alt.hn

5/11/2026 at 8:19:38 PM

590k buyers paid $59M for Trump's gold phone, but not one has shipped

 https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/590-000-buyers-paid-59-223500998.html

by surprisetalk

5/11/2026 at 9:00:14 PM

Recent and related comment:

"I can’t prove it, but it feels like the world recently decided that spamming/scamming is acceptable..."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48094961

by xnx

5/11/2026 at 11:06:38 PM

It seems to me that it feels that the world, or at least the US, decided that far far worse things are acceptable too.

Not easy to be a parent and explain to kids that no, this is not how the world should be run. How do we expect them to have any confidence in the institutions and the rule of law ?

by TheAlchemist

5/11/2026 at 11:29:49 PM

> How do we expect them to have any confidence in the institutions and the rule of law ?

They shouldn't. The reality is that the rich and powerful have never been particularly beholden to the law.

For a while, there was a lot of energy spent maintaining the illusion that we had rule of law, and I don't doubt there are some who believed it was an ideal to strive for that we'd get closer and closer to over time, but Trump and his administration stopped pretending.

by atmavatar

5/12/2026 at 12:20:26 AM

I taught my kids the rule of law and what's right and wrong or desirable are totally separate concepts. The law itself only tells you what's proscribed and potential penalties, all of which have to be analyzed in the light of how or who will actually bother to enforce it and the incentives of the various parties enforcing it.

Unfortunately the police come to public schools and try to do their brainwashing very early before you have the opportunity to even address it. So unless you address this issue at a very young age they likely won't question it again until near college age.

by mothballed

5/12/2026 at 12:41:11 AM

> I taught my kids the rule of law and what's right and wrong or desirable are totally separate concepts.

You should be careful to distinguish "rule of law" from the law itself.

Rule of law is merely the principle that laws should be applied equally to all. It shouldn't matter if you're rich or poor, man or woman, a member of the majority or minority race, famous or obscure, politically well-connected or not, etc. This is an inherently just principle, but it's also extremely difficult (impossible?) to live up to 100%.

On the other hand, you're correct that individual laws can be just or unjust, moral or immoral. We have plenty of historical examples of unjust laws (e.g., a recent and hopefully unquestionable example in living memory is segregation), and it's our duty to oppose them through voting, contacting representatives, protests, and perhaps even civil disobedience.

by atmavatar

5/12/2026 at 5:27:50 PM

> it's our duty to oppose them through voting, contacting representatives, protests, and perhaps even civil disobedience

If none of those work, there can come a time when it will be appropriate to take similar actions to those taken to secure US independence from Britain.

by LocalH

5/12/2026 at 12:46:45 AM

> Rule of law is merely the principle that laws should be applied equally to all.

Which sounds good at first, but...

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread." ― Anatole France

by leereeves

5/12/2026 at 5:24:44 AM

"To my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law" -- Oscar Benavides

You have to both apply the law equally to all and apply equitable criminal penalties for breaking the law, but the latter is pretty useless without the former. In that way, you could say that honoring the rule of law is necessary but not sufficient for truly equal treatment under the law.

by atmavatar

5/11/2026 at 9:21:28 PM

100% a demonstration that who we elect as a leader absolutely does set the tone for the rest of the country. I have lived through two elections of Donald Trump and both times the shift in what kinds of behavior were socially acceptable was palpable within hours. Like a lot of people suddenly decided they could come out and be their true self, it just turned out that it was gleefully ugly and hateful.

by rootusrootus

5/12/2026 at 12:24:19 AM

This is better though, no (as ugly as it is)? At least we now know what this Country actually is and who are its citizens… vs. leaving in some “we are better than this…” fantasy

by bdangubic

5/12/2026 at 2:37:18 AM

Trump is a throwback to the 19th century when US politicians had to appeal to illiterate yahoos who often couldn't even speak English.

Compulsory education was supposed to usher in a new age but obviously that didn't last.

by TitaRusell

5/11/2026 at 9:00:56 PM

The terms of what that $100 went to were updated last month...

https://smartphones.gadgethacks.com/news/trump-mobile-t1-sma...

    The terms, updated April 6, state that the deposit is not a binding sales contract. It provides only a "conditional opportunity" to purchase the phone if Trump Mobile eventually chooses to sell it, with all discretion resting with the company. The company "does not guarantee that a Device will be produced or made available for purchase," The Verge and IBTimes UK reported.
The IBTimes UK article is https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/trump-mobile-preorder-terms-179546...

So yea... a $100 voucher for a conditional opportunity to purchase one if Trump Mobile ever decides to sell one.

by shagie

5/11/2026 at 9:22:18 PM

So just a scam.

by dolmen

5/11/2026 at 8:56:12 PM

Was it crowdsourced? WA state has a crowdfunding law on the books, and the state AG has gone after people that are very late to deliver.

by ortusdux

5/12/2026 at 5:08:23 AM

Does that require the corporation doing the crowdfunding to be based in Washington, or no?

Anyway it was never framed as raising money a la crowd sourcing, no more than the Tesla Roadster has been, you are promised nothing for your money besides a reservation to buy the product when it eventually exists.

by jazzyjackson

5/11/2026 at 9:10:46 PM

The Verge has an on-going series Where's the Trump Phone? [1] with updates every week. They even managed to get an interview with one of the execs a few months back.

1. https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/843498/trump-phone

by ecliptik

5/12/2026 at 12:33:16 AM

Chief shyster strikes again

by Havoc

5/11/2026 at 8:44:51 PM

It used to be that the thought process of receiving a portion of sale money before delivering any product allowed the company to pay suppliers and keep afloat as they drove towards the finish line of delivery.

Now it seems the grifting-meta is to make promises around a product with no plans on delivering it, take in pre-order money, and then just park it in an investment account to grow during a bull market. By the time the grift comes due, your "investment" will have grown to a magnitude where even if you are forced to pay it back, you will have made a tidy profit.

by SimianSci

5/12/2026 at 6:43:16 PM

Yes a lot of scams basically are elaborate ways to get interest-free loans. The only way to discourage these types of scams is to require the claw-back to include high interest. Which probably feels very punitive, so we don't do it. Generally we award the damages and then that's it. But like... damages 2 years ago don't equal damages now, that's not how money works. I guess our courts don't know that.

by array_key_first

5/11/2026 at 9:23:40 PM

It used to be fraud was the problem of the perpetrator, and not the victim.

Welcome to the grift economy.

by cyanydeez

5/11/2026 at 8:52:33 PM

> Now it seems the grifting-meta is to make promises around a product with no plans on delivering it, take in pre-order money, and then just park it in an investment account to grow during a bull market. By the time the grift comes due, your "investment" will have grown to a magnitude where even if you are forced to pay it back, you will have made a tidy profit.

There's never been a time where that would work. A damages theory can't make you cough up your stock market gains, but unjust enrichment will do it.

Put into an example, it's always been black-letter law that if I misappropriate $1,000 from you, put it on red 27, and turn it into $36,000, I owe you all $36,000. If I'm less lucky than that and turn it into $50, I owe you all $1,000.

by thaumasiotes

5/11/2026 at 9:00:10 PM

> it's always been black-letter law that if I misappropriate $1,000 from you, put it on red 27, and turn it into $36,000, I owe you all $36,000.

Only if you "stole", and only if you get caught. If you asked $1,000 for an "investment" with the intention of putting it on red 27, then win, you can repay your investors and they'd be none the wiser.

by gruez

5/12/2026 at 12:21:27 AM

>> I owe you all $36,000

> Only if you "stole", and only if you get caught

Are you sure? I'd have guessed that the debt is created when they generate the $36 000. Getting caught would just make it easier for the victim to collect.

by tzs

5/11/2026 at 8:58:32 PM

In practice how often does that actually happen to well-heeled, well-connected fraudsters?

by GolfPopper

5/12/2026 at 1:07:35 AM

Some people have argued that Sam Bankman Fried just had unlucky timing. If his Anthropic investment had an opportunity to mature everyone would have been happy.

I don’t subscribe, but I have seen the argument a few times.

by 0cf8612b2e1e

5/11/2026 at 9:35:56 PM

> been black-letter law

Only civil, though, right? IIRC criminal law seeks restitution, which would be the original $1000. Civil law is where unjust enrichment would come into play, to my understanding.

by rootusrootus

5/11/2026 at 8:59:40 PM

> Put into an example, it's always been black-letter law that if I misappropriate $1,000 from you, put it on red 27, and turn it into $36,000, I owe you all $36,000. If I'm less lucky than that and turn it into $50, I owe you all $1,000.

Instead of ending this sentence in a period, I would have ended it:

, if I get caught.

by irishcoffee

5/11/2026 at 9:01:16 PM

[flagged]

by helterskelter

5/11/2026 at 9:10:18 PM

>Michael Jackson did this with concert tickets, sort of. You had to pay hundreds of dollars for the chance to buy a ticket to his mega tour, to be refunded if you didn't manage to get one. People send their money in and have to wait like three months to find out if they managed to get one. Meanwhile, he's making money by the dump truck on the interest from all this.

This doesn't pass the sniff test. If we assume that "hundreds of dollars" is $500, and the risk free rate is 5%, and they hold it for 3 months, then you get $6.25 per victim. Hardly a huge sum. If you factor in credit card processing fees, they might even be losing money on it.

by gruez

5/11/2026 at 11:36:35 PM

I referenced the article and the math seems fine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Tour_(The_Jacksons)#Ti...

Tour attendance: 2.5 million Only 1 in 10 purchases were honored, so purchase for 25 million tickets were attempted. $750 million in Money market at 7% for 6 to 8 weeks.

So, 6 to 8 million in interest depending on the weeks (6 to 8) in money market.

by SapporoChris

5/11/2026 at 10:01:52 PM

He's estimated to have made $10-12m in the 80's.

I had some of the details wrong btw, you had to mail in $120 for the chance at 4 tickets, and he only held it for 6-8 weeks. Part of what was so shitty though was that very many of his fans couldn't really afford what was about a months rent but scrapped it together anyways. Maybe it was a poor financial decision on their part, but he took advantage of those people for his own profit, when he didn't even really need the money.

Edit: link from sibling comment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Tour_(The_Jacksons)#Ti...

by helterskelter

5/11/2026 at 10:11:48 PM

>Maybe it was a poor financial decision on their part, but he took advantage of those people for his own profit, when he didn't even really need the money.

Your own article contradicts your narrative that Jackson was somehow doing it for evil/greed reasons:

1. The scheme seems to have been cooked up by the promoters, with Jackson himself being against it

2. The "he filtered by zip code" allegation was entirely unsubstantiated, and seemed to be a side effect of making the tickets expensive.

3. Jackson donated his earnings to charity, so the "... for his own profit" claim was also questionable.

by gruez

5/11/2026 at 11:01:04 PM

1. "Oh no don't make me more money. Okay if you insist..."

2. Kansas City was 30% black but his audience at that show was almost entirely white. I have a hard time believing none of them could afford a ticket.

3. Yeah which he announced after the public letter from his 11 year-old fan which had a ton of press coveeage saying how it wasn't fair

by helterskelter

5/12/2026 at 1:21:35 PM

Back then interest rates were double digit

by wolvoleo

5/11/2026 at 10:30:41 PM

> Then when the ticket winners were selected, he filtered by zip code so he had an almost entirely white audience

How did that work in the 80s? Did he spend days and weeks poring through (paper) census data and correlating it with ZIP codes? Did he use VisiCalc on an Apple ][ or Lotus 1-2-3 on an IBM PC?

Whatever his other misdeeds, I never got a racist vibe off MJ.

by PolygonSheep

5/11/2026 at 9:05:52 PM

Why did he want an all-white audience? You lost me there.

by StilesCrisis

5/11/2026 at 9:09:10 PM

[flagged]

by helterskelter

5/11/2026 at 9:54:06 PM

The guy had vitiligo, I don't think this was a choice.

by StilesCrisis

5/11/2026 at 10:35:11 PM

Yeah I dunno, the nose job makes me think it was about more than evening some skin tone. That guy was weird.

by helterskelter

5/11/2026 at 11:37:01 PM

According to the terms it looks like you can cancel your deposit and get a full refund anytime, even after you’re offered to buy the phone.

by bathtub365

5/12/2026 at 2:50:37 AM

Master scammer, yet his people still trust him...maybe they aspire to be scammers as well.

by pacomerh

5/11/2026 at 8:22:02 PM

It's amazing what Trump can continue to get away with and still have many followers.

by msie

5/11/2026 at 9:12:29 PM

True but when you see what megachurches have been getting away with for years, it's less surprising.

by zimpenfish

5/11/2026 at 8:33:54 PM

Yes, IIRC this is not the first time this happened. I think it happened with his watch too.

Remember the saying: "Fool me once shame ..."

by jmclnx

5/11/2026 at 8:42:25 PM

It's normal for grifters to preselect their demographic.

At this point the "faithful" have fully signed up for the cult. While rest of world looks on in horror, the scamming and extraction will only intensify.

by TheOtherHobbes

5/12/2026 at 12:56:00 PM

If you ever talk to them, they rationalize all the scams and self dealing by claiming that "both sides are corrupt," and they like the guy because he's just better at the grift.

by JeremyNT

5/11/2026 at 9:07:41 PM

Yet another phenomenon that scholars will be studying years from now.

For better or worse, it will be interesting to see to what extent his faithful are willing to transfer their loyalty to whoever comes next. I am not seeing any signs of that happening yet. I mostly expect that Trump will maintain an iron grip on loyalty up until the day he drops dead, and then there will be a free-for-all fight for his followers. I do not think Trump can [or will] bless a successor and transfer the reigns.

by rootusrootus

5/11/2026 at 8:48:13 PM

I mean, Elon Musk can get away with selling FSD capability and not delivering it.

by amelius

5/11/2026 at 9:04:33 PM

While I agree in principle, at least Tesla has delivered something pretty impressive. FSD is not really something I am personally interested in, but I cannot deny that it has gotten quite good. Better than any other system being offered, certainly. Waymo is better, but you cannot buy your own Waymo.

by rootusrootus

5/11/2026 at 8:38:34 PM

Why is this getting downvoted?

by nubg

5/11/2026 at 8:42:37 PM

The many followers.

by cwillu

5/11/2026 at 10:54:10 PM

Or bots, but yea the many followers is also likely.

If you check news.ycombinator.com/active regularly instead of the main feed you’ll see that anything critical of the king or Musk is regularly flagged to oblivion quite quickly.

It’s one of the failure modes of how self moderation works in this site.

by lovich

5/12/2026 at 6:30:42 PM

The fact that this is hardly news shows you the degree to which corruption is rampant in this administration. Too many examples to keep up with.

by insane_dreamer

5/11/2026 at 9:22:01 PM

> Don Hendrickson and Eric Thomas — two of the three executives that run Trump Mobile

Does anyone know who the third person is? Surely it's not Trump himself? I'm guessing Trump just sold the ability to use his likeness and name?

by rationalist

5/12/2026 at 3:22:39 AM

Eric Trump I believe.

Edit: still technically a Trump phone?

by snypher

5/11/2026 at 8:43:13 PM

what are they going to do, sue him?

by micromacrofoot

5/11/2026 at 8:59:40 PM

More concerned about the BILLION dollars he stole from nuclear missile maintenance for QatarForceOne, which he fully intends to keep

And the $10 BILLION he is stealing from the IRS by ordering DOJ to settle his lawsuit

Oh and a million dollars PER DAY he steals for each golf weekend

However with his dramatic health decline he is golfing less and less now, so savings?

https://DidTrumpGolfToday.com

by ck2

5/11/2026 at 8:59:11 PM

Wow. That's a lot buyers. You likely know some of them.

by actionfromafar

5/11/2026 at 9:09:56 PM

I don't know any. Maybe I just have a better social circle than most. Or maybe this is a fake number. There are not as many people preordering this clearly fake device, instead this is just another way to launder money.

by dudus

5/12/2026 at 8:44:12 AM

> I just have a better social circle

This is very subjective. You can have your own opinions, but its really important to remember everybody has a right to their own too.

by alt227

5/12/2026 at 6:48:26 PM

Getting scammed is objectively bad. If you're surrounded with people who are routinely getting scammed by Donald Trump of all people, that's bad. That doesn't mean they're bad people but... something is going on there for sure.

by array_key_first

5/12/2026 at 4:12:22 PM

I didn’t see anything in his post saying people shouldn’t have the right to associate with trash.

We also all have the right to judge people for their associations. You’re right to an action or belief doesn’t make it inherently good, or even equal to other actions and beliefs.

by lovich

5/12/2026 at 12:42:14 PM

Perhaps you have no relatives.

by JKCalhoun

5/11/2026 at 10:05:21 PM

It’s a little over 0.2% of the current US adult population.

That’s not a lot of people in general.

It is a lot of people for the king to have scammed.

by lovich

5/11/2026 at 8:37:37 PM

“ The device would work with Trump Mobile's service plan. For $47.45 per month, Trump Mobile's "47 Plan" (2), which operates on the T-Mobile network, claims to be "better than the rest," offering 100% U.S.-based support; extensive 5G coverage; unlimited talk, text and data; telehealth services; roadside assistance, and international calling to over 230 countries and territories.”

If you fell for that you deserve to lose your money.

by Cheyana

5/11/2026 at 8:52:22 PM

Thats more expensive that my top tier tmobile plan which is $120 for 3 lines.

by adrr

5/11/2026 at 9:19:37 PM

A lot of people are still on ancient plans like $80/5GB since they don't know they can change providers and still keep their number. Or they're old and avoid changing any aspect of their lives. The mobile companies are fine with "grandfathering" these customers.

by jerlam

5/12/2026 at 2:02:24 AM

Mobile companies will never, however, grandfather plans which have better value. They will happily grandfather more expensive plans, hell they won't even tell you.

by HDBaseT

5/11/2026 at 9:46:39 PM

This is actually cheaper than what my parents currently pay Verizon every month--somehow they're spending $161 every month on two lines, with no special services, and they're on ancient phones (an iPhone SE and an iPhone X). They know they need to switch, but have no idea how to pick a replacement service. (I'm going to sort it out in the next week or two.)

by StilesCrisis

5/11/2026 at 8:44:37 PM

Unlimited with an *.

by gonesilent

5/11/2026 at 8:41:43 PM

Only in a libertarian society.

Education wasn't enforced to a big part of our society and it shows.

by AntiUSAbah

5/11/2026 at 8:59:42 PM

There's nothing libertarian about MAGA. It's all about using the immense power of government to hurt the right people, and seizing every opportunity to grow and expand that power with that same goal in mind.

by CamperBob2

5/11/2026 at 9:03:10 PM

Thats not what i meant. Only in a society who no one cares about the others and thinks its always the fault of their own, this is normal. Otherwise we would have guard rails to protect us.

by AntiUSAbah

5/11/2026 at 9:18:43 PM

> There's nothing libertarian about MAGA

Nor conservative, for that matter, aside from some nostalgic dream of social conservatism, I suppose. My MAGA family members love to talk about conservatism as some noble thing, often describing it in neat, simple, pragmatic terms, and then are dumbfounded when confronted with the notion that they don't act according to those principles at all. They still see themselves as conservative, oddly enough.

by rootusrootus

5/11/2026 at 9:08:34 PM

There's also nothing particularly libertarian about the failures of American education. Like, what, government isn't involved?

by AnimalMuppet

5/11/2026 at 8:58:44 PM

grifter presidents grifts fans out of money

by yapyap

5/11/2026 at 8:38:11 PM

[dead]

by nine_zeros

5/12/2026 at 3:34:45 AM

[dead]

by strathmeyer

5/11/2026 at 8:36:57 PM

[flagged]

by AmVess

5/11/2026 at 8:30:13 PM

This is always common. Do a huge preorder and then delay. Given how high interest rates are, this is profitable.

by paulpauper

5/11/2026 at 8:40:53 PM

They will just rag pull it.

Its not like anyone cares over the USA right? $TRUMP? $MELANIE? TACO?

by AntiUSAbah

5/11/2026 at 8:42:03 PM

I like how you conjugated that in the future tense, as if the scam wasn't a done deal.

by cwillu

5/11/2026 at 8:40:50 PM

Not so common, any other president pulling that shit pretty much anywhere in the world would instantly lose all credibility and most likely would have to resign. But then again this dude shits himself on live TV and shilled cans of beans from the oval office

by toasty228

5/11/2026 at 8:48:43 PM

Bitcoin miners did preorders and then wait a year before filling them, with the riggs being delivered with signs of usage and already obsolete.

by paulpauper

5/11/2026 at 8:56:59 PM

>But then again this dude shits himself on live TV [...]

source?

by gruez

5/11/2026 at 8:49:07 PM

[flagged]

by iamkrazy

5/11/2026 at 8:59:45 PM

Notably, Biden would have gotten the 25th treatment instantly, with not a hint of loyalty from Democratic voters.

Trump has a level of loyalty from Republican voters that is unprecedented in modern US history. Why is that?

by rootusrootus

5/12/2026 at 12:13:37 AM

> Why is that?

Precisely why he left the Democratic party, because their voters are not gullible and religious fanatics.

by mandeepj

5/11/2026 at 8:33:18 PM

Common where?

by checker659

5/11/2026 at 8:34:57 PM

Tesla roadster 2, since 2017

by MYEUHD

5/11/2026 at 8:43:41 PM

FSD,2019 still waiting with HW3.

by gonesilent

5/11/2026 at 8:46:28 PM

Broadband/fiber internet accessible to all residents of the USA, anyone? Always love reading about how the telcos took that tax money, hemmed and hawed, and ended up never fully delivering what they agreed to.

by BowBun

5/11/2026 at 9:03:38 PM

Whenever countries raise the age for social security eligibility, they usually impact those that have already been paying into it, up to a point.

by Scoundreller

5/11/2026 at 8:50:35 PM

Good.

by verytrivial

5/11/2026 at 8:30:54 PM

It feels analogous to giving alms to a religious institution at the end of a prayer service - you don't get anything material for it in return, but maybe for the faithful, that's not the point?

by sameers

5/11/2026 at 8:53:00 PM

Tithing is not fraud. People give money to support the church, pay the pastor, and so that the church can use it to care for the needy in the community. Good churches do, in fact, use the money for all of the above.

by Meekro

5/11/2026 at 8:59:13 PM

The above argument is exploring the framing that the Trump phone is not fraud because it is more like tithing. As long as Trump puts it to good use then it's all good.

by threatofrain

5/11/2026 at 8:56:10 PM

There's another article somewhere indicating how Maga is furious because their money is lost. Someone commented on the article something like - "I'm MAGA and I'm not mad at all".

Which is perfectly in line with your comment.

by david422

5/11/2026 at 8:47:48 PM

This is exactly it, I see it in my family members. They are willing to sacrifice so much money and, well, everything to the "cause." It's a cult, and it's deranged.

These sorts of scams go on continually in email lists, and vulnerable people just hand over their hard-earned money fist over fist.

Pointing out what's going on makes the family member hate whoever points out the con, rather than the con man. If anything, it strengthens the love of the conman and accelerates the grift.

by epistasis

5/11/2026 at 8:49:37 PM

What's the cause exactly? Make America a white evangelical "paradise"?

by antonvs

5/11/2026 at 9:13:44 PM

I think it really is just the simpler explanation, they have decided they hate anybody left of them, and defeating them is the cause which much be won at all costs.

I have plenty of these folks in my family. Perfectly nice people otherwise. But they have this huge conception of the evil liberals and all the bad things they must do. They really do think liberals are commies, for example. Like actually believe that. Never mind that you could probably fit all the communists in the US in a single stadium, but whatever. When I try to engage in a conversation about actual issues, they refuse to engage, just devolving right back into plain old identity politics.

Makes me kind of sad in a way. We could be having much more interesting debates about how to solve the real world problems we face, but instead the argument is about whether or not the problems even exist.

by rootusrootus

5/11/2026 at 9:10:28 PM

It's an appeal to restore the country to some form of nostalgic view of it.

https://www.npr.org/2016/06/07/481137357/the-fractured-repub...

    The fact that Americans are politically divided is self-evident from recent elections. But just how we are divided and why it's proved so hard to get past our differences are questions that admit to many answers. And here's an interesting one from the conservative political theorist Yuval Levin. He says, American liberals and conservatives are both inspired by nostalgia from mid-20th-century America, and they are mired in hopeless efforts to go back rather than focus on the future.

    ...

    The striking thing about the baby boomer's cultural dominance over our country for so long is that we view our own past through their eyes. Our idea of the '50s is this kind of simplistic, childish notion of simple families and everything is possible. We see the '60s as a teenager - idealistic, rebellious. In the '70s, we're somewhat maturing, becoming a little cynical. By the '80s we're settled down. In the '90s everything is great. And now, in this century, it seems like we might be over the hill as a country.
People think/believe/hope that returning the country to the situation that they perceived that the boomers had when they were growing up without care (because the boomers hadn't yet reached adulthood) would bring back that lifestyle today. ... without having all of the other parts of the social contract between government and the populace in place. People still think that boomers had it best (and maybe they did) and want that lifestyle too.

by shagie

5/11/2026 at 11:52:01 PM

From what I can see, as a boomer myself, is that we were best at voting ourselves more and more benefits, lower and lower taxes, and mortgaging all the value out of everything that had been built up over the previous generations. And the generations to follow are being left an empty purse.

by amanaplanacanal

5/12/2026 at 2:17:56 AM

I don't entirely place the blame on boomers for the raise of 1950s nostalgia and the corresponding misalignment of economic goals.

Someone (not a baby boomer) working in a traditional blue collar job today looks back at the portrayal of life in a rerun of a 1970s sitcom - Happy Days (or spin off, or even an "average" person sitcom from the 80s... Roseanne, Married with children) on late night cable and wonders what it would take to have that lifestyle today? Well, taxes are taking too large of a chunk of the family budget so people gravitate to candidates that say they'll cut taxes.

Though, they're missing out on the 1950s tax structure... where people making $200,000 (1950s dollars - about $2M in 2020s dollars) were getting taxed at 91%. Corporate tax rate was much higher too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_State...

The plank of "we're going to raise taxes" doesn't get as many nostalgic votes for people hoping to return to the lifestyle of the 1950s.

There's a whole lot of other factors too.

A right leaning 30 year old today is voting to try to have what they perceived how it worked in the 1950s from shallow portrayals of the period.

by shagie

5/11/2026 at 8:45:11 PM

Tithing often involves the implicit or explicit promise of rewards from God, both spiritual and material.

by catigula

5/11/2026 at 9:42:28 PM

Certainly that does happen, and you'd be right to say it's fraud. At the vast majority of churches, it's well understood that the church staff need to eat and pay for the mortgage and upkeep on the facility. Trying to frame tithes as "often grift" is extremely cynical.

by StilesCrisis

5/11/2026 at 8:53:38 PM

That's how this is framed as well.

by thinkingtoilet

5/11/2026 at 9:11:21 PM

Assuming this was not a scam from the beginning. I just think they got more orders than they expected. This seems to be a reskinned HTC U24 Pro (I think earlier Images and specs were advertising another phone). Also seems to have changed from "produced in the USA" to "Designed with American values in mind" & "With American teams helping guide design and quality" according to their website. At best this is bait and switch (assuming they deliver anything) but I can understand people calling this a scam.

by sanid

5/11/2026 at 9:14:59 PM

Bait and switch is a scam.

by hughw

5/11/2026 at 9:25:31 PM

I don't disagree. As far I understand this is 100 dollar deposit up until now. So the customer would have to actually go through the order process where they would see the updated website with new specs etc. so it's not fully a switch yet. I am from the EU and no a lawyer so I would not know the legality of it all.

by sanid

5/11/2026 at 10:57:17 PM

You recognize it’s a bait and switch scam but don’t want to call it a scam, and then you hedge with claiming you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Why don’t you say you’re opinion directly instead of trying to put it out there and having a fallback to defend yourself when you are properly called out.

by lovich