What a strangely hostile response to a perfectly reasonable question. If you don’t want people to comment on what you say, you really shouldn’t participate.
Clearly the guy is ashamed of his job for the majority of his life and the reason he didn’t want to share it is probably the reason they let themselves get stuck there for decades.
It’s a shame more people don’t accept help from others even in the form of discussion
|Clearly the guy is ashamed of his job for the majority of his life and the reason he didn’t want to share it is probably the reason they let themselves get stuck there for decades.
I was never stuck at any job and when I had my Heart Attack I was doing quite well.
Lmao.
What help>? To be criticized for not owning Apple stock?
Get over your disappointment of not being able to pry into my life,
You’ve hit it on the head and all the naysayers here are just being oppositional. This is sort of like that fake Libertarian rage you see periodically.
Is them saying 45 years of working not enough? If they would have thought their job mattered they would have said that. You guys are just horny to say they did something wrong and they are cutting you off.
You’re projecting. I actually don’t care about the person or their story, but noticed someone have a little temper tantrum when someone asked a question in response.
It is interesting that you assume that people are looking to break this person down, it really comes off as projection. In fact, we are curious about the type of job he had because that changes things. If he was a government employee, then retirement is required. If he was in public sector, then what you get will depend on employer. If you’re a contractor, then it is fully up to you to put money into it. We have no idea who this person is or what their experiences are like. Assuming the worst from us says more about you than anything.
Participate in posting my personal work history which as zero to do with this thread and would do nothing to add to it except to invade my privacy? Ok Chief.
It’s called having a conversation…… someone says something. Someone else asks a question to stoke the conversation….
And like. Context as well. yes it is a diff conversation if they worked 45 years min wage vs 45 years as a mega corp ceo lol. It def is a valid question for someone to understand the conversation that’s happening.
No ones being hostile by trying to get context to continue the conversation that was totally friendly until they got butthurt for some weird reason.
As a millennial, I honestly have a lot of respect for Gen Z. I feel like they are slowly but surely figuring out how to stick it to the man and generate awareness of how the big corporations are slimy scum and don’t see employees as “People”. Go Gen Z!
Honestly they’ve been incredible. They’ve been politically active since they were teens and they care more about work/life balance than any other generation before (anecdotally). They’ve been dealt a shit hand but I’m rooting for them.
I was thinking about this just yesterday. After watching Frankie’s cultural observation on boomers, where he says that “boomers are the first generation in history that wanted to do better than their children”, I asked myself what have us millennials done. I settled on this, we broke the generational cycle of abuse and bullying of our kids. The boomers parents, while the “greatest” generation, were raised by an even stricter generation of parents who believed in things like not picking up a crying baby, and probably resulted in Boomer parents that, thanks to WW2, were also an untreated PTSD generation. Alcoholism was just dad’s being dad’s and pre ww2 moms stayed home to keep home and hearth with a little help from the snuff tin. Several generations of war torn parents ignorant of how to deal with what they went through, raising more kids for the next war. From the civil war to Vietnam, every generation had a war or two on their plate. Then our small communities were randomly spread out into suburban experiments to support the industrial revolution. Now no one knows their neighbor, they just go to work. Then the millennials were sent to war. We had heard the stories growing up about how great our nations fighting forces were. Now it was our turn. We had the most righteous of reasons to fight. But this time, when looking to the boomers to lead us, we found a bunch of disfunctional brats. Their maturity was a ruse. They didn’t know any better than we did on how to deal with this world. Their parents won the great war, setup the economy, spanked them, never hugged them, and then handed them the keys to the company and retired to Florida. So the bratty boomers without a clue bullied their kids out the door and into the world. There we stood, 18 and primed to take it on. But there was nothing left to take. Then the bubble they blew popped and we shipped out to Afghanistan, and then Iraq, and even after 20 years we still had nothing to show for it. No house, no good paying job, no health care, and a degree with the weight of never ending debt chained to it. The boomers are and always have been, brats. You see them out there on their Harley’s brrrraaaaatttting around. So when we started having kids, we said no. No we’re not going to beat our kids, no we’re not going to shame them for who they love, no we’re not going to “be a man” and shut up about our war trauma. But the brats still had all the power. They refused to let go of their toy. So we put ourselves to work on trying to fix the only thing we had the power to fix, ourselves. We started normalizing therapy, researching drug and alcohol addiction. We dug into the data. We acted like adults, we admitted we have a problem and we did the rigorous and SCIENTIFIC work of finding the solutions. We broke the cycle. We’ve really earnestly tried to raise thoughtful, honest about themselves, proud adults who ask why. We didn’t ignore them, we answered them honestly, we admitted there’s a problem. But we don’t have enough time to set it right in our life time. The brats won’t let go. We need Gen Z to carry the torch forward. Question everything, do the hard work, admit when you were wrong, be willing to change your mind when new data is discovered. I’m proud of these kids. I want them to do better than us. We got your back kid.
I asked myself what have us millennials done. I settled on this, we broke the generational cycle of abuse and bullying of our kids.
Dont mean to ‘burst your bubble’, but as a Gen-Xer who took allot of abuse from my Boomer parents, and ended up a ‘latch key kid’ to boot, I made sure to not pass that on to my Millennial children. At all. So that trend was happening allot earlier than you think.
Also, ‘wall of text’ is tough to read. Paragraphs are our friends. :)
I imagine they might have been bamboozled like I have been quite a few times, where a proper formatted line break is actually 2 line breaks in the editor instead of just one?
Any Markdown editor, yes. But not everyone is familiar with Markdown formatting. People coming from text editors, forums, and word processors expect a single enter to start a new paragraph.
Any Markdown editor, yes. But not everyone is familiar with Markdown formatting. People coming from text editors, forums, and word processors expect a single enter to start a new paragraph.
I’m using the website, and the standard editor. /shrug
I’m not aware of anyone who uses a word processor to leave a comment on Lemmy.
What do you mean? In Word, you click enter once, and the paragraph spacing is done automatically based on existing paramters. While not every word processor is Word, I’d argue that the one-enter process I described is still a pretty legitimate form of starting a paragraph.
If you specifically meant on Lemmy, you shouldn’t use language like “any editor” lol. Anyways, you edited your old comment just to continue being an asshat, so this was a waste of time. Bye!
If you specifically meant on Lemmy, you shouldn’t use language like “any editor” lol. Anyways, you edited your old comment just to continue being an asshat, so this was a waste of time. Bye!
Next time I’ll have my lawyers review my comments before posting, and be sure to say something along the lines of “any editor *that you would use to post a comment on an Internet forum, and not while writing a word processing document”. /s
I’ve got to give up assuming on Lemmy, as ‘people’ argue about the weirdest fucking minutia here.
In a separate anecdote, Kaplan detailed the end of the deposition when she was set to leave, saying that Trump told her: “See you next Tuesday” – a phrase that is often used as a derogatory euphemism directed at women.
Kaplan said that she was initially confused, as their next meeting was set for a Wednesday.
I won’t quote all of that part, because it’s worth reading. Go ahead, click on it. Donald Trump is such a mean girl.
Edit: I would have never figured out what it was supposed to mean on my own. I had never heard of that before and judging by all the quick replies it’s a more well known insult then I would have guessed.
It’s the type of thing a junior high kid would say to a frenemy to sound edgy, while at the same time avoiding all the “naughty words” that would get them in trouble with the teacher.
So, totally on brand for Donald Trump. Actually a bit too mature for him, since he’s said directly that his temperment hasn’t changed at all since first grade.
me neither, but ima start using it where appropriate. like a passing farewell to the asswipe that parks his obnoxious suv in front of my building all day, every day. is 2 hour parking only but he's buddies with a local cop so they never ticket him--only anyone else that dare park in 'his' spot.
I will, because not everyone has the time or the desire to go to a news site and get blasted with ads and tracking cookies for an article they are only marginally interested in. So here you go:
“I wasn’t in on the joke, so I had no idea. Then we get into the car and my colleagues are like, ‘Robbie, do you know what that means?’ And I’m like, ‘No, what are you talking about?’ They tell me and I’m like, oh my God, thank God I didn’t know because had I known, I for sure would have gotten angry. There’s no question I would have gotten angry,” Kaplan said
You also missed the part when, after the deposition was over, Trump’s lawyers, who we all know now are incompetent and inattentive to details, immediately sprung up to confirm that they were now off the record. They knew what he was going to say.
That means they had to plan it. Trump must have gone to them ahead of time and said “I’m gonna call her a cunt straight to her face, and there’s nothing you can do to make me stop”. So they had to enact a strategy to make sure it didn’t get into the record. And then, they probably had to snicker a bit to prove they thought the joke was totally OK and they really got her good.
I really do imagine that everyone of them has to fake laugh at all his jokes. I bet there’s always a stare and a long uncomfortable silence whenever someone doesn’t react quick enough, like you see in the movies.
Devils at least hold up their end of a bargain. Sure, they may try to trick you, but they don’t withhold their end of am agreement. What do you think the odds are that these lawyers are going to be paid in full?
After catching Covid, he wanted to leave the hospital wearing a Superman shirt. Someone had to talk the President of the United States out of acting like a child.
Man, I remember that. Then they lied to the country about how sick he really was. They had discussions about whether he should go to the hospital or not and ultimately they decided he was getting worse and worse and that he had to go right then so that he could be seen walking to the helicopter. If they had waited, he would not have then able to walk. Of course he was vaccinated and immediately got the best care, I wonder how many of his dumbass supporters died because they figured “well Trump lived without vaccinations or a mask, I will too.”
After he noped out of the WW1 Centennial ceremonies because it was raining, they had to arrange a photo op of him going to Arlington in the rain to place flowers. Ignoring the fact that he could have gone to Arlington every day of his Presidency…
I don’t think that’s true at all. It sounds like day 1 material for “lawyering for cunts school”. Like if you’ve just had a tense meeting with the opposition, and your client is a childish idiot, then of course he’s going to try a parting jibe. You would absolutely 100% pop up and say “that’s it folks off the record now LOL”
I know what C U Next Tuesday means in a derogatory way, but ngl if I really had a meeting scheduled for next week with the person who said it to me, I would just assume that’s what they were referring to.
Yes, in this case the meeting was on Wednesday, but my initial thought would be to wonder if I was misremembering what day the meeting was supposed to take place.
Even if you know about it, it’s not always obvious depending on the context. However, if I have a brief but unpleasant interaction with someone who I had never met before and never planned to see again, said it as I was walking away, then yeah - it would probably register that they were being a dick.
Again, it’s prevalent in the US market, not sure about others. They advertise say $199 / night, but when you go to check out, there’s something like a ~$35- $50 /night resort fee to “pay for amenities like WiFi/ gym /pool”. You can’t reject paying the fee, so your hotel room is actually like 25% higher than advertised.
Yeah, that’d be quite illegal down here. I spent basically half a year living in hotels straight due to work all across the UK and primarily London then continued for a few years after. So we’re likely talking +300 nights. I have never seen an additional charge.
Agree, but the challenge on tax is that it’s not harmonized across municipalities. This means that stores that are across the street from each other may have identical prices/profit margin and a different net price to the consumer. This would lead to consumer preferences biased by physical location and have lots of other weird side effects. You can see this in areas that border state lines when the tax is appreciably different.
Step one is a harmonized tax rate, but that’s easier said than done.
The true cost is different no matter how it’s advertised, no? Harmonized tax is great and all, but lying about price is still bad, irrelevant of the actual price.
It’s a culture of trying to get away with whatever makes the most profits. We also have that, but there are some reasonable laws working against that. One of my favourites is the duty to display per kg or per litre price. Before that, shops made the package sizes deliberately confusing.
I don’t think there’s any law like that in the US. If there were, 2 out of 4 national supermarket chains local to me are breaking the law and have been for years
It’s really not that weird at all. It’s a simple consequence of the EU having better consumer protection laws. Unfortunately the far right in the US is a lot stronger than in most of Europe and has been since the post-war era.
We also, in the US, have an old and antiquated system that was deliberately designed to be difficult to change because the founders had to convince the slave-owning class that abolition couldn’t be forced on them if they agreed to join the newly-formed union. How did they do that? You guessed it! By making the Constitution almost impossible to change, which is one reason why it required the bloodiest war in our history to end slavery.
Again, there’s nothing especially “weird” about it. As is true of a lot of contemporary reality, it’s largely a consequence of history.
Interestingly, tipping culture is also at least tangentially a product of slavery as well, but that’s a bit more complicated so I’ll save it for another comment.
And if you’re starting to suspect that a ton of what ails the US can be traced directly back to slavery, here’s a hint; you may be on to something!
That said, it was the European colonial powers who brought slavery to North America in the first place, which kind of brings us full circle.
It’s not okay. I can hear some of my customers’ anxiety when they struggle to tip me. Some people lord it over me like I should revere them for their blessing. There is an unnecessary layer of stress to the customer service routine for everyone involved except the owner who benefits from this system. Not to mention some businesses pool their tips and share it with everyone, sometimes redirecting these funds into unscrupulous items like snacks without consent. >:(
Tips don’t motivate me to provide great customer service to my customers. Tips serve to maintain cheap labor, but more important to me is how they erect social barriers. I can’t blame someone for wanting or being motivated by tips when they’re stuck near the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. I’m there too so I understand, but there’s just no reason for tips when we can get/provide great service without adding layers of paranoia; When we can provide a satisfying quality of life for everyone in the process with a not-so-simple wage increase (and God forbid, better budgeting and management from business owners).
They also in general make my job harder, especially when an old person who’s basically blind can’t find any of the buttons or follow simple directions (PRESS 3 FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MARIANNE)
I’d like to supplement that I’ve had access to my various employer’s records multiple times… because why lock the admin computer.
With my current employer, my entire wages for the month are paid for with net profits in a single day thanks to the skeleton crew we operate. I get to work knowing every other day is going straight to my boss’s luxurious life-style because it’s certainly not coming back here.
Don’t be surprised when you hear of another staff walk-out~
Fuck tips, support good living standards for everyone!
No. I actually kinda do. Like if I’m out with friends I literally get judged if I tip poorly let alone if I don’t tip at all which is social suicide.
And if I have a coupon for a meal, say 50% or something like that I still have to tip on the original amount before the discount was applied.
Moreover, and most importantly in some restaurants tipping is the only source of income the server gets. Regardless of how I feel about it I am still responsible for this person’s wage.
Yes and no. All tips are supposed to be reported to the IRS. Whether they are or not is not really relevant. What really matters is that the customers aren’t forced to do an owners job. If an owner needs their customers to prop up their employees then the owners shouldn’t be in business.
I used to make $2.35/h when I was in the service industry. Without my customers I would’ve been fucked. What’s worse is on a slow night, I really did get fucked.
I used to make $2.35/h when I was in the service industry. Without my customers I would’ve been fucked. What’s worse is on a slow night, I really did get fucked.
I think that should be the point, employees should not be taking on the risk of a business doing poorly. That’s the business owner’s responsibility and risk, to be mitigated by them. Not screwing over a waiter because it was a slow night. Or because they were unlucky to work a tuesday night over a busy Saturday night.
I was going to say this but fear of mass downvotes kept me quiet. Glad I’m not the only one. I’ve worked for tips but I’d rather just work for a reasonable wage instead, remove the guesswork and chances for abuse.
He amplified his crackdown on soaring prescription drug costs, hidden fees for cable and air travel and corporate “price-gouging.” He also promised to “keep fighting to bring down costs.”
Following the links the above quote, the CNBC articles suggests we can expect progress on the first two items (prescription drug costs and hidden fees), but there’s nothing I read in the linked article about dealing with price gouging other than some stern words. Maybe something is indeed in the works, but it wasn’t obvious to me at the least.
Instead of taking a routine victory lap, the president doubled down on the war, pledging to do himself what the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes have not: Make things cheaper.
[…]
It is a marked tone shift from the president’s typical reactions to positive inflation data.
I do appreciate this narrative shift—transitioning from tone-deaf/gaslighting to acknowledging that key issues still aren’t addressed.
He's trying to thread the needle, and to me it's kinda working. He won't be effective on most of it, I'm sure, but I've given up hope of effective government and just like it when it makes nice sounds.
I feel like the biggest reason he won’t be effective is that he’s against pure obstructionists in the GOP. They have no desire to govern and somehow won the House.
You are massively underestimating the role of Democrats in getting us where we are today. It’s not like industry consolidation slowed down when Democrats were in power.
The reason inflation and price gouging continues under Biden? Inflation got better. And 40 years of deregulation and corporate mergers that never should have happened… That’s pretty difficult to tackle in a 4 year term.
Too bad we didn’t elect the guy with decades of Senate experience who.promised he’d be able to get Republican senators to vote for the Dem platform when a Dem Senate seemed impossible…
What’s that?
That guy did get elected? And then as soon as he took office he did a 180 and said as president there’s nothing he could do to change their mind and immediately gave up on the bulk of his campaign promises?
You might remember that because of the filibuster, 41 Senators can block a bill from advancing, and despite that, quite a lot of bills got passed 51-50. Mitch McConnell could have stopped any and all of those bills if he wanted. It's probably not a coincidence that those passed and that Biden and McConnell have had a generally cordial relationship for decades.
This is the same shit we heard before when Obama was president. Republicans somehow manage to pass a ton of their shitty legislation, so maybe it’s just that Democrats don’t really give as much of a shit about the people as they say.
Because not all Dem senators have the same electorate base whereas republicans (although lately we’re seeing a shift away from this) tend to fall lock step in line. Sinema and Munchin come from very purple states so their seats were never secure. It’s not enough to have a slight majority. Also, the Senate is being held hostage by republicans right now with ever more polarization. I don’t have an answer but to just pin it on the president is asinine. We need to show up to local elections and midterms.
The margin was so slim that he effectively didn’t. If one or two democrats held out (and there were a few specific people who always did) then the votes would fail.
If Biden hasn’t spent the entire primary expecting a Republican Senate and telling everyone he was the only one to get Republicans onboard and that’s why he should be president…
It’s four years later. He wouldn’t even try to get democrats onboard, he publicly said their choice is their choice and it would be wrong to try and change their mind.
So why is he running again?
Because he’s the incumbent? It doesn’t matter that as soon as he was elected, he said the reason he was elected just isn’t possible?
Like, maybe if he had tried I could see letting him keep trying. But he immediately gave up. Do people get nearly think he’ll start trying if he gets the second term? What’s the excuse for not trying now?
Let’s not forget how hard Biden worked to rehabilitate the anti-Trump Republicans. He has more Republican speakers at the DNC than progressives. All the worst shit Trump did had been Republican agenda items for decades. He should have hung Trump around their necks. Instead, he nearly handed them congresss.
Anti-trust is the real answer, at least within the scope of what neoliberalism will embrace. Biden has never been good on anti-trust. He’s made some noise on that front recently, but it doesn’t seem to have slowed down consolidation of every single industry.
He surely wouldn’t but for those of who don’t belong to either mainstream party your question is annoying AF. As long as we keep electing people from the same two pools of corporate backed idiots NOTHING is going to change.
None of us like it but most of us, eventually, learn what a trap third party voting is the way the system is set up. When you’re young, naive and a bit idyllic it seems like an easy choice. “I’m standing up for change!” you think to yourself. Or perhaps the old “We gotta start somewhere, let’s get that 5%!” nugget.
Then you get older and the shit you used watch from the sidelines on TV actually starts to affect your lives. Health care, education, retirement and other life issues show up and that naivety falls away rapidly as you learn that A) it’ll take a revolution of sorts for any meaningful change and B) our lives are too short to hope for said revolution. Do we still want that change, absolutely. However, sometimes in life, you really do need to choose between the douche and the turd sandwich.
Fair to be fed up, but I feel that was more a concern when the two sides of the coin were very close to being the same. I’m not much behind you on age but I can still see that only one option TODAY is trying to blatantly and openly destroy most of the progress we made in your 52 years. I’d rather hold the douche and have a chance at getting out clean than hold the turd and assuredly end up covered in shit.
…but I can still see that only one option TODAY is trying to blatantly and openly destroy most of the progress we made in your 52 years.
They both are, one is just more open about it and willing to get there a bit faster on some issues. Yes, the bulk of Conservatives are somewhere between “Awful” and “JFC this person needs to be beamed into outer space!” but the Authoritarianism and Stupidity are running just as rampant among the so-called Liberals.
I’d rather hold the douche and have a chance at getting out clean than hold the turd and assuredly end up covered in shit.
You know what a douche is for, right? That’s the point of that skit, it’s a Hobsons Choice. It"s amazing to me people continually bring that skit up without understanding what it really meant.
Of course I know what one is for, the point I was making is that what SEEMS to be the same to you and what may have been is no longer the case.
You’ve clearly already checked out and, at best, listen to mainstream media if you’re still in the “they are the same” or “one hides it better” camp. Lost cause.
I don’t think these people will ever get it. It’s the same mentality that keeps climate change raging on, “I can’t change anything on my own, so I’ll just keep doing the same thing until someone else fixes it.”
Someone once explained representative democracy this way: Choosing a candidate is like riding a bus. None of them are going to come directly to where you are and none of them are going to drop you off at your exact destination. The best you can do is choose the one that gets you as close as possible in the shortest amount of time. Sometimes you’re not even gonna get that close and you’ll still have a long walk to your destination, but at least you’ll be closer than where you started. Sometimes you have to take one bus then transfer to another to get to your final destination.
When the alternatives are buses that are traveling the opposite direction, your best available choice becomes very clear.
The place where this analogy falls apart is that by not taking either bus, you may actually lose ground and get further away from your destination. So I guess when the alternative is a bus that stands less than a 5% chance of arriving, you ultimately end up being shoved onto the bus that the majority of people are riding.
The last time a third party ever got close to winning the presidency was the progressive party with the candidate being Theodore motherfucking Roosevelt a well liked president to this day. And do you know what happened? It split the vote and we got fucking Wilson a segregationist bastard who revitalized the KKK and kept us out of WW1 which probably prolonged the war.
If you want a third party start at the local, dont even think about the presidency until ypu can overthrow one of the two parties. The Rupublicans went from being an irrelevancey to win ing the presidency back in the 1800s for example.
One thing that people fail to understand when voting third party is the overall makeup of the two big parties. Republicans are very homogenous. One need look no further than a picture of all republican senators and compare it to a picture of all current democrat senators. Both pictures will have a majority of white men, but one of those pictures will have a much larger number of minorities (women, people of color, etc…).
The democrat party is really an amalgam of lots of different types of people with different cultures and different desires unified by an interest in more progressive policy. But it’s much harder to keep every sub-group of people happy. If even one of those sub-groups grows weary or defects to the other side, democrats lose.
I was happy for a while to start to see some cracks in the republican party, but I underestimated their ability to stick together despite having utter contempt for their populist leader. So many republicans detested the idea of a Trump presidency right up until he won. All of a sudden, they rabidly and staunchly defended his every action. There have only been a very few number of principled Republicans that have stood their ground against Trump, and one by one they’re either losing elections or declining to run again. It’s sad really.
I agree with the spirit of what you are saying, but if you live in a swing state there is definitely an argument to be made about pragmatic damage control. I don’t judge either way, if you don’t feel like someone has earned your vote it isn’t your fault that they haven’t earned your vote.
I also agree that voting for the slightly less shitty candidate isn’t going to fix anything in the longterm, but sometimes the best choice for the well being of people is damage control. Damage control isn’t a strategy, but sometimes it is the best tactic within a broader strategy. That being said, fuck all that noise when people get upset at you for voting third party. You aren’t the person that created a rigged system that doesn’t provide meaningful choices for you to choose from. Someone can disagree with you on how best to fix that, but getting angry at you for choosing a different approach is just people taking out their anger on you for the system being rigged and broken.
I’d like to know who we should be voting for, then. The one that will keep things as they are or the one who wants to burn everything down. There’s really no other viable choice. Not voting is the same as voting for guy number two, effectively.
You’re here criticizing me for supporting third parties.
You just spent the last three years watching more than 200 billion dollars, unbudgeted, get added to an already trillion-dollar war budget. You watched the right to bodily autonomy evaporate, and the response from the party you gave power to change that was just to fund raise. You’ve watched zero action as housing scarcity has escalated, and likewise zero action on wages, education, and health care costs. (Unless we’re giving credit for speeches without any subsequent action.)
And you say I’m the principled fascist, watching Democrats allow it to happen or so concerned with making money off their positions that they ignore it.
You have to ignore so, so many things you make excuses for in order to come that conclusion.
So, for that to be me "projecting", all the ills you describe that haven't been solved to your liking must equal fascism to you? You either have no clue what projecting is, or no clue what fascism is, or I guess probably both. Anyway, cool theory bro, keep both sides'ing and doing your part to help literal fascists back into power, they'll surely get on solving all those things! Un-fucking-real, there are seriously still people that witnessed 2016-2020, then 2020-now and are like, yeah whatever, both sides hurr durr. I try not to hate, but damn, you fucking people, you're seriously going to fuck us all with your nonsense.
Every issue you’ve described is something actively fought for and put forth by Republicans. The same Republicans who hold the house and, subsequently, the ability to pass legislation to fix these things.
Democrats, or I guess in this specific case Biden, has no ability to just snap his fingers and grant: bodily autonomy, re-write the war budget, programs for housing scarcity, education, livable wages, or health care. To claim otherwise or that he is just toting people along while actively avoiding responsibility is either showing that you have literally no idea what you’re talking about or is just straight misinformation.
I do not love Biden and I adamantly disagree with some of his decisions such as his response to the Israel/Palestine conflict. But he has done some serious good with his time in office. Expanding access to live saving medication for seniors, providing an actually reasonable student loan repayment plan, modernizing the internet infrastructure for millions of homes in the mid west, and shifting much of the Federal governments facilities to use green energy just to name a few.
I truly wish 3rd party candidates stood any sort of chance in a general election, I really do. But as it stands currently they do not, history has shown us that over and over and over again. So you have 3 choices: vote for the party that actually perpetrated those above issues and has made it perfectly clear they will do so again, vote for the lesser evil that while horribly flawed has actually done some serious good in addition to frankly just not promoting an authoritarian ethnostate, or toss your vote out and pray for the best.
This is ridiculous. How are Republicans able to pass all their vile legislation in the face of Democratic opposition while the opposite is not also true? How can you argue that Biden is powerless to do anything, but Trump will have the power to bring about the end-times? You’re trying to argue out of both sides of your mouth all to maintain the status quo of shitty government.
the RU one admittedly being an amazing deal for the US against a long term adversary
You chickenhawks say the same things about every war. I remember 2003 when Iraq was going to last six months and cost 30 billion. “Mission Accomplished”. Back then you told us it was a bargain because Saddam had uranium.
Voting third party in '20/'24
What’s dumb is seeing 40 years of conservative outcomes and the progression of fascism under a Democratic president and then telling us to do more of it.
Then again, you chickenhawks just repeat what the news tells you to anyway, so maybe you shouldn’t read it again. I’d hate for you to get a headache.
Oh no. Not the news. How terrible, following the news. I wish I was enlightened enough to get my knowledge of world affairs through online games of Telephone rather than books and reputable news sources.
Back then you told us it was a bargain because Saddam had uranium.
I don’t remember this, care to provide some justification? The way I remember it is that Americans were tricked into being afraid of Saddam and his WMD and it was sold as a preemptive move to a bunch of people still reeling after the 9/11 attacks.
Russia is actually a major adversary, this is not secret. They are also acting like aggressive imperialists. I would be hesitant to get boots on the ground, but helping Ukraine defend itself is both a win for us, and the right thing to do.
That’s not remotely true. If you look at the demographics data, we basically have to just hold on until the Boomers die. Once that happens, Republicans will be a severe minority if they don’t change their politics. Then the left can go back to its usual circular firing squad without risking American democracy.
Then the left can go back to its usual circular firing squad without risking American Democracy.
Jesus fucking Christ thank you. Republicans just line up to be cucked by Trump and their worst policies. Americans, even Republicans, aren’t in favor of these abortion bans, but Trump goes out on the circuit being like “you know, I got those judges in there” and that’s a win for him. More benign, but Ted Cruz can have Trump call his wife ugly or whatever and just hop right back on that dick without even enough time to grab some mouthwash and wipe down with a towel.
Meanwhile, the someone anywhere sneezes, Biden doesn’t say “bless you” fast enough and that’s the fucking news cycle.
It’s the best argument he’s got, and can you blame him? There isn’t a lawyer alive who could win this for old ink scalp. His only hope is a stacked court.
I want any Texan to give me the moral justification for forcing a woman to give birth to a baby that will only live for a few hours in agony before dying. Because this isn’t stopping what they call murder. There’s no murder here even if you consider abortion to be murder in general because there will be no life for this fetus/baby/whatever you want to call it.
I want to know why this woman should be banned from having an abortion in Texas beyond ‘we said no abortions and we mean it.’
“God’s will” is the typical refrain. I usually reply with “Then why are you wearing shoes? If god wanted something on your feet he would have given them to you”. Glasses are similarly blasphemy according to their poor logic.
I remember one of the priests at my childhood (Roman Catholic) church had a great sermon about this mentality. He told the story of a woman trapped on the roof of her home after a horrible flood. A man in a rowboat finds her and attempts to lend assistance. “No need! God will save me”. Confused, he moved on. Next, a motor boat passes by, offering to help her from her roof as well. Again, “no thanks, God will save me!” Later on, a coast guard chopper arrives. The rescuer winched down onto the roof is similarly rebuked by the woman. She soon dies from exposure. When she arrives into heaven she angrily asks God why he didn’t save her to which God answers “I sent two boats and a rescue helicopter for you!”
Well it was one of the few I found interesting so I guess good for that guy for getting me to listen. He made it about how god helps people that help themselves after the punchline
I hold the opinion the religious should live much more like the Amish. If you don’t believe in science, don’t. But they shouldn’t be able to cherry pick which science to believe in.
They think science is a religion. Manifestation of your will is what makes reality. So if they pray hard enough, it will have an effect. They think people who consider themselves scientists are just making it up and making it real because they believe it so much.
I don’t see why they would doubt that. In my experience they tend to trust medical science but god is a super doc that might miracle someone in a bad spot.
I mean he could make a lot of things not work, but prefers to allow our fuck ups with random miracles mixed in. Apparently free will means letting us do bad shit.
And that’s where the whole tri-omni approach starts to eat its own tail.
I have a whole shtick about free will not being compatible with either a materialistic nor a tri-omni worldview. I simply do not believe it exists, nor is it possible.
These are literally grown adults that believe in magic. There’s not going to be any reasonable explanation that will make any sense to anyone outside of their cult.
She is a sinner so she must endure her divine punishment. That’s the whole argument.
I’m worried “paycheck to paycheck” is up to the interpretation of the person filing it the survey and how the questions are phrased. Depending on how the questions are worded, they’d possibly include me. My wife and I max our IRAs, 401ks, and HSAs each year. Anything that can be put on the credit card, is (then paid off before any interest can accrue). Like sure if you look at our monthly expenses vs income hitting the bank, we are “paycheck to paycheck”. But we could both lose a significant portion of our income and be just fine (provided we scale back retirement savings).
Unless they address that in these articles or surveys, it just sounds like they’re trying to get the poor and middle class to just agree to this shared misery while the rich keep fucking the world over.
But it would affect you, just longer-term than shorter-term. You don’t know what things will be like when you’re old, which is why most people who can do put the max amount in their IRAs, 401Ks, and HSAs. That doesn’t mean they’re bad people or misspending their money or not living paycheck-to-paycheck.
If you suffer in your old age because you had to cut back on retirement, that’s a huge impact on your life. It’s way easier to live paycheck-to-paycheck when you still can work than it is when you literally cannot and are relying on Society Security or retirement investments. I think that matters.
I’m poor as fuck, but I don’t feel like I need to judge people who barely make more money than me in the context of fucking billionaires.
Also, do you have kids, because that’s a huge impact on the bottom-line of people who make a decent salary.
Well your certainly buried your point at the end of your tirade. Sounds like you just want to argue with people on the internet that making 150k isn’t a livable salary for a person in this day and age. There’s a lot of nuance and factors to consider. Like children and life situations. People making 50k also have to deal with those same issues - and it sounds like you’re one of them. I feel bad for anyone living paycheck to paycheck because of their circumstances but at the end of the day this is life under modern capitalism.
I feel bad for anyone living paycheck to paycheck because of their circumstances but at the end of the day this is life under modern capitalism.
So have some class solidarity for fucks sake then. If you think people making $150k are the people who are the problem in this society, I think you’re the one wildly out of touch.
The average CEO salary in the US is $832,576 right now, and they don’t actually fucking work.
I don’t think $150k wage people are the problem at all and never said that. Overpaid CEOs and corporations are wildly disgusting and the root of a lot our problems so I guess I’m not sure what we’re arguing about.
Speaking anecdotally, I’ve always heard “living paycheck-to-paycheck” to mean having insufficient savings to cover a missed paycheck
I.e. if you don’t get an expected paycheck then you cannot pay your monthly debts/utilities/rent and still have enough money to feed.yourself and your dependents
Which is why I’m worried it’s not adequately defined. I’m definitely not paycheck to paycheck. But they could word the questions in such a way that I’d be included.
Oh, absolutely. If you click through to the Quicken press release they have a small section defining their methodology but don’t list the specific questions
I wish more people appreciated the lengths that Pew et al. go through to both minimize and recognize sources of bias, confusion, etc
I’m not sure that they asked that directly. It looks like they asked if people are using their credit cards to cover bills more, and whether they expect to be able to fully pay the credit card bill off by the end of the year.
This is like all those surveys saying that 70% of Americans have less than $5000 in a “savings account.”
No shit, yields on savings accounts have been pointless for about two decades. Everyone with spare money puts liquid savings into index funds in margin accounts and runs on credit cards.
The text of the section they are challenging (emphasis added):
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
It’s an exceptionally stupid argument, even for Trump. Obviously “preserve, protect, and defend” are all forms of support, so this challenge is quite possibly the stupidest legal argument they’ve made so far (which is an extremely high bar). But I suppose they don’t think they can realistically claim that he didnt engage in insurrection.
Wow that’s stupid. I’m sure this comes up all the time with wording of other laws and I’m sure judges are used to eviscerating it. Now as long as we don’t get stupid judges…
I commented that based on the slurs of him from the black community. I do not know the full story but shared it based on what I hear from my black friends. It was explained to me that he was a bad dude that sold out other black people. Similar to Uncle Rukus in The Boondocks.
With that context, I meant it as there is the black uncle tom that sold out other black people and now we have American uncle tom selling out America.
It was the top-selling fictional book of the 19th Century (and second-best period - behind only the Bible), and many of the black characters nece the stereotypes of black characters seen in media even today. Mammy, black waif child, and Uncle Tom included.
Uncle Tom was meant to be an almost Christ-like figure by Stowe. But in later years people came to view him differently - often due to state plays of the story that changed the story to give Tom a “happy” ending.
Now when people refer to an “Uncle Tom” they’re referring to a black man who not only allows himself to be mistreated, but actually loves his masters. Someone whose subservience and loyalty amounts to complicity with the mistreatment of himself and others.
In the book, he is kind and peaceful, and the entire books has a theme of goodness prevailing over violence.
The slave hunter sent after Eliza and her family shot in the book, and instead of letting him die they take him to a Quaker community that helps him recover. Through the kindness shown by the escaped slaves and the Quakers he learns to understand what goodness is, rejects slavery and prejudice, and helps the escaped slaves flee to Canada.
Tom’s kindness inspires a slave-owning family to reject slavery and prejudice (2 different evils addressed by the book). His tragedy is that the sister of his owner that intended to free him sells him off to Simon Legree - the most purely-evil slave master in the book.
Tom is later mortally beaten, but forgives those who are killing him (it’s not subtle at all about the comparison to Christ), and afterwards the men who did it once again reject slavery.
But later adaptations, especially plays and “anti-Tom” literature paint him as an obedient, happy slave that is perfectly content to be abused and watch other be abused. That combined with readers confusing peace and kindness with embracing evil has lead to a tragic misinterpretation of a character meant to outrage people and put a magnifying lens on the evils of slavery.
And it worked. Legend says that when Harriet Beecher Stowe met President Lincoln in 1862, he said “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”
Sovereign citizens aren’t just being bad lawyers. They truly believe that the legal system is a world of magic where saying the exact right phrase will create nonsensical effects. The canadian judge that eviscerated their entire thinking did a really good job of showing how skewed their paradigm is.
Hold up, if that’s the crux of his argument, does that mean that his argument is
“I can’t be barred from running because I never took an oath to support the constitution. Therefore my inciting insurrection is not covered by this clause. But I totally incited rebellion.”?
“I crossed my fingers when I took the oath of office so it didn’t count. Also, I’m rubber and you’re glue. Whatever 14th Amendment you throw bounces off of me and sticks to you!”
Unfortunately, I think it is “while I do not admit to starting a rebellion, whether I did or not is immaterial because ‘preserve, protect, and defend’ definitely don’t include ‘support’”
It’s not quite that simple. To be clear, the argument being proposed by his lawyers is that he is not an “officer of the United States” so it doesn’t apply to him.
Basically, there’s legal precedent that elected officials aren’t officers of the US because they are elected and not hired. Add to that the sheer number of commas, “and”s, and “or”s, that it can get legally murky.
NB: Not a lawyer. Read about the above on Mastadon from a legal scholar. Will see if I can find the link.
Doesn’t the “No person shall be a … elector of President and Vice President” just outright say that the statement obviously includes elected officials? Specifically the POTUS and VPOTUS?
I think it directly implies POTUS, especially this part:
or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States,
But also, they don’t have to be legally correct or in-keeping with the spirit of the Constitution. Under my assumption that a few of the Supreme Court Justices are surely psychopaths, they just need an interpretation that’s plausible enough to avoid consequences to themselves.
The argument I’ve seen is that the condition part of the clause (insurrection) by language only applies to the bit after “who, having previously…”
Basically, the argument goes “It says you can’t be President or Vice President if you did insurrection while an officer of the US”—but it doesn’t say you can’t be President if you did insurrection while president of the US.
To be clear: I think it’s fucking idiotic and against the spirit of the law—but I’m no lawyer/legal expert.
While i hate Trump and don’t think he has a leg I can see some give in this argument. Just in the idea that I don’t think a president should have to support the entirety of the US constitution. I think a representative of the US government can disagree with aspects of the constitution but still preserve, protect, and defend it.
It’s not a very strong argument but there is something to be said.
The answer here is simple- regulations with teeth.
Every saw uses water. Every worker wears a mask. Random inspections.
Inspector sees one person without a mask? $1000 fine. One machine with no water hooked up? $5000 fine. 10 people with no masks and 3 machines with no water hooked up? $25,000 fine. Make it clear that there is no fucking around here.
Job site like described in the article? Shut down until problems fixed.
I’d further add personally liability of all supervisors, managers and executives. You run such an operation and cannot prove without a doubt that you instructed for safety, provided the necessary tools and materials and did regulary inspections yourself? You pay for everyones treatment and damages.
Personal liability (piercing the corporate shield) is a really tough nut to crack. That’d also do some outsized harm- think kids college fund raided for settlement money.
That said, I’d be happy to make it a personal crime to, with knowledge of the law, instruct any worker to use a machine without safety equipment and water hookup, or to work without a mask. THAT should be a personal crime, like criminal charges. And you should have to, when hired for any such supervisory position, sign a one-piece thing that has that law laid out so you can’t claim you didn’t know the law.
In my country (Germany) as an architect or civil engineer you can be held liable, in some cases also as an employee, when deliberately or grossly negligently violating technical rules.
At the end of the day no college fund is more important than peoples lifes, but there exist liability insurance specific to certain jobs. It is similiar to doctors malpractice insurance. Expanding the concept to site supervisors seems reasonable to me.
And of course that must not except the company from liability. It should mainly take effect, when the companies liability cannot cover anymore.
Engineering and architecture are different. It’s our job to make sure the things we design bring no harm to people and we have specialized training allowing us to take that responsibility on.
Site supervisors are often tradespeople, and may not even have the authority to direct health and safety measures on their site if corporate sees otherwise. I agree, they have a responsibility to do so, but it must be started from the top with some coercion by strong regulation. Putting liability personally on supervisors just removes it from the company who likely made the decision to forego supplying water because of cost savings.
Site supervisors… may not even have the authority to direct health and safety measures on their site if corporate sees otherwise.
So what? That’d change real quick if site supervisors became personally liable.
Well, either that, or “corporate” would suddenly be unable to find anybody willing to do the job and go out of business. It’s a win either way!
Putting liability personally on supervisors just removes it from the company
It’s not an either-or. Put the supervisor in prison for a year; put the company execs in prison for 10. There’s plenty of criminal liability to go around!
That’s the key- deliberate or grossly negligent. If a supervisor, through deliberate choice or inexcusable gross negligence, instructs an employee to work in an unsafe manner, I have no problem making that a criminal offense that makes both the company and the supervisor liable.
As a manager of blue collar workers that actually gives a shit about my teams this is the answer unfortunately. Many managers don’t care but will if they’re personally liable.
Set up a monitored tip line where supervisors can tell the govt that management isn’t giving them the proper PPE to protect their workers. That way if management isn’t giving them PPE, supervisors have a place to go turn to instead of being squeezed from both ends. Get an OSHA inspector out on a surprise trip and get upper management fined.
Supervisors need to care about their direct reports first and foremost, over any company demands. One of the best supervisors I’ve ever had gave me therapist recommendations when I mentioned having a tough time with mental health, and she told me she sometimes took personal days for her own mental health. Another supervisor, when I was going through an even more rough period of mental health, told me that his wife had bipolar and they put a lot of time and effort in, together, for her to feel alright.
I felt like I had those guys in my corner, and I knew that if push came to shove, they’d have my back. They may have ultimately been powerless to internal HR policies, but they reaffirmed to me that my health should be my top priority and I needed to put it first.
That’s what it means to have a workplace as a family. The leader truly cares about everyone on the team and has their back.
Well, in this case I’d say split the difference and make it each incident escalates where an incident #1 = “we caught you, we told you”, incident #2 = “we told you yesterday to fix your shit / don’t do it again, 2x fine” rinse repeat. Otherwise you run the risk of bankrupting a small business that had all 10 of their workers in violation, and maybe even not making a dent in a large business that only had 1 out of 1000 workers caught in violation
In addition to per-incident escalation, what I could get on board with are scaled fines based on contract / business size. The first incident is still “survivable” for small businesses but will actually have teeth for those larger ones. And then of course if they keep violating, say bye-bye economic viability.
I agree very much. I think on the low end fines should go down to be survivable for a small business, and we don’t need to fine a big company $100k because someone took their mask off.
But fines should increase steeply by number of offenses, and multiply if management is willfully refusing to provide a safe working environment (IE doesn’t want to pay to have a machine hooked up to water/drain, doesn’t want to pay to have filters cleaned, doesn’t want to pay for masks / goggles / other PPE, etc).
A frustrating outcome. I used to buy 14 day packs of allergy meds and sometimes didn’t qualify to buy more two or even four days after I ran out. I don’t know what aspect of their restrictions allow this to happen, but it’s bullshit. Also, good luck if you’re going overseas for a month and need a full supply. I believe a doc can prescribe a larger supply, but I shouldn’t have to pay more money and time for a doc appointment to get that.
One thing I’ve realized about US healthcare is that it would rather restrict meds from those that need them than to give access to those that would abuse it.
That’s definitely what they’ve done with opioids. You could have your bone sticking out of your arm and they’d call you a drug addict for being surprised when they give you a motrin.
Yes, it’s pseudoephedrine that you want. Somewhat ironic that Sudafed got its brandname from it, but you can’t easily get the original version anymore.
Edited: corrected for availibility of the Sudafed - thanks Blue and Cubby.
You can still get it, you have to go to the pharmacy in the back and give your ID though. Limited to like 5 packs a month which is more than plenty unless you’re making meth with it
Probably in the minority here but I didn’t know that Benadryl straight up doesn’t work as a decongestant. It knocks me the fuck out though, so I wonder if it’s effective at making you drowsy as shit and not much else.
The person you replied to was talking about pseudoephedrine, which is marketed as a decongestant. And boy does it get the job done.
Benedryl (diphenhydramine), on the other hand, is an anti-histimine and it absolutely works for allergic reactions. That said, it’s also marketed as a sleep aid (take a look at the active chemical in things like “ZZZQuil” or drug store brand “sleep aid,” and compare it to the one in Benedryl. Same chemical), and believe me, it works very well for that.
The people voted them into power so they can deal with the consequences. I know, not everyone voted for them, but then again, not everyone voted. Maybe the people will make different choices after suffering the consequences of their voting decisions. If they anger enough of the voter base, there could be some change. Or maybe Louisiana will become Mississippi 2, Electric Boogaloo.
The people voted them into power so they can deal with the consequences.
This is a very black and white perspective. Gerrymandering, candidate fixing, straight up corruption and potential election rigging all complicate the situation.
Maybe it will be enough to alert some of them to those issues? If the effects of corruption are felt more strongly, people may be more vocal about it and realise how many like-minded people there are. Then they may come to wonder how these bills keep getting passed if so many people oppose them.
Or they may keep their heads low for fear of sticking out and becoming the next target, or become dog-in-burning-house impersonators: “This is fine :)”
The only people who will “find out” are those who can’t afford to travel for healthcare. These policies always hurt the lowest socioeconomic brackets first and foremost.
ETA: To be clear, this is a bad thing. These policies are evil and disgusting. Instead of getting mad at the people who may not have even been able to get the time off to vote, let’s be mad at the perps who put up these policies to begin with.
They aren't going to find out. All the people are going to learn is that it is "ThE wOkE LeFt" causing all of these problems with their radical agenda.
Wow! That’s going to save the state of Texas so much money! It’s expensive to house people against their will for enjoying forbidden plants in their own homes. 🙄
Forty. Freaking. One. Why has this country not been in an uproar since the first one? Why did we wait until this many? This is the first I’ve heard about it. Doesn’t surprise me at all, but I had no idea this was happening.
The study ignored people with addictions, people with mental illness, and street entrenched (chronically homeless with nowhere else to go) individuals.
I think what they did was good and is encouraging, but it kind of dilutes its own message that “Homeless people are not what you think!” by ignoring the people who are what everyone thinks of.
“Still, Zhao says having data on how people who did get the money actually spent it is something she thinks will help counteract stereotypes, increase empathy and potentially get skeptics and the public on board with the idea of providing cash transfers.”
right, but its kinds weird to say "lets give these almost-destitute people money in the hopes that it will create empathy to help those that are actually destitute'... like, were So close!
and honestly, watching these programs for a bit now... its not necessarily the exact resources (money/shelter) you give people with these problems. its the social support network you create around them that really lifts them up. the only way out of these pits are continual, supportive human contact
I feel like we are killing ourselves trying to solve the “few bad breaks but totally capable of participating” type of homelessness so that we can ignore the “I will never fit into your society” type of homeless. The solutions for the latter are much harder, both morally and financially.
It’s also politically expedient. The right loves the “worthy homeless bootstrap story” and the left loves that you can blame that homelessness on failures of capitalism. Nobody likes involuntarily committing people to long term inpatient care at public expense.
Some people get a really bad dice roll. Ignoring that doesn’t make it go away. It isn’t fair and we like stuff to be fair.
Or they focused upon what they could potentially help with the resources they had as opposed to larger systemic issues which their resources pale in comparison to. One of those two.
I think the study seemed to want to change the stereotype so I think the parent comment has a point. I would be interesting to see what percentage of people make up those excluded groups. The study mentions it is low but don’t provide numbers. Also, the opposition to current social service argue that the recipients should get drug tested and have jobs to receive them so this seems to support that argument. It would be interesting to hear what Zhao used to exclude people from the study and what could be done to help the outliers.
“People in general don’t trust those in homelessness. We think that when we give homeless people money they’re going to squander it on drugs and alcohol. That’s a deeply ingrained distrust and I think it’s unfair and it’s not true,” Zhao told CTV News
just to clarify, the study provides numbers, it’s just the article that does not
45% of participants were excluded for a score >= 6 on the DAST-10 drug abuse screening test, 13% were excluded for score >= 20 on the AUDIT alcohol use disorders identification test, and 26% were excluded for psychiatric symptoms according to the colorado symptom index
in total 229 of 732 participants passed all screening criteria (additional criteria: age 19 to 65, homeless for less than 2 years, canadian citizen or permanent dresident)
It’s important to note that a housing-first approach is the gold standard for care. Getting people off the street into a safe, stable, living environment then allows everything else to follow.
If handing out cash gets that to happen, hey, it’s money we’ll spent. But I’m guessing… just handing a wad of cash doesn’t help as much as we might think- even if that is a few months rent.
It’s a multifaceted problem and will require multiple solutions to address. Those are always the most difficult solutions because they’re expensive up front and may not show results immediately.
I just wanted to say this is the kind of comments that make Lemmy better than reddit! I had to dig to the very bottom of the reddit post for someone to point this out versus this being the top comment on Lemmy.
Note: I am all for helping homeless people, but excluding information in the title makes this seem like ‘if we give every homeless person $7,500 we can solve homelessness!’ I wish that was the case, but homelessness is a much more complicated issue
I think what they did do in the study was great. They found that the vast majority of homeless people are there because of temporary circumstances, and that money is a direct fix for many people.
But the conclusion they drew is a bit simplistic. Presumably they will need to try other interventions in the groups not studied - such as addiction programs for those struggling with addictions - to fully serve this population.
Here’s the thing … we don’t actually do anything to help unhoused people so why not try something like this? Too bad for us that we make money more important that human life.
40+ years ago some economists got together and created a study on guaranteed income. It worked, but unfortunately no one continued it because we’ve become so entrenched in the ideology of Reagan/Thatcher (article here).
Yeah, it’s already hard enough not to struggle with mental health as is, even in materially good conditions, and then you add onto that losing everything and being forced to live on the streets with everything that brings? Maybe without even having any form for food security?
You are in a straight up survival situation. And it may be especially painful because you’re not alone out in the wilderness…
You’re surrounded by people. Many of whom are very well off. You are surrounded by people who have a home, food, luxuries, and everything, and you cannot have any of that. You’re not allowed to, by society.
It’s a goddamn nightmare. No fucking shit people struggle or just straight up break. I would too.
At the same time, is isn’t fair to say all homeless people are the same and lump someone who lost their job then had a medical emergency and can’t dig out with someone who is severely mentally ill with no access to the kind of mental health services they need. There are different reasons that people might be homeless and the way they handle an infusion of cash will sometimes differ. Yes, a person with a heroin addiction might spend money on heroin. Does that mean we should just let all homeless people rot?
Not at all. I think a good program would include financial assistance and social worker involvement for all homeless people, along with addiction resources for those who struggle with it.
They also mention that the majority of homeless aren’t that. So this is a nuanced story I think. We may be able to help the majority of the homeless simply by giving them money and/or housing. But for the ones suffering from addiction, mental illness, or entrenched homeless, this won’t be a magic bullet. It will probably take drug and mental health counciling. It probably won’t completely get rid of homeless, and the ones it won’t help are the most visible and most problematic.
But we can’t let perfect be the enemy of good. And we already know our current approach is not even to the level of good.
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