iNow

This issue applies also at the very courts TheVat referenced as a solid majority of those judges have been installed with brutal swiftness and ruthless efficiency by McConnell et.al, and they are in large part quite ideologically aligned with the right... Trump himself installed 3 (THREE!!!) new justices to the SCOTUS. Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others... and I do find myself in hell, so feel the need to keep going.

New data about how deeply police killings in the US have been undercounted for decades. Source here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01609-3/fulltext Summary: A core message here: “Currently, the same government responsible for this violence is also responsible for reporting on it,” and that's an obvious conflict of interest which results in needless problems like these.

Former Fed chair and current Secretary of the Treasury in Biden’s administration, Janet Yellen, is advocating for exactly that that. It would definitely help

Far right extremism and fascist tendencies are certainly on the rise, and the GOP is gladly helping it along to win power through primary votes. I’m not suggesting the left is perfect, just that democracy is under threat and roughly half the country seems glad to push it over a cliff in the name of freedom.

I feel the same way about this OP, TBH

Hopefully today you can also learn acceptance

That’s a good point. The Fed will be raising rates next year so this will likely change ever so slightly, but I suspect not enough to notice any measurable difference.

Thx

If not, they make release agents for use with epoxy. Suspect it would work here too since epoxy sticks to everything

Not necessarily, but you seem to forget the president cannot unilaterally set policy. We need these leaders writing the laws in congress, not executing them from the oval office. I am also skeptical that it would matter even if such a leader were in place. With ideological bubbles and information ecosystems as they exist today, Jesus or Mohammed themselves would be attacked by trolls and treated as the devil himself by half the population.

Are you unfamiliar with how to use google?

Oh, so for you the swelling was in your foot! That’s weird. 😂

QFT

Meanwhile, in the USA

It feels a bit like we’re getting closer to World War 3, but I suspect we’d actually be fighting it with ourselves… against our neighbors. It’s no longer about national borders and has shifted instead to which version of truth and reality you align with. And it’s clearly not an issue limited to just the US.

My in laws do this every holiday (or did until we began hosting). Shredded carrots and mandarin oranges are common. Not horrible honestly, but my wife’s grandmother does this and also adds marshmallows. Not at all a fan, but where I really draw the line is when they put miracle whip and black walnuts into a bowl of sliced apples (a bit like a Waldorf salad which is also hate). I gag every time I try it, and I’ll eat damned near anything. 😂 Years of experience and massive college parties with my roommates confirms it’s much better done with Everclear (a high ACV grain alcohol with little if any flavor for my friends across ponds).

I tend to agree. Just a few days ago, I shared this thought elsewhere (a thought which you’ve just reminded me of): “I sometimes wonder if the steady decline in religiosity these last several years has also caused folks to seek out other sources of religious / faith based thinking with fantastical impossible to believe stories (like QAnon).”

Well, and also Putin may be the richest man in the world but appears on none of those lists. He also is often likely deserving of the “evil” moniker I previously admonished others for using.

Traits that have been with us since before the times we were living in trees are still present and being supercharged. We naturally listen to those we consider to be "like us." This has helped us survive for millions of years... listen to the parent not to eat that poisonous plant. Listen to the grandpa not to get too close to that lion... listen to the tribal elder to prepare in fall for the coming winter. These tendencies to listen to those trusted group members around us helped us survive. But that was at a time when we were only surrounded by 5-15 people. The closest neighboring tribe was several days walk away. Us / them mattered as that other neighboring tribe likely wanted to harm us, steal our things, and force procreate with our daughters. Today, however, we're exposed to hundreds of millions of people all at once. We self-select into tribes which we consider to be "like us," and the concept of verifiable reality shared by the masses has taken a backseat as compared to the need to align with powerful groups like us and virtue signal to them that we are "pure" and that we "belong" and it's all fed by a very real and very powerful desire (one which has helped us survive for millions of years) to simply not get ostracized from the group around us.

This is a valid point, but tangential from what I intended to suggest. Yes, if we make it easy to steal then more people will steal... It's why we lock our doors at night. It's not like a door lock makes our homes impenetrable, but that little extra difficulty is usually just enough to prevent those who normally wouldn't engage in such behaviors from stepping out of line. However, my point was directed more at the publics response toward the ultra wealthy. All the energy gets spent on calling them evil and creating signs saying things like, "Eat the rich!" etc. Now, we definitely should be doing a better job of taxing them, and I have no problem with signs saying, "Tax the rich!," but my point was ... focus more on fixing policy and less on the "burn them at the stake" and mob rule / torches and pitchforks mentality.

Oh. Oh, good. Back to yachts then. Super.

Depends on what metrics you use to measure ethicality

There are several parallel issues here. One is that wealth acquired by the ultra wealthy tends to get put into tax shelters and nebulous investments so it grows (but remains outside the system), whereas that same money in the hands of the less fortunate goes IMMEDIATELY into the community around them. They spend it on groceries and vehicle repairs and school clothes for kids and paying the electricity bill so it’s not dark in their apartment anymore at night and their kids can read. The providers of those goods and services in that community where this money is being spent ALSO spend the money once received for THEIR groceries and THEIR service needs and on THEIR kids. Dollar for dollar / unit for unit… the money in the hands of the less fortunate does more net good than money in the hands of the already fortunate. Yes, spending from the wealthy also creates jobs and injects money back into the system, but very little relative to money used in “trickle up” stimulation packages. Also, a bit of extra money in the hands of someone who already has a bunch of it doesn’t tend to change their behavior or encourage extra spending. Getting $1,000 tax break when you’re sitting on $50M isn’t going to suddenly result in them finally making a call to a plumber or the purchasing a new dishwasher… but for the person living paycheck to paycheck that money literally changes lives, gets spent and injected back into the system quickly, and results in lasting reductions in poverty and suffering. When you’re living at the margins, every dollar counts. It also costs a lot to be poor. When the washing machine breaks, you can’t afford a new one but you can afford to pump quarters into the machine at the laundromat… but that ends up being more expensive on net. When the car breaks down, you don’t get to work on time and you get fired. The rich, however, have tax protected ways of growing their wealth and can afford tax attorneys to hide it. Paying more tax has more impact on their ego than on their lived experience. The anger at the rich is out of hand, though. We need better policies and enforcement mechanisms, not more hate and vitriol directed at those doing better than us. Sadly, the anger is probably in large part intentionally being amplified by the very people on the receiving end. If they can keep everyone mad and focused on the wrong things, then the status quo remains stable and no progress or change gets made. Like most issues in economics, we make a huge mistake by treating it as a moral failure when at its core it’s a policy failure. Fixing the policy is just super hard because the people with the power to change the laws tend to be the same ones benefiting the most from them… and also because focusing on wonky policy details is hard for a public who’s often just trying to survive through to tomorrow and who’d much prefer throwing stones and being distracted with us/them tribalism. Perhaps this thread could try focusing on wonky policy details instead of distractions like yachts and steel boats… or not.

It’s your hand you want her to hold, eh? Hmm. Ok.

I don’t care. I mostly just stopped reading