scarabic

Two assassination plots though, and that was before his presidency was assured. I’m not hoping, I’m not calling for it. But the impulse definitely seems to be out there to pop a cap in this man.

It would be really interesting watching Vance try to carry on Trumpism without Trump. He’s already strained to convert himself into an angry, insane Trumpian after starting out in quite a different place. Could he continue dancing if the music stopped?

Your post points to the answer.

If people’s absolute essentials could be guaranteed: housing, healthcare, education, and food, then all the “advantages” would only affect the bonus region above that where wealth and privilege reside.

The problem is that it’s very possible for those life essentials to be threatened because other people have wealth and privilege.

If there was just a floor on this damn thing we could stop talking about all this. But American culture dictates that that floor must be squarely below the point of dignity and deprivation, so that people don’t get comfortable. Because we can’t have that. Ever. Because it’s a moral hazard to the soul. Unless you’re born rich. Then you can have comfort for free, and there’s magically no moral hazard to your soul somehow.

I bought my first home half with money I’d saved by working, and half with some money I inherited from my grandparents. I was also able to buy with only 10% down because it was 2005, leading up to the sub-prime mortgage scandal, and they were giving out mortgages very easily.

Fast forward some years.

I reluctantly rented my place out for a couple of years because I needed to move myself and the mortgage was underwater following the 2006 crash caused by all those sub prime mortgages. I rented to a nice couple and although I gave them a very attractive rent and treated them as well as possible, there was no question that their rent money got me through that housing crisis and eventually allowed me to sell at a significant profit instead of losing my ass.

When I sold, I offered my renters a deal to move out. They took it, and said that they were buying their own place as they had inherited a small amount recently.

For me this was a perfect example of how, just because my grandparents died a few years before theirs, I was their landlord and not the other way around. I got protection for my investment on their dollar. And once they too got the benefit of inheritance, they were able to graduate to the next level themselves.

Years later I’ve remained a homeowner and am sitting on multiple millions in equity from all the appreciation during that time. My remaining mortgage payments are about 1/3 of what it would cost to rent the same home. My wife’s younger siblings, by contrast, can’t even afford to buy under any circumstances because the market is so high. And of course lending standards are much more strict now.

For me this is a perfect example of generational advantage. Here I am sitting pretty just because I’m 10 years older than them, while they have to move out of state just to get a start.

Anyone who thinks this is a fair and equal opportunity economy is a damn fool. As long as you are competing against people who have advantages you don’t, it doesn’t matter whether your theoretical opportunities are equal. You’re going to lose and wind up in servitude of those who won.

Heh yeah wouldn’t that be a hoot if your ISP offered you a laptop at $5-800 discount for signing up?

I guess this is where we fall down for having near zero competition in the home ISP space. There are multiple wireless companies competing for our business but few Americans have much choice in their broadband. FCC corruption aside, it’s just easier for multiple companies to stand up cell towers than for multiple companies to rip up your street to lay fiber.

If we could get 100% of people to do anything then the world would be a utopia tomorrow. Spoiler: that isn’t going to happen.

To keep it on point here, /u/Anticorp got yelled at above for saying that COVID is here to stay, as if this is some apathetic, defeated attitude.

I would posit that any hopes and dreams predicated on getting literally everyone to do literally anything are laughably naive and not even worth discussing.

Might be yeah. Some of it is getting people in the door who then buy another model. Some of it is getting new people into the ecosystem. Their MacOS business is tiny compared to iOS these days. I scratch my head a lot wondering what they’ll do with it long term.

It’s really, really needed badly in this situation /s

Interesting… the comment I read right before this one was amazed it’s possible to kill 35 and injure 43 with one vehicle attack. Killing hundreds… now that’s one determined rampage with a hell of a capable vehicle through a perfect scenario of multiple dense crowds of people standing still.

Totally agree on distrust of CCP but we can also apply reason.

Perhaps there are levels of crowding in China that are unlike anything I see on a daily basis. This could be part of it.

The knife attack killed 8 and injured 17 more. A physically capable person going nuts in a dense crowd… it’s conceivable.

But you’re right these are tragic figures.

Age of “unprosecutable rape” is more like it.

Maybe people who lived in red states developed this notion that no one put in the effort but where I live we certainly did on a large scale and it did not eliminate the virus. Other cultures who already had a healthy practice of masking when sick still got hit with COVID. This notion that we could have eliminated it if people had just put in a tiny effort… I don’t know where y’all are getting that from.