The Biden Administration Redefined "Recession"

The US is in a recession at the moment, but it's not allowed to be called a recession. Well, the government's trying to not call it a recession, but it's... Wikipedia article got changed. You see this? Really? Oh, dude. No. They redefined recession? Yep. So recession used to be two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Right. Not anymore? Not on Wikipedia. When was this? Jimmy, get the Wikipedia-y thing up, because this is wild. How long ago did they change it? This weekend. Oh, God. Yeah, I saw it got... Well, I saw it got locked because people were fucking with it, is what I read. But I don't know how much of that was... But this is the definition when you type in Google, which is the same thing. So a period of temporary economic decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced, generally identified by a fallen GDP in two successive quarters. So in Google, it's still the same. In Wikipedia, let's look at what it says. Recession is a business cycle. Contraction, where there's a general decline in economic activity, recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending or an adverse demand shock. This may be triggered by various events, such as financial crisis and external trade shock and adverse supply shock bursting. Okay, here it is. A recession is defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research as a significant decline in economic activity spread across the market lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale retail sales. So... In the UK, it's defined as that. In the UK, it's defined as a negative economic growth for two consecutive quarters. That got changed. So that's what's changed, that the United States used to define it as two consecutive quarters and now we don't anymore? Yeah, and people have pulled it up on the archive. So a bunch of advisors, economic advisors, have got quotes of them saying what a recession is, especially when Donald Trump was in office, there is a recession that's coming. It's negative GDP growth for two consecutive quarters. Right. And then this weekend, people are asking them, are we in a recession? Because the second quarter economics just came out and it's 0.9 decline again. Have you seen the White House press secretary define the economy as being strong and the best economy we've had in over a decade? Have you seen her do that? No. It's hilarious. It's like the wildest gaslighting because she's doing all of these political hand maneuvers that people do. You know those moves that people do with their hands when they're talking and they're trying to display like confidence and control? And there's like, it's literally like political pantomiming. It's weird to watch. Tai Chi and political Tai Chi. Yeah, it's weird to watch because it's like sleight of hand. It's very bizarre. You think they'd be trained in that, some neuro-linguistic programming. If you put your hands here when you're saying this sort of a thing, blah, blah, blah. I don't know if they're... There's clearly an indication that that's what you would do if you were trained, but I think it's more mimicking. It's mimicking like the great presidents and the great politicians who have done these very specific things. Like Bill Clinton famously used to do this thing with his fingers. We take his thumb and do this and do that. So it's not aggressive and violent because you can't really hit someone with this. But if you were doing this, it'd be a problem. That's problematic. That's angry, right, with the pointing the finger. The fist is a sign of violence. But this thing is this weird, like mushy... So the bizarre thing about the recession situation is the fact that it doesn't matter what you call it, right? You can call it fucking paradise if you want, but it's still shit. Like all of the criteria of what's happening indicates a recession. And the reason obviously is that you've got midterms coming up, and you need to make sure that is in a recession is not something that can be thrown at the Democrats. It's a protectionist strategy. Yes. So don't use that word. It's not. It's not because it's not defined in that way. That's not the accepted definition. It was until very, very, very recently. That's wild. Well, that's gaslighting. And just that alone, you know, people would think that it's trivial because they are talking about this economic downturn. But it's not trivial because we've always used that term, recession. And we've always used that term to define whether or not the economic policies that are currently in place and whether or not the management and the government has done a good job of making sure that the economy stays in a good place. They definitely haven't done that. So in order to escape that sort of distinction, they're literally changing the definition, which is terrible. And it should be pushed back against in a big way. It should be something that people get angry about. Like, hey, you're fucking with definitions in order to pretend that you're doing a good job. Well, the reason that you attach a sequence of letters to something, right, is to represent what that thing is. You don't change reality by changing what those words actually mean. But if you can't control the economy, you might as well just control the language and hope for the best. God. What a bunch of weasels. Dude, it's wild. But again, this is I think because everybody's opinions and their words now are what everyone's judged on, not their deeds. We used to be judged on our deeds because they were the things with the most obvious. But now, because social media is one of the primary forms of communication, people are judged on their opinions and their words far more. And what that means is that your opinion is actually, and the language specifically that you use, it's way more important than actually what's happening in the world. And if that's the case, what it means is that language should be the focus. Why wouldn't I lexically try and do some Brazilian jujitsu to fuck around with this little bit of semantic fuckery? Why not? Because that's going to actually change the thing that most people are taking notice of. And also, there's a concept called two-step flow theory. And what it says is that there are precious few original thinkers in the world. And because most people feel like they have to have an opinion on everything, because that's the world that we live in at the moment, but very few people can be bothered to do original thought and do the research, people just take on the opinion of whoever their favorite thought leader is. So you could basically argue that the culture war is largely two armies of NPCs being ventriloquized by a handful of actual thinkers above them. Mmm. That's a great way to look at it. And that is kind of what's going on with a great majority of people, or a large number of people. I don't know if it's a majority, but it's enough to make noise. It's enough to show you that there's a real problem with ideologies and with tribalism, because that's what people gravitate towards. They gravitate towards a group of people that they feel like they can fit into, and then they can adopt those patterns of thinking and those thoughts. And instead of coming up with their own opinions, they form this sort of conglomeration of other people's opinions, and then they fiercely defend them.