Kate Shaw
LightfighterThis is a very accurate graph of anything in my lifetime in the US.
CheapPontoon@Lightfighter same. 1980 was the inflection point. greed is good, three-piece suits, preppies, yuppies…
David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)The same graph used to work for the UK, except with Thatcher instead of Reagan. But then Brexit happened and we got another sharp dip in the ‘good things’ line.
@david_chisnall Could definitely add a second dotted line with an acceleration of red and green with Brexit/Trump and it would be accurate on both sides of the pond.
GunChleoc
Genesis - Land of Confusion (Official Music Video)
Auf YouTube findest du großartige Videos und erstklassige Musik. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder mit der ganzen Welt teilen.
Bob Thomson@gunchleoc @Lightfighter @david_chisnall would like to know - where’s the satirical snark now in pop music? “I modelled shirts for Van Huesen” “Did the Earth move for ya Nancy?” Etc. I’m sure it’s still there somewhere and I’m just an old git.
@bobthomson70 You still get it when satirists make music. My favorite one right now: https://youtube.com/watch?v=S-Jo-djilvo
Most of their stuff is German language though.
"Right Time to Thiel" - James Bond Theme | ZDF Magazin Royale
WTF! We just wrote down what we know about Peter Thiel. Why did this become a James Bond theme?Lyrics: He knows it allWe are just pieces in his game of ches...
@gunchleoc @Lightfighter @david_chisnall for sure yeah, Radio 4 choc full of it. I’m more thinking of when I was a teen and it was big selling singles.
@bobthomson70 I guess the modern equivalent of that is to get a few million views on YouTube, which they do for some of their songs. This one has less than 1/2 million, but they have a German language music video up with 40 million views.
Of course, most musicians don't have their own TV show 😁
Michael Engel@david_chisnall @Lightfighter In Germany, we had the criminal and corrupt Helmut Kohl… for 16 loooong years.
Morten@Lightfighter "Some metric" should be on the vertical axis and "time" should be on the horizontal axis. Otherwise perfect.
Arthur van der Harg@drgroftehauge @Lightfighter And it probably should read “Some imperial”.
K2@Lightfighter Ditto
filthy neon sparkle goblin@Lightfighter British version just replaces his name with "Margaret Thatcher" :)
Ray McCarthy
Neo Ehproque@bright_helpings @Lightfighter same time, even
Andy Dearden
Consensus Tullyality@Lightfighter my GenX husband confirms this is accurate
Brian Repko@Lightfighter some curves might show a slight Nixon or Bush wiggle but yep yep (shakes head vigorously)
Large Format ProjectionistRelabel that line “LBJ” and you’re right on.
Ronnie was merely the tallest in a streak of neoliberals.
@BenHM3 It could go back to the 3/5ths compromised and the Electoral College... Or even to the creation of the British East India Company.
Scale Theory
David Penfold 
@Lightfighter Same with Thatcher in the UK.
Zack@Lightfighter It’s almost like electing an actor wasn’t the best idea.
Hiker Geek 🌲💻🌲Reagan popularized trickle down economics.
Basically an official policy that rich people are more important than everyone else.
It was the foundation of the oligarchy we are afflicted with today.
@Lightfighter for what it's worth this almost certainly started because of the significant shift during Carter's presidency. He tried to do some pretty Progressive things and corporations bought their way to acquiescence from the Democratic Party and from that point forward it's been both major political parties in agreement with corporations and in opposition to the people they supposedly serve
Rastal@Lightfighter Neoliberalism. That's why. That's what changed with Reagan (and in #uk Thatcher) and continues to today.
Imagine if people in USSR had never heard of Communism - that's what we have today in the West with Neoliberalism. This Hayek ideology has run the West since 1980s, it affects every aspect of Westerners daily lives, every political party (uni-party) believes it, yet few Brits or Americans can name it, or much less identify it as the reason things went downhill.
BlueDot@Lightfighter That checks out.
Susanna the Artist 🌻@Lightfighter I was in college before I realized there were people who thought Reagan was a great president.
kit@Lightfighter
I'm not a citizen, I just come from a tiny little South Pacific country, and barely remember Carter, but seems about right.
I'm not a citizen, I just come from a tiny little South Pacific country, and barely remember Carter, but seems about right.
scheichsbeutel@Lightfighter Looks nice. But it isn't as simple as that. Vietnam? Nixon? To be continued ...
David PhdI would go back to Nixon too - his Southern strategy of appealing to Southern Evangelicals and racists to win for the GOP.
@cmsdengl @Lightfighter As mentioned, it looks nice, but that's it. Things aren't that simple. You can also look at the post-Reagan era: Clinton's liberalization of the financial markets - a real evil. And so on and on ...
M.@mmol @cmsdengl @Lightfighter I know what a meme is. What exactly about my statement above was there that you couldn't understand?
@scheichsbeutel @mmol @Lightfighter
Its a troll account mute or block
@scheichsbeutel Well, no it's not that simple. But starting in 1600 with the formation of the British East India Company would be a bit much for a simple meme.
@Lightfighter I fully understand that this is a satirical oversimplification. But sometimes people end up being convinced that they’ve thereby solved a very complex problem. And I think that’s kind of dangerous.
Mike
Zoidberg For President@Lightfighter I lolled at the green part.
gingerFlip@Lightfighter bravo 👏👏👏
StarkRG@Lightfighter It only seems that way because our lives are so short, in reality the US has always been a horrendous, destructive entity.
condret 
@StarkRG @Lightfighter but at least they had decent economic policies until reagan i think
@condret @Lightfighter By what metric? For the white, middle-class standard living in suburbs, sure. Even that really only existed for a couple decades anyway and was mostly a fiction built up during the cold war to show how much better American capitalism was than Soviet communism. Once it became clear that the Soviet Union was imploding, "the economy" became just a buzzword for politicians to rave about when they're in power, and rant about when they're not.
@StarkRG @Lightfighter Reagan redistributed from the bottom to the top. His presidency stands paradigmatic shift away from the ambitions of the New Deal and the Great Society towards tax cuts for the rich. The USA had better economic policies befor Reagan.
@condret @Lightfighter For a somewhat brief period of time (mostly just the 50s, 60s, and sorta some of the 70s, so roughly 11-12% of the history of the nation), for a relatively small subset of the population (veterans of WWII specifically and white, upper-middle-income suburban dwellers that adhered to social norms), yes, it can be seen that way. What Reagan put an end to was an interlude, a show put on for international prestige that had run its course and was already on its way out anyway.
@condret @Lightfighter I'm not saying that Reagan wasn't a massive piece of shit, I just don't think you can credit him for the state of affairs in the US. In addition to the back-room, secret societies (like the Bilderberg meetings) constantly steering society towards things that benefit them specifically and individually, there are many key figures that stand out. McCarthy comes to mind, all but wiping out the entirety of the American left wing, something it's barely begun to recover from.
@StarkRG @Lightfighter Interesting that you mention Bilderberg. I alwaya thought that was a distraction from other secret societies.
@condret I doubt it, they're pretty secretive about their goings-on. They're definitely not the only such group manipulating things, some do it out in the open, some do it semi-secretively (like exclusive fraternities and official-but-clandestine government agencies like the CIA), and some do it very secretly indeed. That's not paranoia talking, we know of a lot of them, and can safely surmise the existence of others (including informal groups like the people formerly in Epstein's inner circle)
JackMexThe president that rich people, warmongers, and idiots love equally.
✿ floby 💉😷💨@Lightfighter there's also the version where they compare themselves to other "peer" countries and their line only matches that of autocracies and developing countries
devoir@Lightfighter Why do so few people understand this?!!!
@devorars Propaganda mostly I would guess.
@Lightfighter Sigh. Yes. Probably most things go back to that.
Toni Aittoniemi@Lightfighter Margaret Thatcher and her fanboys for Europe = same thing.
Jake in the desert@Lightfighter yeah. Reagan was instrumental in a lot of this and I hope he and his useless wife rot in piss. The only consolation is these monsters eventually die.
Hibou Chachara@Lightfighter interesting that some still think that the election of Reagan was not already the result of the bad being heavier than the good.
Curtiss Grymala (he/him/his)@Lightfighter I have said many times that, for my entire life, we've consistently thought "well, at least the next Republican president can't possibly be worse than this one," and, every time, they've proven us wrong.