Yeah, the drop in travel and drop in spending on American stuff is sharp – not sure the specific %, but it’s definitely up there. What’s interesting is that it’s a “spontaneous” reaction from many Canadians, not so much a result of leadership. Like, yes, Trudeau made a speech or two that were fairly clear on the sentiments, but people’d already been booing at hockey games / cancelling trips etc before that. Sorta like our armed forces reserve applications going bonkers / crashing the website frequently due to volume, without any specific reason.

But these things are still driven by what seems like mass paranoia / potentially media trends, to some extent - especially as there’s been few ‘real’ controls/measures implemented. Canadian media is heavily skewed/oriented towards the USA, so we’ve seen a fairly constant blast of negative Trump/American perspectives. Social media makes it really easy to fan those xenophobic flames – like you’d just need a small batch of bots/agents upvoting/downvoting posts to shift the herds perspective on sites like reddit, as, if they catch posts ‘early’, that’d essentially allow control of which comments are visible, allowing for control of the discussion. The anti-american stuff feels a lot like a social media trend in this respect – like people ‘spontaneously’ recording themselves dumping buckets of ice water on their heads, or taking photos of ‘planking’, or some random dance move, or stealing stuff from public washrooms, etc. Those sorts of things were basically coordinated through algorithms on social media, moreso than people rationally/objectively deciding to do them. It’s not like people across the country woke up one day and all thought “I know how to support ALS research, I’ll film myself dumping a bucket of water on my head!”. It was a nonsensical behaviour pattern spurred on by oligarch controlled algorithms, demonstrating the power of those algorithms to manipulate the masses.

Very difficult, as most traded goods pass through US boundaries via train/truck.

More “regular” trade agreements between individual states is generally more likely going forward I imagine, but the sort of integrated supply chains that we’ve all benefited from in North America for like… decades and decades… is pretty well toast.

Eg. the US wants to build their own cars, in country. This means Canada and Mexico will likely also need to build their own cars, in country. Mexico has a bit more of an opportunity to build up integrated supply chains with countries in south america, though they tend to be a bit less stable – the proximity is a win. It’d be really cool to see if they did though – not sure what sorts of free trade agreements are around in the south, honestly.

Canada is busy trying to shore up agreements/trade with areas like asia and europe, as those are ‘sorta’ the same distance/calculus as shipping things via sea to mexico / south america.

It’d also be interesting if the waning of the US hegemony results in more western countries trading with traditionally ‘blockaded’ countries. Cuba has long been a Canadian vacation spot, but trade with Cuba has been limited due to US pressure. Given the current state of things, I don’t see why Canada wouldn’t increase trade there. And given the state of Cuba currently, it could be really beneficial for both country’s people.

I’m mostly familiar with the Canadian situation due to my locale.

What I’d say on this front, is that the government of Canada has generally taken preformative steps so far in regards to the issues in the USA. There’s a lot of chest thumping and pageantry. Our largest province, Ontario, recently re-elected a fairly hard right Conservative politician – one who is well known for doing things against the public interest (like selling off what little green/parkland exists around toronto, to his developer buddies)… he was re-elected because he draped himself in pro-Canada trappings. He’s the guy who made the “Canada is not for sale” hats more popular. Branding yourself as captain Canada works for elections currently – which is why, for example, its very likely we’ll see a Liberal party returned to power federally, even though until very recently they were looking at a significant routing (that, plus them changing to Carney, who is probably the most right-wing/conservative leader of the Liberal/“centrist” party in history).

When I say preformative, I mean things like… there have been no explicit calls from our government to businesses/industry to follow suit on untangling supply chains or shifting trade relationships explicitly – they’ve taken some steps to try and lay ground work for further diversification of international trade, but haven’t pushed any levers, outside of allowing market forces to do their thing. Our banking regulators, for example, happily remain within Microsoft’s cloud ecosystems – and they have seemingly no interest in the financial industry outsourcing all of their websites to foreign countries / the USA. Many of our levels of government have made overtures of “buy local” procurement policies, but when you ask for details they’re all just “planning/reviewing/considering”, without direct action on the table. It’s not what you’d expect, given the ‘rhetoric’ of it being an existential threat / crisis. Our politicians are full of sound and fury, but they aren’t bothered enough to take direct action at this point.

If you rely on concrete / verifiable data points from our government, trade and relations are deteriorating, but there’s no overt cautions/warnings/mandates to take action. Media posts that hype up the fear by changing words feed into the public paranoia, and ignore the relative calm seen in our government agencies.

I ain’t American. I’m from one of the countries most irked by America at present (Canada) – if you look at my @, I’m on a Canadian lemmy server.

But its still true that Russian propaganda is mostly about disrupting allied nations and fostering civil unrest / animosity between countries. They have literally stated that they seek to amplify things like race-oriented conflicts and stories, because it helps to destabilize western countries (so things like Tiktok, where any anti-black event is automatically on the front page, is part of that routine – compared to other nations, where it shows more benign things, such as “child prodigy plays piano”). Things like “BuyCanadian” campaigns are likely supported/partially funded by Russian interests – because it’s not just “avoid american products”, but “avoid all traditional allies” in tone. Sorta like how Russia didn’t need specific ‘agents’ in the US, but could instead fund “influencers” that were saying things that promoted Russian geopolitical goals.

Is there a reason to be concerned about what’s going on in the states? Yes. Doesn’t mean that we should hype up negativity beyond reason / create anti-american echo chambers.

Oh, wait, ok, let me go do up a massive post with a ton of cited sources and detailed research in order to support an online opinion about the general feeling I get when seeing these sorts of articles – specifically ones where the social media site (this lemmy OPs post) re-words the title of the article from “travel update” to “travel warning”, and aims to get people going on about how the USA is evil.

Or, no, I won’t bother. It’s an online opinion meant to draw some additional thought / criticism towards these sorts of posts, and the intentions behind them.

Yeah, it’s not too surprising that it’ll have slightly different contexts in different regions.

Yeah, so it definitely gives the vibe of social media over hyping / trying to drive further wedges into western relations and opinions. Which is basically a Russian goal / propaganda tactic…

As another poster commented, the actual article doesn’t call it a ‘warning’. So, this does look like social media/bubble hyping up the issue.

For starters, the question wasn’t, as far as I know, asking how the ideology / stance fairs in terms of implementation / reality. Like you can give a description of what a communist believes, without having to try and explain Communist Russia / China.

In terms of medicare/dental care, yes, there are soc lib fisc con people that do believe that. Likely not people in the USA, where everything skews right wing – their soc lib is more like “I have a black friend! I’m not racist!”. In more sane countries, there are a good number of people who fall into that ideological mindset, who do support public utilities/health initiatives – it’s pretty common here in Canada, based on people I’ve spoken with.

Like a soc lib fisc con person I know, has previously suggested that we ought to change how roads / cars are handled – arguing that cities shouldn’t have anywhere near as many cars, and that common “paved” roads should be essentially relegated to highways/freeways due to the cost and ecological impact. In their take, city budgets are often bloated by road repair costs due to the over-engineering of what’s required for regular residential activity. Using other road materials would dramatically increase sustainability – and even if it results in more ‘maintenance’ cost/road tolls for car users who still insist on using cars, that’s up to the consumer. I don’t know if they were talking nonsense, but that’s the sort of thing I sometimes hear people in the soc lib fisc con camp say.

Not sure – but it’s plausible that the media/bubbles are hyping up that sort of event, even if it’s an outlier. Like there are millions of visits to the US from Canada on a regular basis – one lady got put in a detention area, as a result of having wonky paper work on a longer term work visa (something most regular tourists/travellers don’t have to worry about).

As far as I know, travel advisories aren’t issued as a result of ‘cost to insurance companies’, but rather danger/risk to citizens travelling to those countries, imposed by governments. Travel insurance providers look at those, and determine risk/coverage based on that sort of information. So no explicit warning, implies there’s no significant risk, for most visitor types.

Advising something like “If you use X as a gender, make sure to carry additional paperwork/figure out additional rules”, isn’t something that’s going to cause a “generic” family to worry about going to Disney Land.

All these reports of travel warnings feel misleading to me.

A proper travel warning equates to insurance companies refusing to provide travel insurance, which directly impacts whether people would travel to the USA. None of the “warning” updates have gone to that level.

Updating travel guidance isn’t that big a deal.

So many people with such brutal takes on it – helps to quantify who the audience is on lemmy I guess.

Socially liberal fiscally conservative, to me at least, means that the person is in favour of equality in the sense of equality of treatment from the government, but is not in favour of additional big spending projects to try and have equality of opportunity. They’re pro-choice, but likely against the government funnelling money into providing abortions for women (so abortions available, but not gov subsidized). They’re pro-trans rights in terms of being fine with whoever doing whatever they want with their body/partners of choice, but against government paying for trans-specific gender affirming procedures and parades to highlight those groups. They’re in favour of things like universal medicare/dental care, because those programs are shown to be a net benefit fiscally and socially.

In general, they support socially progressive ideas, so long as they’re fiscally costed out and beneficial to the public purse. They’re against increased government spending / reach, preferring ‘small government’, with the social components placed more on individuals to fund directly.

Musks Tesla stock holdings make it so that even if he were kicked out as CEO, the company would continue to be viewed as his personal piggy bank, and likely continue to face backlash for the stuff Musk is doing. Him liquidating his stock position would crater the stock price. It’s pretty well cooked.

Well, I guess that’s still a step ‘up’ from his dad, with the 40 year age gap between him and his baby mamma/former step daughter, saying “Show me the rules that say I can’t groom/fuck/marry my former step daughter. Show me the rules.”

So your college degree seems to have been poor quality, as your approach to discussing a topic is to just insult the other person to try and make your point. You’re also conflating your personal experience, from the sound of things, with the framing I was referencing in the article. Pointing out that the article is highlighting an extreme example of an outlier, who works in a field that most people find ‘more respectable’, is a valid criticism of the article’s bias. The article would read a lot differently if it was someone who’d gone to an ivy league school to get an arts degree, went into debt for $500k doing so, and now works as a Starbucks barista struggling to make payments. The way the article is structured is intended to cause people to get triggered and be all out-ragey, without properly engaging with the subject / thinking about what’s going on, the issues, and potential tweaks to make things work.

The article does include a reference to the ‘average’ debt level of ~40k, for people that took out student loans. But it doesn’t comment on how those “average” students debt servicing amounts are changing due to the changes in policy. It references via secondary links a more regular example, one where the person is just 2-3x more in debt than average – where a woman comments that her payments are going from $250 to $900.

One of the ‘horror’ stories we hear out of the American system, is that people will be paying these amounts for decades and decades, without chipping away at the principle. Not a surprise, if your payments are less than the monthly interest costs – and if she’s paying just $250 out of a payment that ‘should’ be $900 on a 10 year term, she isn’t covering the interest at all. If they’re allowed to take out loans from regular FIs, they could theoretically get that down to around $450-500 by extending the amortization out to 25 years and adding options for over payments if they want to get out of debt faster. You could get that even lower, if you have a guarantor (ex. Parent) or other security behind the loan to reduce the interest rate further – with that setup, you get a monthly payment of like… $250. A more practical middle ground. Yes, it’d potentially increase the payments, but it’d also remove the common complaint of not being able to get ahead on principle payments.

And again, that referenced example is one where someone’s gone into twice as much debt as the average person who uses that system. The average person, based on the numbers in the article, is looking at a payment of about $400 after the change, from the look of it. A difficult, yet far more manageable change than putting out there that people are suddenly seeing a 10x increase up to $5000, which is the ‘shock and outrage’ approach taken in the article.

I don’t think anyone from a more sane country is looking at the American system and thinking its ‘good’. In another response, I noted that here in Canada, from what I recall at least, we cap our tuition amounts for Canadian citizens / undergrads – so its far less common to hear of people going into massive debt to get degrees from local universities. Doing so aims to place the ‘pressure’ on Universities to figure out how to fund their operations. Many ended up relying on foreign student income, where tuition isn’t capped. Even with some restrictions, universities still have massive endowment funds, so they aren’t ‘hurting’ for money at the institutional level – for example the University of BC is sitting on about $3billion in its fund. Putting pressure on the Universities/institutions to give students a fair shake, is more practical in my view than saying the government should cover student loan debts / interest issues. I mean, if the Universities “fraudulently sold degrees that they claimed would get you 6 figures”, shouldn’t they be the ones holding the bag – not the government / regular tax payers?

You say you graduated HS 22 years ago. It may be time to act more like an adult, and treat other people/discussions with some decorum.

*just an edit to add in, that if you watch the clip of the lady with the 5k payment… she openly admits that, while complaining about the increase, they’re aiming to put in about $7k/month to get it all paid off in 5 years, while still having more left over for ‘prioritizing other investments too’. So, the article’s ‘outrage’ increase, is one where the person clearly got a really high paying job out of it, and isn’t exactly ‘hurting’. So they earn way more than enough to cover their debts – and are essentially 1%'rs who were getting subsidized by the government by thousands of dollars per month.

Thanks, appreciated.

Sure, I get that not all lawyers are scum – though I do know a few that fit the very description I gave. But the point is more that you can find less ‘noble’ examples of people in massive debt, which may alter opinions on the subject. The article chooses to use a specific outlier to make the case more persuasive/concerning.

Like another thing I’d be curious about is the variance in debt levels between professionals who train at “regular” schools/colleges, and ones who train at “elite” schools like Harvard or MIT or whatever’s good down there these days. The impression I get as an outsider to the US system, is that the costs vary wildly between different tiers of schools – and that it’s entirely possible to get a decent career (middle class) even without a top tier school education. I’d suspect then that there’s a tranche of people who are going in to massive debt attempting to go to these more expensive options, without good reason for doing so – but it’s the individuals choice, at the end of the day.

And contrary to what some folks seem to think on here, an 18 year old is an adult in most countries, as far as I know. They’re old enough to be accountable for their actions. They can vote and all that. And these folks are often mid 20s by the time they get out / have fully accumulated their debt – so even more ‘old enough’. As long as they have ‘options’ to choose from, I find it questionable that people choosing the highest/most expensive options should be given the biggest break.

It’d make more sense to me to regulate the hell out of your schools, and have government enforce things like tuition caps for American citizen under grads etc – rather than have a kind of manic approach to debt forgiveness that flips every four years, which turns education affordability into a lottery. University endowment funds are a fairly clear argument for clipping those institutions wings a bit, and forcing them to give a break to the students. Heck, even here in Canada where we cap tuition, some of our universities have absurd amounts of money stockpiled.

Silly question perhaps, but I haven’t tripped across it on the site for Revolt – is there a relatively straight forward server version for self-hosting, or is it just that the source is on github and you can compile it in theory if you feel like goin through that process… ?

Yeah, I don’t really see a reason to engage with your posts either, at least not with any real conviction. It’s not a sign that you’re approaching a topic / other person in good faith if you’re defaulting to insults. Insulting people isn’t very persuasive, and just serves to further alienate moderates – it makes you seem like an unreasonable extremist with the personality of sandpaper underwear.

Sure, but you’re framing that in a way to be as positive as possible about it. How about, “the 18 year old that wanted to defend criminals and get them out of violent crime offenses for huge profits”, and went into debt to pursue what they thought was going to be a hugely profitable career? Do you really think regular people, who go into debt just ~40k based on what the article states, should also be comp’ing that other case with perks/debt forgiveness? The article is specifically using an outlier case, who went into debt for a profession that’s respectable, to skew opinions…

Student debt is an issue in the states, I don’t disagree on that as far as I understand it at least. It’s just that a lot of the articles around the subject seem very heavily skewed by political bias, which is annoying. And me being annoyed by that, and wanting more neutral discussion, I don’t think of as bootlicking.