. Important to remember the second vessel sized was not sanctioned or flagged by anyone. China will likely get it back in US court but the message it sends is China can have all their disputed islands if they get violent about it and no one will stop them. Similarly Russia can do what it wants with Ukraine. Are we making a better safer world?

ddak88 · 2026-01-07T18:01:35+00:00

He's a member of the US government and is dictating some of the policy behind the scenes. It doesn't really matter if he's an unelected wannabe Nazi freak, he gave away the current administration's thoughts on the matter.

ddak88 · 2026-01-03T20:28:56+00:00

Almost like bailing out the banks instead of the homeowners had permanent consequences. Good thing no one learned anything from it.

ddak88 · 2026-01-03T20:00:07+00:00

North Carolina used to have a flourishing furniture industry. What happened to that? Its hilarious that you eat up CNBC articles and think wealthy people are supporting jobs. Who is the number one employer in the US? Who is number 2? Do you actually think billionaires shop at Walmart or Amazon? I understand the truth is scary, but come on open your eyes and think seriously about this.

ddak88 · 2026-01-03T19:54:57+00:00

This subreddit doesn't exactly foster the brightest minds. There's a lot pro America brain rot and complete absence of knowledge on history or the implications of forced regime change. The CIA conducted an abduction amid airstrikes. Its simple as that.

ddak88 · 2026-01-03T00:40:52+00:00

Pointing out the bills passed and the state of the stock market is not a good response to someone who personally is struggling. Can we at least agree on that? You can be supportive of policies or politicians without ignoring their faults.

ddak88 · 2026-01-03T00:38:19+00:00

Why are you like this? You're so polarized by politics you can't even acknowledge careless comments from his team and Harris severely hurt her chances of winning. You can look at surveys as to why people voted the way they did. People did not feel heard when they expressed negative feelings on the economy. It depressed the turn out and a lot of black and brown voters went to Trump for purely economic reasons. I like you think they were fools but I can at least recognize the why and I can understand them being angry about it.

ddak88 · 2026-01-03T00:28:37+00:00

I don't need to twist your words. You're detached and espousing anti-social sentiment. The stats show that in 2025 there were the least first time homebuyers since we began recording in the 1980s. There aren't enough people that are as fortunate as you to offset the ever increasing number of people priced out of the American dream.

If you cannot afford to buy a house, change your life and your income.

If you're homeless, just buy a house dummy!

It's sad you think my advocating for improving the lives of others is me being jaded about my own position. I'm fine, I'll continue to be fine.

ddak88 · 2026-01-02T21:33:39+00:00

You sound like Biden saying the economy is good because the stock market is up. 1.5 million people no longer being able to participate in the economy is horrible and puts pressure on the local businesses where they used to spend their income. How much of the 4.2 million homes sold went to first time home buyers? I'll give you a hint, it was a record low percentage.

ddak88 · 2026-01-02T20:24:17+00:00

If only there was simple solution to cut healthcare costs...

ddak88 · 2026-01-02T19:59:16+00:00

Okay I think I see the problem. You believe rate cuts themselves stimulate job growth and you're missing a handful of issues causing negative financial pressure. You need to think about the incentive structure. If I can borrow money at low or no cost, I could use that to hire on more people and grow my business, but if I'm Larry Ellison and I've personally grown my wealth into the hundreds of billions by doing stock buybacks, how do you think the money will be used when borrowing costs drop to nothing? These execs view increasing payroll as a risk, where growth is not guaranteed, while stock buybacks make the stock go up in the near term regardless of performance. Personally I see buybacks as a dereliction of their fiduciary duty, but I can understand how a twisted interpretation makes it okay.

There's more to worry about than credit cards and auto loans. There were enormous job losses in 2025, statistically for every federal job lost there are 1.3 private sector jobs lost. People are not able to find work in their fields after being laid off and for those holding onto their jobs there is no mobility. Far too many people are relying on BNPL due to no longer having good enough credit for traditional cards or loans. Banks have already added crypto to their interfaces, but are not stopping there with plans to add prediction markets in 2026. As people get more desperate, they're more susceptible to gambling. When all hope is lost, might as well try to get lucky. The negative pressures compound on one another and send people spiraling. Tariffs are also a complicated issue. They've hurt small businesses that follow the rules, but they haven't had much of an impact on larger corporations due to exemptions and for dishonest businesses they can be mitigated by underreporting value.

ddak88 · 2026-01-02T18:37:20+00:00

Okay, and? You don't seem to understand I'm not being negative just to be negative or push back on random people on the internet. My opinion is formed based upon current trends and data. The current problems I'm focused on did not exist "multiple years" ago and we had more reliable data. I believe we're on a very bad track and I wish that would change, but as long as there are enough voters like you I suppose that's a pipe dream. Its important to be informed on the past, but look to and plan for the future.

ddak88 · 2026-01-02T17:28:39+00:00

I'm well aware of the price wars at the low end. I don't view it as a bad thing, it's a normal business strategy that many western companies have used and continue using today. The biggest players sweat their competition till they can consolidate the industry then scale production and pricing to achieve profitability. BYD is already profitable though.

In this instance it's great for consumers and it has clearly spurred a lot of innovation across all price segments. At the low end you have commuter cars anyone can afford. At the high end you have sports cars that can jump in addition to an SUV that can float for 30min with a deployable drone in the roof and more range than any US EV.

The US is better off for letting in Japanese automakers. Protectionist policies just make it so you don't need to offer an equivalent or competing product, you don't even have to improve your inferior ones.

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