You might be confused by the CPI. The GDP is actually adjusted using a different measure of inflation (the "GDP deflator"), which looks at the actual purchases made in the country over that period. There's not really any "reasonable" alternative calculations to be made there.
The 80s were a reaction to the "liberal" 70s. It's just the natural cycle of history, the majority of people are in the center so when culture shifts too far to one side they start pushing it back.
It's not like the firing is random. "Low performers" get a lot of warnings throughout the year. Most people are average or above so they will be completely unaffected, it's not likely you would drop from 50th percentile to 5th.
On the other hand, do you really want to be stuck working with someone who's not very competent? I think we've all had that experience and it's miserable.
As a former interviewer at Meta who did hundreds of technical interviews, I can tell you that the people that I hardly expected "Djikstra or Knuth". Honestly I gave pretty reasonable questions that were similar to the types of things I would do in my work (with some modifications to work as an interview question). And still the majority of people didn't do great. It's even worse at the "screen" stage, where I've had people that, e.g. didn't know what "function" means or couldn't write a loop to find the max number in an array.
Bondholders get the $$ first when a company goes under. And typically businesses don't completely disappear and lose all their assets. They usually have a slow decay then get acquired by someone else who takes over the debt.
In any case these factors will presumably lead to an interest rate premium for bondholders. It's just a question of whether you want to take the risk or not.
I do think it's odd that the FTC is going so heavy on one company. Shouldn't we have laws that apply broadly to the industry? It's not as if Meta is the only social media company anymore (is it even the most popular?)
> Pause on the launch of new products, services: The company would be prohibited from releasing new or modified products, services, or features without written confirmation from the assessor that its privacy program is in full compliance with the order’s requirements and presents no material gaps or weaknesses.
Do we really want the government to have to approve every new product a privacy company releases? That seems quite extreme and typically only applies to very specific industries with broad safety concerns (like medical care).
Current SCOTUS makeup is very pro free speech. However it's really hard to say for this case since it doesn't seem like Americans are really that burdened if they have to use, say, YouTube instead of TikTok.
TikTok itself doesn't produce any content. They host the content of others. So shutting down TikTok cannot infringe on TikTok's own first amendment rights. Compare to last year when the FCC's ban on chinese telecom companies was upheld.
So the only question is does it infringe the rights of the users posting content. This is a better argument. One thing on the government's side is that content-neutral bans are a lot easier to justify as long as they serve a significant government interest and provide alternative avenues for expression. The latter seems easy to argue since TikTok has many alternatives (YouTube, Instagram, and others). And I think they could probably convince judges that national security is compelling enough.
Note that the comparison to Trump's actions in 2020 isn't really valid since that wasn't done via law. It seems like the author just threw in Trump's name because he is unpopular?
From what I've heard attrition is very low right now. Which makes sense... why leave when you might get paid four months of salary if you are laid off instead.