Reagan had a profound impact on reshaping the American dream.
What was once a foundation built on the idea of upward mobility for the poor and middle class has undergone a substantial transformation since the 80s. The emergence of an unregulated capitalist model has led to a widening wealth gap, with the affluent growing even wealthier while the middle class gradually fades.
Addressing the impending challenges, such as climate change, technological innovations, and social shifts, necessitates a strategic focus on bolstering the working class and supporting unions. These pillars are vital in fortifying our response to the multifaceted challenges that lie ahead.
And of course my grandma always used to tell me how great he was. Granted, by the time he was president, grandpa was nearing retirement so neither of them really had to deal with his bullshit in the same way most working class Americans had to. She was a sweet lady, but damn were her politics bad XD
Quite a few, but Biden is never going to do that. He's been fairly pro-drug war his entire life. The best we can really hope for from him is pausing the drug war against cannabis. And even that might be stretching things.
His son is a drug addict, he isn’t going to ever do anything that might appear to be in favor of drug use. He’s supported the war on drugs his entire career and isn’t going to stop anytime soon.
I remember when I was younger and the hole in the ozone was a big deal. We did something. Same with then I was a young kid smog was so bad that we had “smog days” (similar to snow days) where we weren’t allowed to play outside, or have recess or lunch outside. CA did something about it. There used to be a chance, but now……it’s hard to see anything under a hopeful lens.
You and I must be a similar age because I remember the hole in the ozone as well. I also remember writing an essay in grade school about pollution levels (when the library was my only resource).
Oh god. Remember microfiche catalogs? Searching for shit on those things was fun. No, not really. Funny enough, the industry I work in, occasionally I run into scans of microfiche slides. They are so bad.
I agree we had our chance. We also had a chance to make everyone’s lives better, and let greed control everything. Well, not we, as in you and me, but the collective we.
I loved microfiche, mostly because my AuDHD brain adores rabbit holes. ;) It was not conducive to efficiency tho.
One thing that has always annoyed me is that the hippie generation (a few years older than I am) are the ones who now lead and control Western nations, and one would not be wrong in thinking they could (and should) have changed things for the better, but instead sold out to THE MAN they fought so hard against. :'(
Yeah…… I always found the irony in the “peace and love” and “summer of love” generation being the ones to truly fuck us over, and being the absolute least loving and friendly people out there.
From what I understand, the only reason we were able to correct the hole in the ozone layer is because the alternative to CFCs (the aerosal propellant or whatever, that was mainly responsible for the hole) was cheaper.
The only way we have (or have ever had) a chance against these large scale problems is when the interests line up with profit-motive. If they don’t, like the past 3+ decades of climate change, we’re fucked.
It wasn’t cheaper to switch it was just forced on everyone.
It’s like aqueous based cleaners/paints. They don’t work nearly as well as the old stuff, but in CA we don’t have any choice. Shit, for some inexplicable reason, CA outlawed mineral spirits. I still don’t understand why. It’s probably one of the dumbest things they could have banned.
The current issue is that the US government has no interest in stopping climate change. They have plenty of financial interest in letting huge businesses do fuck all they want, and in the process fuck over everyone and the environment/planet. Plus they are all so close to one foot in the grave who gives a shit if the world is on fire, they are going to be dead soon anyhow, and fuck everyone else. They got PAID
It wasn’t that it was cheaper. If it was cheaper they would have already been using it and they weren’t. What happened with the CFCs was actually a concerted effort banning them in products across multiple governments. The industries basically just figured their shit out due to nessesity.
Nessesity breeds invention. Convenience just strands the matter at the bottom of the to do list.
My country has started phasing out things like hydrogenated oils in foods due to health concerns and single use plastics. The market is given a hard deadline in advance - adapt or die… and they do.
Next on the chopping block are single use plastic take out containers meaning that infrastructure is being developed right NOW to make reusable, resterilizable and cyclable metal containers because the deadline isn’t going to change. The industry won’t let go of the market of people wanting food delivered… So they will change the culture and the infrastructure and there are just as many jobs to be had. Gas powered cars are on the chopping block for 2035. No new vehicles will be sold so they are making the infrastructure changes now and a lot of consumers are already being influenced by that knowledge.
People forget that capitalism isn’t the answer to everything. The market will always hurt people because if they can scrape a buck out of something that bleeds they will. What stops us from being flooded by inferior products that can harm you, dangerous working conditions that can kill you and exploitative practices that rob you of your time, health and freedom is governments. Collective governments like unions, municipal governments, state governments and federal governments. Instead of using those bodies as tools of control for individual citizen behaviour we should be looking at using them effectively against the forces that decide to market their crap at everyone else’s expense and leave their mess for us to clean up so they can impress their shitty investors by how much misery they can turn into cold dead cash.
That way is far too slow to combat issues that are threatening to our survival. I’m not sure that we have time to wait for the market to “adjust itself” based on changes in demand, especially when those changes aren’t very widespread and there’s a significant amount of people who don’t believe it’s even real and will go out of their way to be more harmful to the environment. It’ll take more than a couple US states banning plastic straws before they no longer become profitable, for example.
The point being that it is a tactic that can be used. The US state governments are bonkers in how much power they individually have. People think it means more freedoms but it really just translates to being twice bound as though you have two warring countries determining what you are individually allowed to do and the ability to change gets held up in endless debates about federal over reach. Your federal government could and should be able to make choices like these.
But they can’t… Because of a deep underlying distrust in Federal systems being baked into the American national identity. That’s why when you hear about a Country actually making culture changes for the environment it’s never the US. The best the US Federal government has done is ban microbeads which are easily replaced with other stuff at no inconvenience to the consumer.
We are too far along to be talking about individual states.
What about kids that prefer to be called by their middle name? Would that need permission to not be called by their first name? What if they go by their middle name, Edward, but prefer to be called Ed? Would they need two permission forms? Lol
I imagine enforcement would be selective, so Thomas can be Tom and Michael can be Mike, but some cis kids will still get caught in it. (Like, I knew a girl whose legal name was Roberta and that was shortened to Bobbie. She wasn’t trans, her nickname was just usually given to boys rather than girls.)
Not a law talking guy, I thought that one of the constantly brought up issues in civil rights cases is selective enforcement of rules. Schools allowed hats but suddenly decided a turban wasn’t allowed for example.
Don’t be fooled. Nature is practicing her own version of drones dropping grenades for when she’s finally had it with our bullshit. Mushrooms, naked snakes, and worst of all, badgers.
People like this family ruin it for all the hard working honest Chinese families that come here to try and improve their lives. This is fuel for racism and cultural distrust. Throw away the key.
In one of the stories I read yesterday, the mom was killed a few years back. The dad was raising her all by himself and now this happens.
You’re a fucken clown if you think this murderer doesn’t deserve capital punishment. He wasn’t in danger. There is no question he did it. And he purposefully did it in front of the dad to see.
Uh what does capital punishment or under solve at all? Statistically it makes murders more common, so if you really believed dislike murder the only reasonable side is against capital punishment.
The amount of abject cruelty that is being leveled at trans children in Florida is fucking horrifying. This is legally enforced humiliation and bullying. This alone would have been more than enough to drive me to suicide when I was a child myself. And they are absolutely aware that this will cause that. Ron plans to orchestrate a genocide in Florida. He’s essentially forced every single person, company, doctor, politician, educator, teacher, any professional human being or group of human beings who values human life out of the state. When he’s done all that will remain are the most openly violent fascists and all the people who are too impoverished to leave the state. Of which many such impoverished disenfranchised people are trans children. How such open fascist power has not been internationally condemned and how he himself has not faced expulsion from any political office and faced serious legal actions from the government of the United States is beyond me. I thought world War 2 and the rise of fascism in Europe was supposed to have taught us something. Evidently not.
I know I did the numbers once and if you just lined up the dead combatants from the USSR side head to toe it would cover a distance from NYC to LA multiple times.
I thought world War 2 and the rise of fascism in Europe was supposed to have taught us something.
They don’t gotta burn the books, they just remove ‘em.
WWII might have been the end, but they’ve slowly been worsening education especially in places like Florida. I think at this point, capitalist social media is also a significant cause of the rise in fascism. When Zuck decides to platform holocaust deniers or twitter decides “free speech [for nazis]” it legitimizes it. It doesn’t take much before this translates into real life. You surround yourself online in your little bubble with all of the other crazies (yay Facebook is bringing people together) long enough and it’s nearly impossible not to translate that into the real world.
History is pretty fuckin’ easy to repeat if you don’t know the history.
youth have been turned into political cannon fodder for generations. we’re creating mass poverty and homelessness on a hockey stick curve yet we have to continue to focus all our attention on garbage engineered to divide the population like this. really cool stuff
Gun nut here: Not a Texan and also not really pissed off about this. I also think it probably won't make much of a difference and home-made firearms have been around for well over 100 years so if someone really wants to make one and doesn't care about regulations, they're just going to make one anyways.
I agree, what I classify as a gun but is someone who needs 30 different rifles and more than one handgun, dont hunt and is afraid they will be attacked by anyone if they don’t have one or more guns on their person at one time, just to clarify.
I’m not anti-gun, I just don’t see a need for so many guns in one household whether legal or not. I honestly don’t think ghost guns and kits should be regulated some how, and serial numbers help obtain this
Ah yes, nobody talks about the daily news of someone killing dozens of people with knives, old tools, and/or cars! We should absolutely not worry about guns while these clearly significantly more dangerous weapons are allowed to proliferate so easily!
No, and I’m not upset. I just think it’s excessive to think you need that many guns for 2-4 people. I saw one gentleman that had an arsenal of 250 guns and 90 handguns in the guise of self defense, for one person. He carried 3 ar-15’s in his car at all times and walked around with 4 handguns 2 on h hi is hip and one on each leg in ankle holsters. His gun belt carried 8 magazines at all times.
If you ask me that’s stupid, if he got into a gunfight with someone he might have enough time to use 2 or 3 shots off one gun. Sorry but that does not put the odds in your favor.
I only have what I need and I’m quite happy. There are a lot of people that are the same way. Besides guns aren’t a need, unless you live off the land and don’t use a store at all, they are mostly a want, based on different reasonings.
Oh don’t get me wrong, very one has wants. And a lot are able to achieve that. I guess what I’m trying to get at is there is such a thing as being too much or excessive
No, and I’m not upset. I just think it’s excessive to think you need that many guns for 2-4 people. I saw one gentleman that had an arsenal of 250 guns and 90 handguns in the guise of self defense, for one person. He carried 3 ar-15’s in his car at all times and walked around with 4 handguns 2 on h hi is hip and one on each leg in ankle holsters. His gun belt carried 8 magazines at all times.
If you ask me that’s stupid, if he got into a gunfight with someone he might have enough time to use 2 or 3 shots off one gun. Sorry but that does not put the odds in your favor.
Man, you’d think after the Great Depression and the recession of the last naughties we’d have figured out that credit is a disease and we should stop participating in it so often.
it’s more a necessary of modern day life, with an economy designed around squeezing every penny out of people, there’s nothing left over for savings, there’s nothing left over for that weird sound your car started making, or even just a moment of happiness from a new TV purchase or a holiday or whatever.
It’s really disingenuous to blame it on the personal responsibility aspect.
That’s fair - I more mean as an establishment, but I guess I do have some victim bias in the back of my mind. I guess we’ve locked into a vicious cycle where it started back out where credit wasn’t bad, so creditors started charging more and the cycle continued until credit is almost necessary, but is a strangle because the snake wasn’t seen until it was already constricting us.
I will blame the consumer culture of the US (and the banking industry and media that promotes it; I can't speak to other countries). They have made always having a balance on one's credit cards the norm. I'm teaching my kids that credit cards are short term loans with usurous interest rates, that you should never borrow more than you can pay back within the month, and that you should never carry a balance. I had to teach a friend in his 30s that you shouldn't carry a balance - he thought he needed one in order to maintain or improve his credit score. I'm sure he didn't make up that misinformation- someone in SM surely promoted that idea. ETA: Fixed a typo that changed the meaning of a sentence.
It’s not the consumers’ fault that between staggeringly high rent, staggeringly low wages, and massive inflation, there isn’t space to save for your car suddenly developing a fault.
As I told the other person, blaming personal responsibility here is silly given the last decade.
I admittedly haven’t looked at the article, but they are likely measuring based of a fixed snapshot in time, which tells you zero about the actual debt.
Example: at any given point in the month I have 5 figures of CC debt, but I always pay every card in full each month (I never carry a balance) and have enough money to zero everything out if something happens. Because of this it looks like I have high debt load when I really don’t. I do this because it simplifies payments, allows me to collect rewards, keeps my bank account/debit card out of mainstream use (which helps prevent my account info from getting stolen/misused) and allows cash to stay in my accounts just a bit longer earning that sweet 5% interest.
That being said, not everyone does that and many folks are likely in over their head.
Fidelity has a number of funds around 5%. A fidelity brokerage account auto invests in SPAXX, which is 4.96%. SPRXX is 5.02%. These accounts are insured, and the cash is completely liquid, a debit card tied to this account works normally, for example.
I have never had a credit card. I have no plans to get one. I have no idea what my credit rating is either. And until I have to know, I don’t care. I am not in any debt though.
You should probably still find out your credit score/rating though, especially since it’s free. Identity theft is a real issue, like someone opening a line of credit in your name and fucking up your rating when you actually need it for something (buying a car or house, or anything that requires a credit check).
You can also put a freeze on your credit via the big three credit agencies. That would prevent someone from opening ip a credit card or taking out a loan in your name.
Another case for getting a credit card is the rewards and protection. I always pay on time and never have to pay interest, so I only gain from cashback rewards and don’t lose anything by using a credit card. Banks are also very strict with fraud (it’s their money you spend before paying it off after all), and they will side with you if your card gets used to pay for something you did not authorize. Lastly, it’s becoming a hassle to pay cash nowadays with most establishments going cashless.
As long as you always pay it off on time, there aren’t much downsides to maintaining a credit card, regardless if you care about your credit score/rating or not.
You’re right, but it’s a shame the system is designed to punish people who don’t have an interest in participating at this time. Fraud should be the responsibility of the credit card companies not the users.
Possibly, but it has not been a problem in my life so far, so either it’s good enough that no one cares when it’s come up or I’ll be in trouble one day, I guess.
Tricky part here is that an easy way of building credit is by use of a credit card. If you can’t buy a house in cash, then obtaining a good mortgage becomes difficult. I’d recommend the happy medium being one of those preloaded credit cards where you pay $1000 up front or what ever and just use that for day to days… being out of debt like you are, though, is one of the most liberating things one can ask for
I was like you and got screwed by it. That’s the unfortunate part of the system for us. Credit rating isn’t rating of trustworthiness, it’s a rating of likely-to-take-debt/trustworthiness. Never having credit is often “worse” than bad credit. If you ever do try and take out a loan for a car or a house, you will have fewer and more expensive borrowing options.
The play for people like us is to open exactly 2 sources of credit, use one as autopay for static bills, and automatically pay it every month. Use the other for dynamic expenses, but monitor and pay it off in full whenever it reaches 30% utilization, or 25 days, whichever comes sooner.
One can get the benefits of credit without actually accruing debt. The way you use your cash/debit, you already don’t spend money you don’t have. Just continue to not spend money you don’t have, but get the benefits of the system. Be a “deadbeat” as they call us. Us deadbeats actively cost the system money by never carrying balances that accrue interest.
I use my credit card for every purchase I make and get 1.5% cash back. I pay off my balance every month in full to avoid any interest. That 1.5% can add up pretty quickly and it’s basically free money.
If you treat them like a debit card, there aren’t any of these issues. I have a credit card that I use for all everyday expenses. Every month it’s paid off so it never acrues interest. My credit score is great and the card offers some other benefits too.
If I lose my job the risk I have would only ever amount to one month of spending, which is easily covered by my emergency fund.
Probably. At my house I’d just have to walk out to the garage. There’s enough leftover iron pipe and whatnot in there that I could knock together a low rent single shot 12 gauge in just a few minutes.
It still takes a lot of time and effort for something that would underperform something kludged together from hardware store parts. The only real benefit of printing it is that it won’t set off a metal detector
The bullets you have to use to fire one will 100% set off a metal detector though, never mind that these devices themselves are terrible, often unreliable, and potentially dangerous to the user.
Yep, though it would probably be easier to smuggle bullets around a metal detector than a gun. Though honestly it would probably be easier to kill someone by hand. I told a friend about how I’ve printing as a hobby and his first question was “can you print me a gun?” Bruh
Oh yeah diy nerf guns have come so far, they’re really crazy. I really want to design a low power rubber band powered single shot pistol, something you could print and build without a trip to the hardware store.
Depends on what you make, any idiot can build a pipegun and a lot of those "simple" 3D printed guns actually take some skill to put together. Never mind the skill to build, maintain, and sucessfully use a 3D printer.
What's the over/under on how many of those construction workers will vote Republican in 2024 anyway? Somehow Democrats trying (often imperfectly) to help people gets them nothing but scorn, meanwhile a Republican platform that revolves entirely around taking things away from others is super popular with the blue collar crowd.
I 100% agree that giving them fair wages shouldn't buy their vote. I'm disheartened that they will never question their vote for the party who took them away in the 80s and will do it again if they can.
To clarify - I don't think self-interest should be the only deciding factor in a vote, but it should at least penetrate as a factor. Logically, some of these folks would go "wow, thanks Biden, maybe Dems aren't anti- middle class after all" - but in reality, I'm not holding my breath.
I fear to late for that. 99% of Republicans and their voting base are desperately wanting to take us back and want zero progress. And they are winning.
When they get this pay boost, their employer and whatever state they're working in will take credit. Democrats are terrible and messaging to it's almost certain that no one will ever tell them that Biden did it.
It’s not as bad as people think. There are large numbers of black and Latino construction workers who aren’t on board with Republican politics at all. My union is nearly a third Latino and they tend to be some of the most involved in organizing and activism. Also worth saying that less than half of the white guys are conservatives.
That’s all well and good, but keep in mind that only ~11% or so of employees in the US are union. So I’m not sure how representative your experience is of the working population in general.
Abortion is the big ticket item and the headline isn’t wrong but it’s also more than that- it would’ve basically given the Ohio Republican Party power for decades. They already illegally gerrymander, etc. and this would’ve made them even more unaccountable.
Current rules- 44 counties to get signatures, 10 day cure period to gather more if you fall short, 50+% to pass.
Proposed rules- 5% from ALL 88 counties, no cure period, 60% to pass.
Essentially, grassroots initiatives already have a high hurdle and this would’ve made them effectively impossible. Only big moneyed interests could ever get anything on the ballot again.
So basically everything good in the last century wouldve failed and this law would’ve ensured Ohio would slide into the same useless bucket as Alabama on the national scale
That’s what they’re trying now. Ohio is a major state, with multiple major cities, and a long history as a swing state due to being roughly even rural/urban. Like Columbus is really queer, Cleveland is just as Great Lakes as Toronto, Detroit, and Chicago, and we’ve also got Appalachia and a lot of what you probably can’t tell isn’t rural Indiana. Add in that Columbus is a major hub for business and it’s very valuable and perceived as takable.
Man looking at some of these with the years next to them and Ohio used to be kinda based
And yeah there are other things that may desperately need to be changed about our constitution that wouldn’t clear the 60% mark even beyond abortion. Namely our constitution currently prohibits recognition of gay marriage, which while no longer an issue in the Obergefell era, may become relevant again depending on who bribes the Supreme Court.
They’re trying to force the big Cs to live at the whims of rural Ohioans despite how close the urban/rural population is
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