When apple changed to lightning it was in the middle of the accessory hype where there were loads of accessories using the 30-pin. People where outraged because they could no longer use any of their accessories. Apple then commited to lightning for 10 years in order to sooth the public image. This was 11 years ago, and they didn’t switch last year to cut costs, but I’d argue it only overstayed it’s welcome for a year.
It was almost 4 years before the first usb c phone was released and that was only in China. No clue where you’re getting 2 years from. And even then Apple helped design the USB C standard.
I had one game in I think Civ V where Dido was just being an asshole to me the entire game, and in the sort of mid-late game she did her big move and invaded. I lost maybe 3 cities, then the defenses started to hold and I pushed back. Took my cities back and then just kept going, and absolutely refused all offers on peace (which were becoming increasingly elaborate.) Even when every other civilization started denouncing me as a warmonger even though I didn’t start it, I kept going. Eventually got her down to two cities. I took the one closest to me, renamed it to Fart City, then offered it back to her in exchange for peace which she gladly took.
Then I waited a few turns until it had cooled off, then declared war on her again. This time I took the city on the other side, leaving her with Fart City and about three workable tiles, completely surrounded within my territory. I stayed at war for the entire rest of the game, with troops completely surrounding her. Every time she built an improvement I instantly pillaged it, ever worker was instantly captured, every troop immediately blasted. She just got to live out the next thousand years or so in squalor in Fart City, while every other country denounced me for my crimes lol.
Dido was starting shit for all of history, then kills your people to take their resources. Too bad there isn’t the possibility for a civilization to overthrow their leader. You could have supported a revolutionary movement in her civilization so she would have been guillotined a la mode, then become allies with the new government.
At least it sounds like the other civilizations learned not to fuck with you.
There was on game in Civ 5 where I was spawned as Nobunaga in a nice continent with Montezuma. He caused problems to me until he declared war on me with his renaissance army while I was in Industrial age. Conquered all his cities except the capital and then declared peace. Did a lot of trade routes to Russia and England and with enough gold, bribed England to attack Monty. They captured his pathetic capital. Then I warred with England and captured the city back and revived Monty. Russia won the game through science but I taught Montezuma to not fuck with me.
Meanwhile I want us to work on things that are actually personally fulfilling, instead of earning imaginary money for rich assholes to abuse and hold us down with.
If we were working on what we wanted to do, we’d do it as much as we had energy for. That might be once a week, or it might be every waking hour for 6+ months.
The important bit is “days per week” would be 0+. This is what I want for everyone. It’s why I fully support a UBI, along with socialized healthcare and housing.
You want to spend your time doing nothing but raise your kids? Great, do that super well and don’t worry about the “lost” income. You want to make art? Awesome, do it! You want to engineer a bridge, teach, be a doctor or nurse, grow crops, etc? We need that too, and in addition to your base UBI money you get extra for doing a socially needed job. Good for you!
If you like what you hear, you should look into, and support, politicians who support a UBI (universal basic income) in your region!
But bear in mind that a UBI alone isn’t enough; because capitalism encourages greed, we also (regardless where you live) need socialized housing so landlords don’t just eat the full entitlement, and socialized healthcare so people can keep themselves healthy to do the things they want without going bankrupt. Those are by far the biggest spends for most people, and if we could get that in check, a UBI is a great equalizer, and could pull millions of households out of the worst of poverty.
It’s good for disabled people, so they can be much more independent, it’s good for retired people, so they can retire without worry, it’s good for parents, so they don’t have to choose between supporting the family and actually raising the family, and it’s good for society as a whole because those “nonproductives” now have economy stimulation power by not being flat broke.
If I didn't have to work, I'd probably end up doing the same job I am now but for schools and local government, rather than for large companies. And I'd also be doing things like building and maintaining community gardens, or teaching anyone who wanted to learn what I know, because then there's more people to help me out and I can relax more.
Personally I’d love to help with community gardening initiatives… sort of.
I’m presently working on an indoor root crop system for urban dwellers, just as a hobby. I don’t actually want to profit off it, I want to develop it to help fix the world, but with the present system, I feel the absolute need to monetize it in some way, which is anathema to how I want to exist and it being low cost and accessible for low income households.
Capitalism hinders progress. It’s really sad and demoralizing.
I’m going to release it for free anyway when it’s done - when it’s a reproducible system and not just an interdependent idea - but it’s never going to benefit me, and that sucks because I’m poor lol
You could release the ideas and techniques but patent it to protect from commercial theft. then sell licensing and expertise while making it easy for lower income people to utilize what you make.
That’s something I’ve thought about, as well as making a companion cooking series (recipes to use what you grow sort of thing), or hands-on/ongoing troubleshooting…
I just barely have the energy to make and test the thing in the first place, after years of planning out how to optimize it and testing lesser variations (which means if I get the last iteration balanced, it will work for anyone with minimal input. I’m super irresponsible. I do have a few more responsible testers lined up, however. For reproducibility.) and I definitely don’t know where to go for help that won’t screw me over for a fee I can’t afford 😅
You don’t want to collect trash off the streets? Well, looks like our city will look like shit forever. You don’t want to work as a cashier? Well, looks like our supermarkets will remain closed.
Most jobs are not fulfilling and would never be done voluntarily (at a relevant scale).
The UBI (universal basic income) is intended to meet basic needs, it’s not intended to give a lavish life. If you want more than the basic, you need to work a bit for it.
What it would do for work is to make it optional and more flexible. If your employer isn’t paying you enough to be there, you don’t keep working there. You find a different job. You have the security to quit with nothing lined up. Because nobody has to be there to meet their basic needs, employers have to actively make you want to work there for your extra wants to be met.
That means maybe a store clerk gets a discount on goods in addition to their flexible hours per week.
But ultimately a shift to UBI plus socialized housing and socialized healthcare would lead to a shift in society such that we don’t have the bullshit jobs we do now, and a lot more people would probably be happy to do menial society supporting labor as part of a rotation. Idk, frankly I’ve met people, they don’t mind doing grunt work if it’s appreciated and valued.
If my bills were paid and I had to cashier or collect trash 2 days a week to keep society running (and for some extra spending, like for electronics or games or whatever) I would totally do so. It’s not my full time occupation, which makes it infinitely more desirable.
I can’t really capture an entire economic shift in one digestible comment, but a lot of stuff would necessarily change to accommodate this shift. It’s not a business as usual proposal, so you can’t really apply a business as usual mindset to it.
While I think UBI is a good direction for us to head towards as a society, I have a feeling megacorps would just skyjack the prices of pretty much everything to negate the benefits of UBI (look what happened during the pandemic). We would need some kind of legislated regulatory shift as well that would inhibit price gouging just for because there is more money floating through the economy.
You are probably correct in that racketeering would need to be reigned in, but I don’t really think it’s all that impactful over housing and medical.
We already have what you are using as a worst case, it’s just fully legal and uncontrolled. Rent and medical has been inflating for years for no reason. Because the proletariat can handle it (even though we can’t).
Literally because they aren’t treated with respect in our society, while actively keeping our society functional. Cashier’s are Literally in the process of becoming obsolete in our Modern Society. Wake up! Ding dong! Ding Dong!
Fwiw, I’d love to see cashiering eliminated as a position. We have the tech for it already and honestly only keep humans doing it because we need to keep human labor up (capitalism and “reasons”).
There is no reason whatever to keep that position huminated (as opposed to automated), other than driving up employment. And maybe reducing loss through theft, but if there was less meaningless junk everywhere that would be less of an issue overall… plus people wouldn’t be destitute and could pay for it…
We voluntarily do plenty of distasteful tasks, even without any expectation of a non-economic reward. Lemmy moderation is a salient example.
I’ve got other gripes about UBI, and especially about pinning the hopes of a “purely voluntary (but with asterisks)” workforce onto it… but there really is no telling how we would behave if we tried this experiment.
For every study suggesting that Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” is actually a legit thing (even though Hardin was later exposed as an academic fraud who fabricated his theory because of his white supremacist, eugenicist political agenda), there is another study suggesting that we’re actually historically really, really good at managing commons and that perhaps capitalist framing only gets in the way of the cooperation that we’re predisposed toward.
There’s also not any evidence that we settled into our modern capitalist model due to any sort of societal optimization. All of the theoretical reasons why an economic abstraction may be an advantage over a social gift economy don’t really hold up when you look at historical or contemporaneous accounts of actual gift economies. It seems like the only reason we ended up with this model is because it was advantageous for several waves of wealthy rulers who needed ways to translate their violence-based power into legal power or else lose it.
You don’t want to collect trash off the streets? Well, looks like our city will look like shit forever. You don’t want to work as a cashier? Well, looks like our supermarkets will remain closed.
Every time I read this I just hear loud licking sounds. bootlicker
How about paying those people enough that they want to do those jobs?
In many countries, your basic needs are already fully met no matter which job you do.
E.g. in Germany working minimum wage full time gets you way more money than you need.
Minimum wage full time gets you about 2160€ before tax, which will be about 1650€ after tax (and healthcare etc.).
You can easily pay for your basic needs for less than half of that (even when living alone). The rest you can use to buy upgrades, like a new phone etc.
Minimum wage workers in Germany are already wealthy.
But of course, if you’d ask the average German minimum wage worker, they’d claim to be poor.
They claim to be poor because they can not afford modern luxury. They can not afford to pay for expensive brands, they can not afford to eat in expensive restaurants.
They can not afford to be lavish.
Now imagine if every person in Germany could afford twice as much (something that happens multiple times in a lifetime). Would they stop considering themselves poor? No, their entitlement would simply rise accordingly (as we’ve seen again and again throughout the thousands of years of history).
You can not pay people “enough”. People do not care about their individual wealth. They only care about how wealthy they are compared to others.
The majority of people can never be wealthy, because people only consider themselves wealthy if they have someone (or rather many) to look down upon.
You’re demanding an exact boundary while offering nothing in return but an avalanche of vague imprecise claims with no sources cited.
You can not pay people “enough”. People do not care about their individual wealth. They only care about how wealthy they are compared to others.
The majority of people can never be wealthy, because people only consider themselves wealthy if they have someone (or rather many) to look down upon.
Speak for yourself and only yourself. You don’t speak for me. You don’t speak for the people I call friends. You only speak for a narrow “keeping up with the Joneses” sort of American asshole that is actually getting a bit rarer as boomers slowly die off and not enough young people echo that ideology to sustain it.
Save your “all human beings are exactly the same way, therefore capitalism good” naturalistic bullshit claims for reddit-logo and for that matter save your bootlicking apologia for there, too.
Lastly, what are you arguing for? That it’s cool and good to underpay people that do the most unpleasant (and in many cases, most important for society’s ongoing functioning) tasks because of some biotruthy sophistry about how no amount of pay would be enough therefore underpaying them is good? Or extending your argument to its conclusion, if it’s just “how much compared to everyone else” that matters, you are seriously arguing for everyone to get paid less if they aren’t in some exclusive very special secret club of very special elite people (that you probably include yourself into)? Fuck that.
As cited above, the GDP per capita in Germany doubles every few years.
How many times more do you think it has to be doubled until you and your friends deem themselves wealthy.
They never will. Because you, too, define wealth as being able to look down on others (in your social environment).
A large part of the world’s population would consider themselves extremely wealthy if they had even near the income of a German worker earning minimum wage.
On a global scale, German minimum wage workers are very, very wealthy.
The only reason you’d ever consider German minimum wage to be too little is if you’re used to extreme excess, if you’ve lived in a hyper wealthy environment all your life.
You’re so used to extreme wealth, that you deem slightly less extreme wealth to be poverty. You consider it to be poverty, because the people surrounding you are even wealthier. You consider it poverty, because you can not look down on them.
Oh, so you’re one of those smug (ethno)nationaist chuds that think that people in the United States that are one missed paycheck from homelessness, or are already homeless and are in physical decline from exposure and preventable illness are actually spoiled because some numbers on a screen say that that homeless person is actually a recipient of extreme wealth due to location while completely ignoring cost of living expenses because it doesn’t fit the numbers you want.
You’re way too far up your own ass to argue with, and you probably have goosestepping lessons to keep up with for the big plans you and yours have for your glorious fatherland in the future.
Most jobs are not fulfilling and would never be done voluntarily (at a relevant scale).
What is your glorious German superiority proposal for those “not fulfilling” jobs, then? Slavery? The US prison system might excite and thrill you if you look into it. scared-fash
What is your glorious German superiority proposal for those “not fulfilling” jobs, then?
The current system.
ignoring cost of living expenses
I don’t have detailed knowledge of the US economy, which is why I keep using Germany as an example.
In Germany you are never one paycheck away from being homeless unless you’re actively wasting money. As said before, 800€ is more than enough to live alone in an apartment. And you make more than double that (in the worst case).
I don’t have detailed knowledge of the US economy, which is why I keep using Germany as an example.
You only have arrogant presumptions about rich the United States ostensibly is, while ignoring that a tiny percentage of the population actually benefits from those riches and the rest experience staggeringly higher cost of living, especially for things like medical care and housing.
In Germany you are never one paycheck away from being homeless unless you’re actively wasting money. As said before, 800€ is more than enough to live alone in an apartment. And you make more than double that (in the worst case).
Again, you’ve admitted your ignorance about the United States there, and the situation of hundreds of millions of people that live in it that are not functionally wealthy in a material way that they actually experience.
And once again, “the current system” is failing those people and no amount of being smugly content with a status quo that is unsustainably bad for people in the United States that scrub toilets, drive ambulances, or provide CNA services to hospital patients does those people any good.
Again, you’ve admitted your ignorance about the United States there, and the situation of hundreds of millions of people that live in it that are not functionally wealthy in a material way that they actually experience.
I am indeed ignorant about the United States. This may surprise you, but I don’t know about every economy around the world. I’m sure you don’t either.
But I do know that a capitalist system can work well without UBI, as proven by the German system.
(Yes, I will keep using the German system as an example.)
“the current system” is failing those people and no amount of being smug about how status quo poverty for people that scrub toilets and pick fruit is somehow a good thing will change that.
As long as we haven’t fully automated it, people will have to scrub toilets and pick fruits in any econonic system. What you wish for is for them to not be poor. Which they aren’t (in Germany).
ignoring that a tiny percentage of the population actually benefits from those riches and the rest experience staggeringly higher cost of living
Are you claiming that people’s actual wealth has not gone up in the past 50 years? That we don’t eat better regulated food, that we don’t own very advanced devices, that we don’t eat food shipped from across the world?
Normal people’s wealth does keep growing. That is a very obvious fact. You may claim that it doesn’t grow fast enough, but it does grow.
No shit. And you were making vast and bold status quo warrior declarations upon a foundation of that ignorance.
This may surprise you
It only surprises me that you came here and made those claims with that much ignorance to begin with. I made no such claims about Germany, but you certainly did about the United States, again, in support of your enthusiasm for the status quo.
As long as we haven’t fully automated it, people will have to scrub toilets and pick fruits in any econonic system. What you wish for is for them to not be poor. Which they aren’t (in Germany).
And according to your smug status quo advocacy, those people getting any more pay or being treated with any more dignity is bad because… Germany is so glorious to you. Which somehow justifies the status quo worldwide.
Are you claiming that people’s actual wealth has not gone up in the past 50 years?
It is far from evenly distributed and is steeply tilted by the staggering increase of wealth in the billionaire class.
If you bent down and talked to someone sleeping in the street (as the rate of homelessness now rises here), told them how their wealth has gone up, actually, with a probably smug look on your face, you shouldn’t be surprised if you get spat on.
I made no such claims about Germany, but you certainly did about the United States
Can you please quote where I did that? Because I never made any global claim. I always referred either to “many countries” or “Germany”, neither of which explicitly include the USA.
And according to your smug status quo advocacy, those people getting any more pay or being treated with any more dignity is bad
They can get paid more. But they’re already dignified and already well paid (in Germany).
If you bent down and talked to someone sleeping in the street (as the rate of homelessness now rises here)
Where is “here”? Some country which didn’t manage to implement capitalism successfully? I never claimed that calitalism does work everywhere, I claimed that can work everywhere.
Maybe US capitalism is shit. But it can work well without UBI (as proven by, you guessed it, Germany).
Smug status quo liberals like you phrase their bad faith questions like that all the time, but just in case you will surprise me, here.
In Germany you are never one paycheck away from being homeless unless you’re actively wasting money. As said before, 800€ is more than enough to live alone in an apartment. And you make more than double that (in the worst case).
As cited above, the GDP per capita in Germany doubles every few years.
How many times more do you think it has to be doubled until you and your friends deem themselves wealthy.
They never will. Because you, too, define wealth as being able to look down on others (in your social environment).
A large part of the world’s population would consider themselves extremely wealthy if they had even near the income of a German worker earning minimum wage.
On a global scale, German minimum wage workers are very, very wealthy.
The only reason you’d ever consider German minimum wage to be too little is if you’re used to extreme excess, if you’ve lived in a hyper wealthy environment all your life.
You’re so used to extreme wealth, that you deem slightly less extreme wealth to be poverty. You consider it to be poverty, because the people surrounding you are even wealthier. You consider it poverty, because you can not look down on them.
You are obnoxiously ignorant of living situations outside of your own to the point that you prescribe maintaining the status quo to people you don’t know that don’t live anywhere near you do. You made the extraordinary claims, not me.
Maybe US capitalism is shit. But it can work well without UBI (as proven by, you guessed it, Germany).
Again, your ignorance is showing, paired once again with your arrogance. It is not working for most other people and no amount of being smug about you getting yours changes that for most other people.
Further, what about the status quo makes you so happy about people being paid less than a sustainable living to scrub toilets and pick fruit? Why is that so necessary to you? Well, besides you having a disgustingly privileged point of view where people toiling for almost nothing is cool and good because GLORIOUS GERMANY.
Can you please quote where I [made a claim about the USA]?
Smug status quo liberals like you phrase their bad faith questions like that all the time, but just in case you will surprise me, here.
[lots of quotes]
I’m sorry, I don’t see where I explicitly mentioned the USA in those quotes.
Was it “A large part of the world’s population”? (Note that it doesn’t say “the entire world’s population”.)
You are obnoxiously ignorant of living situations outside of your own to the point that you prescribe maintaining the status quo to people you don’t know that don’t live anywhere near you do. You made the extraordinary claims, not me.
okay
Again, your ignorance is showing, paired once again with your arrogance.
sure
It is not working for most other people
Again, I never claimed that capitalism is well implemented everywhere. I only claimed that
I assumed bad faith questioning and goalpost moving, and that’s exactly what I got from you because your arguments have nothing to stand on. You wanted to narrow in on some pedantic Reddit-tier bullshit because your failure to understand that GDP has massive blindspots as an actual measure of how most people live in any given country.
Again, your arrogance and ignorance (by your own admission) about how other nations are going, all to justify unlivable wages for people doing essential but underpaid and underappreciated jobs, is quite frankly monstrous and you’ve provided nothing to justify that status quo but your own arrogance and your own ignorance.
You got yours. Congratulations. The status quo isn’t supported well by smug arrogant people like you stanning for it with nothing to offer but statements of “I got mine.” That’s a good thing, because the status quo is shit and is failing far more people in the world right now than it is benefiting.
goalpost moving […] is exactly what I got from you
I’m not sure whether you believe to be arguing without moving goalposts. Do you want me to tell you about some goalposts you moved? (E.g. asking me to apply my statements regarding Germany to all countries, including the USA.)
all to justify unlivable wages
Oh, the people in Germany (whom I was talking about all along) are living just fine.
the status quo is shit and failing far more people in the world right now than it is benefiting
Perhaps. Good thing I never claimed the status quo to be successful in all countries.
You’re dodging the consequences of your own claims so quickly that all I see is a blur of denial.
You started from a position of arrogance and ignorance. You cited GDP as if billionaires and their ever larger share of the total GDP take don’t matter and that poverty in other countries than your own simply can not exist in a way you understand because that shiny GDP number says otherwise.
You said that both increasing wages and any sort of UBI are wrong. You gave no real justification except “you got yours.”
Arguing with you further is like wrestling a pig in shit.
Enjoy rolling in the shit and oinking in it. Win a last word game if you must, because there is nothing to your argument but “you got yours” and blatant ignorance about the rest of the world.
Technology is clinically known to suppress emotions. It has a correlation to a-motivation. So banning technology use in school is actually good. It’s just that most schools think that will fix all the motivation problems, which it will not.
Does it though? That kind of sounds like buzzword science to me. Especially since I can’t find anything that actually says that it is technology being at fault here.
Yes, it absolutely does. We have a finite limit of attention / emotional energy / etc and most of the stuff on your phone is tailor made to try and monopolize it.
Watch The Social Dilemma on netflix, it will give a better and more compelling argument than an online article explaining it, however, I worked at facebook and I’ve seen the internal market research around boosting “engagement”. They’re all playing a zero sum game and know that they’re trying to maximize your engagement at the expense of everything else that might possibly be engaging (including other apps, games, media content, and incidentally useful stuff like work and school).
A recent survey of adolescents without symptoms of ADHD at the start of the study indicated a significant association between more frequent use of digital media and symptoms of ADHD after 24 months of follow-up.Citation [ jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/…/2687861 ]
Executive Functioning: Executive function refers to a set of high-order cognitive abilities that enable humans to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully. The reason for the link between technology use and attention problems is uncertain, but might be attributed to repetitive attentional shifts and multitasking, which can impair executive functioning. [pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26999354/]
In a study of children aged 8 to 12 years, more screen and less reading time were associated with decreased brain connectivity between regions controlling word recognition and both language and cognitive con[ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29215151/ ] Such connections are considered important for reading comprehension and suggest a negative impact of screen time on the developing brain. Structurally, increased screen time relates to decreased integrity of white-matter pathways necessary for reading and language. [ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31682712/ ]
“Correlations between symptoms of addictive technology use and mental disorder symptoms were all positive and significant, including the weak interrelationship between the two addictive technological behaviors.”
“Although no studies showing causal relationships yet exist, problematic Internet use is associated with having greater difficulties in emotion regulation…” [ europepmc.org/article/med/25041745 ]
there are too many and I don’t have more time atm.
A recent survey of adolescents without symptoms of ADHD at the start of the study indicated a significant association between more frequent use of digital media and symptoms of ADHD after 24 months of follow-up.Citation [ jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/…/2687861 ]
Executive Functioning: Executive function refers to a set of high-order cognitive abilities that enable humans to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully. The reason for the link between technology use and attention problems is uncertain, but might be attributed to repetitive attentional shifts and multitasking, which can impair executive functioning. [pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26999354/]
In a study of children aged 8 to 12 years, more screen and less reading time were associated with decreased brain connectivity between regions controlling word recognition and both language and cognitive con[ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29215151/ ] Such connections are considered important for reading comprehension and suggest a negative impact of screen time on the developing brain. Structurally, increased screen time relates to decreased integrity of white-matter pathways necessary for reading and language. [ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31682712/ ]
“Correlations between symptoms of addictive technology use and mental disorder symptoms were all positive and significant, including the weak interrelationship between the two addictive technological behaviors.”
“Although no studies showing causal relationships yet exist, problematic Internet use is associated with having greater difficulties in emotion regulation…” [ europepmc.org/article/med/25041745 ]
there are too many and I don’t have more time atm.
Except the banks payed it back. The US government profited about $15bn from the bailouts. Potentially a loss if considering inflation. Also banks were forced to take the bailouts to prevent a bank run. You would almost certainly have taken your money out of CITI bank if they were the only ones receiving a bailout from the government. Which would have cost the government more in the long term.
Large banks like JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs had already paid back the government bailout by July 2009.
We are considering inflation. Then add on risk adjustment, and we can see it for the corporate charity it is. If it was a good investment, then we wouldn’t have been forced to make it. Yes there was enough private capital to cover these loans.
Them being “forced” to take loans is irrelevant because they’re the ones buying policy, not us. One interest rate for them, another higher interest rate for them to charge you.
Why? If I am required to pay a certain amount of money back each month with interest and I have absolutely no way to wipe that debt away other than repaying it, why am I also getting taxed on that money as income? I am required to have a degree to earn money and I cannot pay for a degree without federal loans so why am I getting charged twice for them?
The idea is that you were “given” that money when you got the loan and you weren’t taxed on the value of the loan when it was provided to yoy, so you can’t deduct it when you pay it back.
In at least some parts of Canada, for example, there are tuition credits which you can claim against income taxes later on.
I am required to have a degree to earn money
Not really true. You are required to have a degree to have a particular job of your choice. It’s up to your government to decide if having that choice is something it wants to encourage, with income tax breaks equivalent to the cost of tuition (the loan principle) or if that is a luxury that is taxed like any other luxury.
The interest on loans is not a tax. It’s the expense of accessing capital immediatly. Again, it’s up to your government to decide if accessing capital immediatly is a necessity eligible for tax breaks, or a luxury that comes out of your after tax income.
Also don’t forget consumption tax which may or may not apply (usually not on loan interest).
You can buy a house in Canada on a low skill job that doesn’t require a degree and doesn’t destroy your body? You certainly can’t in the US. Your statement is also incorrect in the US because of a flood of entry level folks with degrees. This has been a problem here since the 2008 crash. Jobs that didn’t require a degree ten years still don’t but won’t hire without one because of the hiring pool.
You’re totally right on paper. The real world is not theory though.
When you pay principal, you are gaining that much value back as equity. It makes more sense if you think of a loan for something physical like a mortgage. If you pay $100 of principal on your mortgage, that money turns into equity that you own in your home so that when you sell you get that much more (in a simplified way).
You aren’t losing the $100 you pay in principal, it’s just transferring into an asset rather than liquid cash. With a student loan, that asset is your degree/education. It’s a little different than a mortgage because the bank can’t repossess your degree, but the underlying logic is the same.
You could also think of it like paying for your degree on a payment plan. You wouldn’t expect to get a tax writeoff on your couch just because IKEA let you pay in monthly installments.
I live in Spain, and in spite of paying a shitton of money in taxes, I can’t fathom changing that for a system like the US. Man, my SO is in dialysis, the amount of money we would need to spend for something like this in the US it would put us on the street right away.
I know, it’s rough. I remember watching StarCraft 2 back in the day, and one of my favorites was “WhiteRa”, and they always made comments about him being ancient at 32…
Yes! Special tactics… I also remember twitch chat (I think it might have still been justin.tv then) would laugh about how many tea breaks he took per day.
We tried every other form of debate on the topic. If people are engaging in a discourse in bad faith in hopes that they will benefit from the publicity, your best option is to ignore them.
Unless the nazi wears red, then let him spew his holocaust denial because “western propaganda imperialism butwhatabout they deserved it it never happened.”
Yeah I’m getting to that age where it feels like everything from this era just blends into the 2000s and late 90s for me. Probably because I’m a 96 baby lol
I’ve always liked IPAs, and I’m probably going to continue to, but the style is kinda beat. They’re at a point now where they’re just doing the most nitpicky variations on the theme. Dry-hopped rather than wet? That’s a juicy IPA. Lactose back sweetening? Milkshake IPA. Ran out of finings and can’t clarify your beer? It’s not ruined, it’s haaaaaazy. Strong enough to black you out after three? Double IPA. After two? Imperial IPA. No stronger than the American light lagers you used to steal from your dad? Session IPA.
The point of IPAs was that they were full of huge, bold flavor in a market that was saturated by beers that were competing with one another to taste the most like a vodka soda and have the lowest calories (and therefore ABV) possible. They were the revolutionary vanguard of beer that tasted like beer. But now I can get all sorts of wild shit. Fruit sours, coffee/chocolate stouts, real pilseners that actually taste like beer, proper copper lagers, all sorts of amazing stuff. The era of the IPA being the only “real beer” has ended. I wish someone would tell the breweries.
No, I mean I wish someone would tell the breweries that they can pare it back to only seven different IPAs per season and instead invest more in different styles. I can get some wild shit because I’m fortunate to have one really good store about 20 minutes away but between being in PA with weird laws about who can sell booze, how strong it can be and how much they can sell and the relative glut of local brewers that are still in 2010 we could stand some work. Even moreso because the summer is winding down and I can already hear the thunderous sound of the Imperial Pumpkin Ales rolling in. “It’s 14% ABV! Put a caramel cinnamon rim on the glass and it might even taste like something!”
Man, all those “wild things” you mention have existed for ages here in Belgium. IPAs are pretty much the new kid on the block. Weird how different our cultures are.
I love a real ass IPA, but like anything, after a while you get bored of the same old same old. Dabbled with seltzers for a hot minute, but I’m back to wine/cider mostly now. IPAs being so heavy feel more like Trappistes to me now: only during the winter.
Fair go. I really only brew ciders and seltzers nowadays but that’s mostly because they don’t have a cook step (and therefore don’t have a wort chilling step that’s a giant pain in the ass and a wonderful place for infection to creep in)
A lot of that stuff existed alongside IPAs like Dogfish Head for years. The explosion of IPAs in recent years coincides with the rise of Tree House Brewing, who may not have invented the New England IPA, but certainly mainstreamed it. At their second brewery, you’d see license plates from all over the country and you had to either show up 3 hours before opening or wait 3 hours in line. It was insanity. They were selling out every day at $15-20 a can back in 2014. They made stupid money, and their expansions since then will tell you all you need to know.
Anyway, within a year, the copycats started appearing, and that’s when the IPA craze really took off.
It can make following a story so hard because people with gendered pronouns hang so much of the story on she said that to him and when the pronouns switch mid story even though she is still talking about the same person I am instantly like wow this doesn’t even make sense. How is he now saying stuff to her, I thought he blocked her or something similar.
That is kinda weird. There certainly are different sings for “she”/“她“ and “he”/”他” in chinese characters. Though, both signs are pronounced exactly the same.
Chinese characters are their own language. You don’t read them so much as you translate them. That’s why Chinese folk can mostly read written Japanese even though Japanese and Mandarin have almost nothing in common.
This is 100% untrue unless you're talking about menus and such. Japanese uses three other writing systems (counting Roman letters) two of which Chinese speakers are not going to know without study. A handful of the hiragana/katakana still look and are pronounced like the old Japanese kanji they came from, but those also were not Mandarin but from other dialects of middle Chinese (I want to say there was a lot of Wu, but I can't recall for certain). EDIT: and even knowing how to read them is going to be useless in the most important case, which is that they conjugate verbs, and do other very important lifting in the language.
Japanese, on the other hand, can read a lot of the kanji, but aren't going to necessarily get a lot out of anything because Chinese grammar is so radically different to Japanese.
Both will have trouble with characters whose meaning for the same character differs in the other language, and potential difficulty with characters invented in one of the countries independently.
Source: live in Japan, married to Japanese, a number of Chinese friends (mostly Taiwan and HK, but a few mainland)
Edit: sample sentence: 猫がネズミに食べされました。Here it is with the kanji for ネズミ instead, which would give Chinese readers a better chance: 猫が鼠に食べされました。However, I don't think a Chinese speaker with no internet/dictionary and no previous knowledge of Japanese is going to get the meaning correct. The second one with the kanji will fair better, but I still suspect it would be wrong.
I agree with you about not being able to get hiragana and katakana, but it was very manageable to travel through Japan with no dictionary . I also carried a notebook where I was writing Chinese and showed it to random Japanese people and they almost always got the meaning. Obviously your first example is a bit mean, because you’d know what a Chinese speaker would interpret it like. But this sentence won’t exist in the “wild”. The second example is a bit easier to get. A lot of assumptions are coming with this “on the fly” translation. For example I played dark souls in Japanese but I don’t speak it. It was manageable to play when there were enough Kanji, because of how items were shaped etc. A lot of assumptions but it kinda works
Yeah, I can read Chinese restaurant menus OK (usually; some names are less literal and I have no idea). From what I've seen on the net, I could deal with some navigation.
My sentences are a bit mean by design, but even a lot of signs use grammar like that.
For anyone wondering, the sentence might look like "the cat ate the mouse" but it's actually the opposite (cat was eaten by mouse). More polite japanese grammar indirects things a lot and it can be really rough. For example, official documents, credit card applications, and a lot of signs. I've been in Japan most of a decade and it's still tough
Interesting! Thanks for the insight. I also find it interesting that Japanese sometimes use their own Version of Kanji, neither traditional nor simplified Chinese. Like 楽 vs 樂 vs 乐。 Oftentimes the Kanji use feels “archaic” in contrast to Chinese to me. Not sure how to describe it. Maybe words like 駅? I can’t think of a good example from the top of my head but maybe you know what I mean?
Japanese went through its own kanji simplification over time, codified in the postwar period.
Also, some characters were invented at different times, including when Japan was mostly in its sakoku period (no foreigners in/out except at the trading post in Dejima).
I’m basing that on my Chinese coworker, who travels to Japan on business but doesn’t speak the language. Of course she can’t read hiragana or katakana, but she says she gets the gist of the Kanji.
I doubt she could read a novel, but she’s not illiterate when she’s there like I am.
(There’s little point to throwing Kanji at me, BTW - when I lived there I was young and more interested in looking for a good time than learning the language, unfortunately.)
I also do this from time to time, but I'm Hungarian. Our politicians however will "save" us from the decaying western liberalism, which is more important than schools, heath care, etc.
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