for the past two years or so, i always see the clock when the time is 10:13…
if I don’t see it 10:13 am then I see it at 10:13 pm, sometimes I see both. the thing is I never intentionally look for it. im never conscious about it.
I am also born on October 13
a few months ago, I kept thinkinf about my friend, H, who went to college this past year. she kept coming back to my mind and I had made a note to reach out to her. a couple days later she texted me. last night, I was sitting and bed and she came to my mind again. the same thing happened. it was late, so I decided to go to sleep and texr her in the morning. later today, she texted me.
the thing is it keeps happening with other people as well. me and my friend, a, had stopped talking completely for about a month due to something that had happened. one night i was laying in bed debating whether I should finally break the silence and text him. I fell asleep and when I woke up he had sent me a message. When I answered, I literally told him ”this is weird because I almost texted u last night“. with this friend in particular, weve Both opened our chats when someone is typing just from coincidence.
im certain this has happened more before these instances, but these two events are more memorable because it was immediate. Sometimes I feel weirdly conmected to people, including people I have never spoken to, but can never tell if it is in my head or not.
So my understanding of history and economics is surface level.
in school we learned about how the Great Depression exposed the flaw in Republican and laissez-faire economics, where obviously, the government has little to no intervention. presidents like Herbert Hoover, hurt the American economy because the government allowed depressions to just continually get worse rather than reinvigorating the economy with federal money. obviously this popularized keynesian economics (which idk what that means tbh). then this is followed up with things like the New Deal and then LBJ's Great Society, where government's intervention is associated with periods of economic prosperity, where you see the formation of things like Social Security and increased access to education, increased income, etc.. And how much of the prosperity associated with FDR and Lyndon B. Johnson is because of their policies and not just the market, like consumerism and things like that, following World War I and World War II?
my first question is: how much of this is just because democratic policies are just better and how much of it is because of the market conditions created by the world wars? how do you know?
And then my second thing is: have tariffs ever worked? Because historically, you know, you have things like the Tariff of Abominations, people who were against Henry Clay's protective tariffs. these are really far back but I can’t think of anything more modern rn. Tariffs just like historically have always like raised prices for Americans, and don't really seem to do much. the point is for them to increase domestic industry… but now the us is reliant on imports, so it doesn’t make sense to place tariffs (unless they’re on specific markets)?