And then, when this predictably puts all the small time, local food joints out of business, the people that vote for these clowns will be complaining that big corporations control everything.
Can you guys even see 10 inches in front of your own nose?
OK I fat fingered 20 instead of 60. That’s even better for my argument. To get the good pay you have to work for a huge multinational. Who else has 60 locations in the US alone?
What are you smoking? You know there’s a labor market right? And companies compete for workers? Imagine you run a taco shack and every one of your employees is waiting for the minute there’s an opening across the street at taco bell, or the opening of the new burger king down the street. What do you do? High turnover and employee resentment or raise wages? If raising wages means going out of business you’re stuck.
And then small minded people like you will be in a thread in 2 years quoting statistics showing how big corporations are putting smaller ones out of business and taking over all the industries, even going so far as to blame corrupt politicians and corporate capture, conveniently forgetting that you cheered on the very corporate capture legislation that led to it.
idk personally I think if you can’t pay a living wage you don’t have a business model, you have a loophole of exploitive policy. Like, you’re saying all this and I’m hearing “but without slaves to pick my cotton I’ll go out of business!” good
This is the fast food lobby’s main talking point. Personally, I don’t disagree. Decide a living wage, make that the bare minimum for everyone. The talking point however is that “my poor wittle small business can’t afford to pay people enough money to live please daddy let me continue the exploitation.”
Indeed - not saying I agree, but this is the main talking point from the fast food companies. It’s not fair they have to pay more when (sometimes) slightly smaller businesses do not.
The raise takes effect on April 1 and applies to workers at restaurants that have at least 60 locations nationwide — with an exception for restaurants that make and sell their own bread, like Panera Bread.
Where did you get 20? And does your point about minimum locations make sense with also bringing up local joints who are explicitly exempt given said minimum?
Edit: I see, are you saying that small businesses won’t be able to compete with this new wage minimum? Valid point there.
My bad, 60. That’s even better. To get the good pay you have to work for a big corporation.
Yeah, the “exempt” ones will be in a situation where they’ll have to raise pay above what they can afford, thus going out of business, or have high turnover and high employee resentment. The end result of all of this is of course more big multinational control over the fast food industry.
Yeah the obvious solution to stop big businesses is removing all regulations. Once everyone is all getting paid below minimum wage, wages will magically go up and they’ll be better off.
I never said anything about removing all regulations.
Just, think about the downstream impact of what you’re doing. This one’s fucking econ 101 level obvious, there’s a meme about shit this obvious involving a bicycle and a stick. There’s got to be a better, more well thought out idea. Here’s one off the top of my head: a 0.1% additional business tax for every location above 10 in the state that goes towards housing assistance for food service workers. That’s a win win; either you get more business diversity in the state or you get all the workers at all the fast food businesses a pay bump.
If you think this isn’t corporate capture and corrupt business politics you’re nuts. There’s a fucking exemption in the law for panera bread.
I don’t wanna debate the subject or anything but I did want to point out that there ARE other factors that keep employees around besides wage especially at lower skill jobs where there is wide range of ages that could work there. If you’re a good boss to work for in a small business, less money could be worth better work environment.
A lot of people are scared of change. And im sure there are plenty of people don’t really try to achieve more on life than being content.
and also McDonald’s has had competitive pay above minimum wage for a while now. Idk I just don’t think this stuff will be such a pendulum swing as you anticipate because of these things so I wanted to share.
Well, my thoughts on that are 1) if you wouldn’t move for 20 an hour because the environment’s good, is $20 really a living wage? If you can stand $15 then that’s gotta he enough to live, right? 2) if people won’t achieve more than the minimum they need to get by, maybe that’s something we should just let happen, and 3) if companies are raising pay to stay competitive without government action, doesn’t that negate the argument used to institute stuff like this?
All of your arguments in this thread sound like someone who really has already made up their mind how they feel and you just say whatever feels right. Your last point alone is so silly, as if there hasn’t been decades of history proving otherwise. Maybe try focusing on listening for a while instead of trying to be right.
Um… literally all of it? All you have shared are opinions.
You’re not only just stating your opinion but it’s also your opinion of what the consequences might be. Shit that hasn’t happened yet!! And you haven’t even used any source or data or even a reference to a specific time in history where something like this happened that leads you to believe in the consequences you’re insisting will happen, which would at least be something I could point to as true or not. So like, yeah man idk but you really do not be so stubborn about what you think might happen in the future.
I literally don’t care if something is owned by a small or big business. The obsession of small businesses is absolutely stupid. I only care if prices are low and wages are high. If that means only “big businesses” can provide that because of economies of scale, than good for them, companies should be rewarded for doing that.
If “small businesses” want to compete they should provide equity, there’s literally nothing stopping that from happening.
There’s a local barber shop that I go to and in my province the min wage was increased 50% while the prices have climbed 80% since I started going to them. But guess what, there still the best price/service wise so I go to them. The chains cost more than double plus taxes. And a lot of the local neighboirhood goes to them.
The only business that complain about labour laws especially laws like this that put heavier burden on larger companies are poorly run companies.
I see good business treating people good so when things like this comes up it shows me that business people will always push against progress.
If it’s better for customers and workers what’s the problem (from a capitalist perspective)?
Do you want to punish success?
If small businesses become successful and grow do you want to purposefully stop them?
I always ask what is the difference between a small and big business and nobody gives a good answer.
Small business is always used as a shield to attack workers.
Genuinely, if they don’t offer a innovative product, what’s the point of “small business”? What’s the point of a “small business” barber/retail store/grocer/etc. besides better prices?
When does a “small business” become a “big business”? And should we stop that from happening?
It seems to me that “small business” is just entitled people. If those same people became a “big business” they would want to crush their competition (i.e. “small business”) look at Bill Gates/Steve Jobs against IBM.
The only thing that “small business” people want is for them to be the owner of a “big business”. That’s it.
If you actually care about distribution of ownership and wealth. You’d advocate for co-operatives, ESOPs and distributed ownership structures. Otherwise I don’t care.
The issue is that this inevitably leads to monopolization. When a large business is able to keep competitors out of the market, they eventually are able to raise prices without any competition which is drastically worse for consumers. There are many reasons why monopolies have historically been broken by the government and why the government should continue doing so. It’s not for anyone’s best interest other than the shareholders.
I have literally seen a small business expand beyond my city and become regional over a couple decades. And probably will try to be national chains.
From a capitalist perspective. What’s bad about monopolization? For big businesses to be big business they need to have success. Why do you want to break success? Why do you want to pick winners and losers?
I don’t believe in any of that. I prefer distributed ownership and benefits.
If the consumers own their own stores through a consumer cooperative than they can set the prices for themselves. And hence don’t need “competition”. And since the shareholders would be the members (i.e. the consumers), in a consumer cooperative, then that means they’ll benefit. No need to have any billionaire tyrant either local nor from a big box store.
I live in a Central European capital with worse healthcare than the US. (I have lived in both countries and have elderly relatives living under state funded healthcare in both systems.)
First, there’s a big difference between cities in both places. I could believe that if you compare California to Bratislav, but Oklahoma to Vienna would already be a different matter.
And in any case, it depends how much worse it was. In the US, even if it’s “state funded”, you have to pay for it, and quite a lot. Chances are if you went to a private clinic in Central Europe paying that same amount of money you could’ve gotten the same, if not better treatment.
I might as well just say it, I’m mostly comparing Louisville, KY and Los Angeles to Prague, Czech Republic and a midsized city in Poland. I have relatives who travel to the US for treatment because at least in CZ the elder care in hospitals is abusive/negligent.
Edit: To clarify I’ve lived in Kentucky and Czech Republic, but spend a lot of time in Poland and Los Angeles because of family/personal ties.
I mean, I can believe public hospitals in Prague not being top-notch, but flying to America to get treatment seems surreal. Like, that’s a lot of money and I can’t believe for that amount they couldn’t find a private to do it better in CZ or at least in Germany.
I haven’t personally been in America so you’re probably more knowledgeable than me under that aspect, but from all the shit I’ve read online I don’t get why should anyone from Europe go get treatment there instead of a Scandinavian country.
There probably are people that could treat her well in Europe, but I think the issue would be getting her treated in a country she’s not a resident of, and doesn’t have insurance in. She has a condition that the Czech state insurance refuses to treat because of her age. It’s possible other European systems would be the same but I can’t speak to them.
Oh that sucks. Seems like a very specific case so I guess I shouldn’t lump it in with the generic knowledge I have, sorry for talking out of my ass.
I still think a country like the US could manage with universal free healthcare, but I shouldn’t have assumed that every country that has one works just as well, you’re right.
I think the US system is very broken in pricing, but my experience in terms of quality of care and waits is that the US is very good in that regard. That’s why there’s a lot of medical tourism there for more extreme conditions. I’m not defending the terrible pricing structure, but the healthcare system overall is not just bad.
Well, it is one of the most developed countries in the world, it would’ve been weird if it didn’t have a lot of specialized doctors.
Other than the price though, I’ve seen a lot of people complain about long waits and surgeries (even reconstructive ones) not being “approved” by insurance companies. It’s probably skewed since people only talk about the bad experiences they’ve had, but just the fact that they can do that seems crazy to me.
I’ve never heard people complain about US waits to the level of Canada, or much of Europe. But yeah the insurance thing is that they will only cover treatments necessary to health (usually, but some others may be mandatory minimums now).
I can’t find the ones I saw before, but just searching “insurance” here brings results like this or this which are actual horror stories (both the ones in the posts and the ones in the comments).
It seems to me that queue issues are the same everywhere, with the difference that in the US you pay to wait. I’m glad your experience was different and I’m sure not everyone goes through that stuff, but the fact that it happens at all is pretty dystopic to me.
In small towns yes there are problems with waits sometimes of course, in my opinion this is largely due to anti-competitive laws like certificate of need and due to the strictest licensing requirements in the world. Also, urgent care waits usually aren’t bad. As for whether a place is covered by your insurer, yeah that’s pretty annoying, but there is a reason insurers don’t cover certain things from certain providers- the insurer doesn’t want to pay exhortationate fees just like an uninsured patient would have to so negotiate the cost with the providers ahead of time, and if they don’t reach an agreement they can’t pay for it.
I don’t know what the standard is in the US, but to me 80k is definitely not “a small town”. Like, here in Italy we only have 66 cities with more people than that. Someone in an 80k city not finding a gastroenterologist to visit him in three months within 1 and a half hour of driving seems absurd to me.
If having private healthcare causes all these issues with insurance I think it’s really not worth it at this point. I don’t think the quality of the service would decline either since even in free healthcare countries doctors earn a lot and are a coveted job.
No. It’s because states that have huge populations would choose the president with basically zero say from most others. Technically a non representative government.
Horse feathers. There are 535 total EC votes and only 100 of those come from the Senate. The other 435 are come from the House whichis based on population.
The solution to this mess is to upsize the HoR and tilt the ratio back to where it was prior to 1929 when we fucked it up.
Except using the popular vote means that States wouldn't decide who was president like they do now, the people would.
Under the current system if I vote Red in Chicago I just completely wasted my time. Cook County is so blue that I don't have a voice. Get rid of the Electoral College, however, and now my vote worth just as much as everyone elses.
People seem to think that if we moved away from the College that the population of a blue state will 100% vote blue or a red state will only have red votes. It's just not true. The northern half of California or the southern half Illinois votes way different than their counterparts.
The Electoral College is an outdated system designed for a time when the US had relatively low Literacy and the public couldn't be reliably counted on to be informed. There is no excuse for it nowadays.
You solve the ‘problem’ of ‘tyranny of the majority’ by having a strong constitution and good rights and protections for minorities, not by switching to the indisputably worse option of ‘tyranny of the minority’. Because that causes the exact same problem, but for even more people instead.
The version of the tyranny of the majority that he's warning against is already solved in the American system. The ward against it is the Senate. Every state has exactly 2 votes in the Senate and no legislation can be passed and enacted into law without passing a vote in the Senate.
The issue is while a strong constitution is nice, it’s necessary to have at least some people in office who would respect the constitution to be effective, including at least a partially originality supreme court.
Alternatively, more clearly written constitutional laws. It’s wild that you have judges who cannot agree on what an article of the constitution really means, and the language should have been amended years ago.
In the Netherlands, we have a clearly written constitution, but no real ‘supreme court’ in the American sense. And that setup seems to work quite well.
Agreed some should be clarified, but a lot are pretty clear but are denied as unclear for political reasons. One obvious example is the 2nd amendment of the bill of rights. Also, keep in the mind the US constitution is the oldest constitution still in use, so language does evolve somewhat.
Literally every thread you have to argue with me. Are you doing that with everyone or just me?
Aside from that, there’s things federal government can legislate against that the state will absolutely have no say in. I’m more left wing in my politics but guns, despite being a fundamental right seems most fought against by the left and fought for by the right.
I don’t even notice usernames most of the time. Maybe I “have to” argue with you because you say a lot of disputable things. Turn down the paranoia a few notches.
You have an average of a post/comment to Lemmy every 15 minutes over 3 months. You most certainly do not “have to” spend every waking moment of your day on here arguing with people. It’s unhealthy.
I mean since you’re talking about health… by the way, speaking of health, I’m semi-disabled because of it, which is another reason I post so much. So I’m already not healthy.
Not that you give a shit. You’re not actually interested in me beyond telling me how awful I am.
I don’t need a medical degree to know that spending all day long arguing with people online is not healthy, other people with medical degrees have already studied and proven that.
I also don’t need a medical degree to know that your mental health can decline from an unhealthy behavior even if you already have another ailment (or disability even), not sure where you got that from. It’s not like there are only two states of “healthy” and “unhealthy”.
I didn’t say you’re awful, I said you’re engaging in an unhealthy behavior.
Guess it’s good I don’t spend “all day long arguing with people online.” That would be false.
And, again, I am unhealthy. I have trigeminal neuralgia, (aka the suicide disease) and, due to an ulcer, I haven’t had a morsel of food in my stomach for five weeks now. So frankly, the fact that I haven’t thrown myself in front of a bus right now is pretty fucking mentally healthy thank you very much.
Now, any more pop psychiatry or are you done?
By the way, you didn’t have to say I’m awful. I can read between the lines. I guess you think I’m stupid as well as unhealthy.
I don’t think I implied either of those things, but it’s fine, I’ll be done now. I don’t want to be an enabler for you any more than I already have here.
You absolutely implied them. And your being intentionally obtuse about it is pretty fucking transparent. But good. I’m glad you won’t “enable” me any more because I don’t need to deal with people being jerks to me.
What do you mean? They do matter? A democrat doesn’t campaign in California not because it doesn’t matter but because they know most Californians will already vote for them, same with Republicans in Texas
They don’t matter because most states use winner take all for their EC votes. Every additional vote past 50% is absolutely worthless, as is any vote cast in a state where there’s no chance to hit 50%.
With a popular vote system, every vote would still be worth something. It would be worth a politician’s while to campaign in California because even if they’d normally get 60%, as it’s still worth it to drive higher turnout or try to increase that to 65%. It’d be worth going to a hostile state because a vote is a vote. It doesn’t matter where it comes from; they’d all have equal worth.
Every vote past 50% just then wouldn’t matter at a national level. Yes it would increase the total number of votes that voted for the winning candidate, but it would also centralize power more into cities.
Did your teachers perhaps get their college diplomas in the 1870s? Because that predates the first tabulating machines being invented. Add that invention to the telegraph machine (ca 1837), and you’ve got a stew going.
It means the people voting republican already know everything they need to know because of their top secret source on youtube with 13.4 million subscribers.
This just in: It appears that while Laying in State, the deceased senator was seen rising from her coffin and returning to her seat. Sources in her office say this is a sign she has successfully completed her ritual to transform herself into a Lich.
Per congressional bylaws, the only one who can permanently destroy the phylactery is the Sergeant at Arms of the House of Representatives, wielding the Mace of the Republic.
Wait a witness is now being charged as an accomplice almost 30 years later? I thought they had pretty much dropped this case as the cops didn’t want to solve it
I haven’t read the article OP linked but this CBS article I read mentioned that the case was essentially dropped as prosecutors didn’t feel good about it, but after Duane “Keffe D” Davis started doing talk shows and released his book, they felt the case against him got strong enough to prosecute.
Well, the witness in this case is a gang leader and the one who provided the gun to the shooter and I believe probably gave the command to shoot. So I think getting charged for murder is not necessarily unreasonable.
This is what you get when right-wingers hype child trafficking bullshit as culture war. Child trafficking is real and terrible. But it looks nothing like what the internet tells them it is. They see it everywhere because they have distorted ideas about what it is. See The Sound of Freedom
It’s fucking sad. When liberals get shit wrong, it’s embarrassing. You worry about it delegitimizing real situations. You question what led to where you are now. It’s a big deal.
Conservatives just double or triple down. Fuck the real victims. Fuck the falsely accused. Fuck getting better. Fuck shame.
I had mine 14 years ago 100% free all thanks to Plan Parenthood. No pain for me and I was back in action after 5 days. Wife at time had no problem giving me the 20 our so releases I needed to make sure I was clesn of active sperm.
So after doctors said I was clean said goodbye to condoms and never been freeier.
They say you can get easily reverse so see no reason why women should suffer under a horrible surgery and be out of action for 6 to 8 weeks. When it takes 30 minutes and all well in 5 days.
Fyi mine also done here in Oklahoma but Tulsa area. I had to wait only 2 months for a slot.
They told me it be less likely that I could reproduce the longer I had it but I was assured it was easily reversed. Not that matter I am not interested in having any more kids.
Yeah when I got it done, my doctor told me to consider this as permanent procedure even though it is possible to reverse it. They want you to make this decision without the idea that a reversal is quick and easy or even possible
Most women who’ve had a hysterectomy have likely had a severe debilitating medical issue related to the uterus and so removing it probably makes them feel the most free they’ve been in a long time.
I agree, but the sad part is this is being done because abortion is illegal there now. It’s being done out of desperation, not because someone wants it done.
I understand the sentiment, but supporting this is sort of conceding the anti-abortion laws are there to stay and I don’t think we should accept that.
If you want to get a vasectomy, fine. That’s a personal choice. But the reason so many men are signing up for a free vasectomy isn’t because it’s a good financial deal. It’s because we’re losing the fight and we need to start winning it again.
I completely agree about the need to fight for our bodily autonomy. I’m old and postmenopausal even if I hadn’t yeeted the uterus years ago. But I am appalled that my daughters don’t have even the meager protection of Rowe v Wade.
There’s a tiny bit of my soul that is gratified however by the way more men are starting to step up and take on the responsibility of pregnancy prevention.
Here’s a few things to consider, but I’m hardly the person to give an authoritative list.
What are our quality of life targets?
We can support a crapton more people if we all go Amish. We gotta reduce growth to a global lottery system 30 years ago if we want everyone in the world to live like a median American.
This isn’t a one-size-fits-all-age answer, either. People need more resources as they get older, and contribute less work in return. An aging population means more economic stress on the younger population, and less economic output relative to each senior citizen means less access to medical care.
What are our sustainability targets?
Some things are getting bad faster than others, some things are closer to breaking points, etc.
How much do we want to bet on degrowth vs. innovation?
If we assume only tiny incremental improvements for centuries to come, then we’re preparing for something very different than if we’re trying to keep research investment steady or even accelerate progress on things like fusion, carbon removal, microplastics remediation, and power distribution and storage.
What policies are on or off the table?
Some philosophies say that limiting a person’s reproduction is categorically immoral, even if the predictable consequence is that everyone dies. Some TESCREAL dudes say we should use nukes cuz the ends justify the means.
How do we mobilize these policies?
We have lived experience that an aging population isn’t great for getting effective policy in place.
What about the political fallout?
Population change policies certainly won’t be done globally in lockstep, which means in order to stabilize local economies, there will be more immigration for places where the internal population growth is slowing/reversing. That can easily lead to xenophobia, which could destabilize everything. It’s hard to fight global climate change when you’re dealing with local fascism.
etc.
That’s why I can pretty much only reliably say “people who don’t want kids… not being forced to have kids… is an unambiguously good thing” and I can’t extend that to people who do want kids.
I regularly see people calling for massive reductions in population and I don’t think they are as informed about the subject as they think they are. For starters I usually get the feeling that they think degrowth will be painless or relatively painless even when massive. It won’t, even a slight reduction in worker population each generation is massively going to decrease the standard of living, starting with pretty much every luxury service we have. Any innovation in tech? Yeah not gonna happen anymore, there is not enough breathing room in the economy to waste on fancy little toys. In a system set on degrowth any available resource will be exclusively used to maintain the status quo, forget improvements.
Thinking further beyond the immediate consequences there is the long term question of what we want to happen to humanity. If people think we should go extinct then degrowth is a perfectly viable strategy for making that take a bit longer, if we are to potentially survive indefinitely degrowth is not an option. We are consuming more depletable resources than any individual can count and a great many of them have already dropped below a level where we could rediscover them. For example: There is not enough surface ore (coal, iron, copper, etc) in the world anymore to repeat an industrial revolution. If we lose the capacity of mass production that’s it, no second attempt. And it is like that with many resources, Helium is running out in iirc ~100 years, Uranium for reactors in iirc ~80 years, nitrate needed for fertilizers is running low and concrete manufacturers are looking into alternatives to river sand because that is also running dangerously low. Now we can stop growth and extend the usable time we have left with these resources but they will run out eventually. Or alternatively we can stop pretending that stagnation has ever worked for anything (no not even nature works with stagnation, a forest with only old trees dies together with its entire animal population and is eventually replaced by a new forest with young trees) and start working on solution to that problem. If we don’t want to got extinct the only solution is to get off this rock and start mining the planets we don’t have to be careful with. We cannot strip mine earth because it’s the only habitable place we have but we don’t have that problem with any other celestial body.
As for the short term, getting rid of the excessively wealthy would be a good start, it’s not like we lack resources as is, it’s just that 0.1% of the population are hogging 99% of it for themselves. Imo eating the rich will net much better results than doing a china and having less kids (btw anyone check on how their industry is doing, cuz last I checked their government is panicking a bit about the side effects the decline in workforce brings with it)
Well a lot of social safety nets require on a continually growing work force, of course they could be removed but that will never happen. Immigration is also a good solution but it’s unclear if in many places that will ever be expanded. But furthermore, there is no reason to stop people having kids in most situations.
Exactly, burning. If we do away with the burning, trading fossil fuels for environmentally friendly alternatives, we can reduce or eliminate greenhouse gases, the biggest contributor to climate change.
This is such a short sighted and selfish thing to say.
I had a vasectomy, for many of the reasons stated here (the most important one being so my wife didn’t have to put her own body through any more trauma).
But I had 3 beautiful, healthy and perfect kids first
So that’s how we tell if people are having a good time? Whether or not they kill them selves!? Wtf. I’ve not had a good time but my brain is wired to not kill itself.
You must know more about it than me. What’s my reason then? I thought it was because of how hard life is and the extreme possibility to suffer but what do I know.
Don’t make your ladies have a more invasive surgery. Just get it done.
word, the differences in their longterm health outcomes are ridiculous with hysterectomy. We still get our testosterone and dangly bits, we just, er, cut the swimmers off at the pass. not having to worry about condoms / bc / etc? priceless.
That is if you can find a doctor who will give a recommendation for one. My partner has endometriosis and has wanted an oblation for a while but nobody will give her the ok cuz she’s in her 30’s and “she could still have kids if she wanted to.”
I thought stuff like that was a meme but she can’t find anyone. The first doctor I met with just wanted me to know a vasectomy was permanent and he gave me some vallium. $200 and 20 minutes was all it took for me and she’s STILL looking to get an oblation :/
Here’s the 2016 study that started things. There are some more recent news articles in Japan from the past couple of years about the project getting funding and going into clinical trials in 2022 or 2023.
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