Lower earners do get pretty good care in states like California with MediCal. The problem is a) it isn’t federal, so some states they don’t invest get worse care and b) you can fall onto a band of making too much for public health care and too little for real insurance.

Nothing I’ve written should be taken as an endorsement. Medicare should be extended to all. With no means testing.

Eh, that’s overstating it. It still is a stupidly rich country and professional working Americans tend to make more money than their European counterparts, even considering healthcare.

But yes, tying healthcare to employment comes with all sorts of problems and lets too many people not “poor enough” for Medicare to slip through the cracks. In my experience with a state Medicare system that gets good funding, the public system actually holds up quite well when looking at many of the European systems, at least here in central Europe where I live now… simply extending that to everyone would basically fix the problem. I’ve had good dental work, a fantastic pre natal and birth experience along with mending broken bones and such under a public system with no cost to me and honestly my experience was great.

I often lose track when people jump into conversation like that…

I was appreciating what you added to the conversation at first, but man… giving a bad faith one line response to a long, well thought out comment, now being unable to admit a mistake without passive aggressively implying it’s the others person’s fault you didn’t read thoroughly…

I guess I do appreciate knowing who to block before I need to personally interact with them.

There are also plants specifically adapted for wildfires. Sequoias (and I think redwoods) need them to open their cones and they can’t propagate in their own leaf litter, they need to be cleared by fire.

Yup, it actually empowers them. Every time we see someone get fired for some completely dickish stuff they’ve done or said, the next day we see a go fund me worth tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars from cretins living vicariously through them.

I’m not going to find them now, but if you’re interested, there are a lot of studies that look at how money moves through the economy and which dollars are more impactful. While dollars saved do get reinvested in a roundabout way, their economic impact is pennies on the dollar compared to direct spending or investment into business. It’s just far better for any market economy to prevent dollars from pooling into savings beyond simple prudence and is far better to put them directly to work via spending.

Well, sort of. Fascism is more precisely a marriage of nationalism and a police state with a corporatocracy where one aids the other in their goals. Which you could definitely argue is what’s happening in the US, but isn’t really what my point was (and certainly shouldn’t be read as an endorsement!).

But yeah, that deal with devil is definitely a complicity. They’ve been willing to hand vast amounts of money, and rights, to the ruling class because they’re been being paid very well to do so. And I don’t see revolution happening until there’s either a critical mass of people reaching starvation levels of poverty, or the middle class sees all that wealth they traded their rights for evaporate.

Even from a capitalist perspective this makes sense. Money pooling at the top is money not moving through the economy; 100% taxes encourage reinvestment and philanthropy to avoid the tax.

But that number is “only” ~25 million out of over 340 million, or about 7% give or take (double checked my numbers; slightly off, but still under 10%). And they’re likely in the worst position to do anything politically because they’re too busy surviving. There is a crisis of under insured, but most people don’t feel that pressure until it becomes a real problem, then they’re in the group that is too busy surviving to enact change. For most Americans, that disposable income number includes healthcare. There’s just a stupid amount of money in that country. And while there’s a huge gap and most goes to the top, enough goes to the middle class to keep them pacified.

I’m definitely not endorsing the US system; it’s a system of haves and have nots and embraces a wealth divide and can be pretty bleak. But most Americans just aren’t feeling as much of a financial punch as the complaints might let on.

(This isn’t to invalidate Americans who are struggling… been there, been homeless, it’s awful. But middle class America, even by European standards, is pretty ridiculously wealthy.)

Honestly? The average and median American still has I think the highest disposable income in the world even after accounting for cost of living short of places like Luxembourg. While they’re complaining, rightly, about their lot being worse compared to years past, most of them aren’t feeling a sort of financial squeeze that’s usually needed for that kind of revolutionary action yet.

The US has made a sort of deal with devil that’s still mostly paying off for the average citizen. Until the middle class specifically really feel the squeeze, and not just compared to themselves historically, I don’t see any revolutionary action happening.

Amount I’d say no, the US has been very car centric since the 50s and that was firmly established by the 80s. Size is probably a fair point, much more SUVs by the 90s. I still think in the vast majority of cases this is more a matter of the 24 hour news cycle making parents afraid of abductions and the like despite an all time low.

Honestly these comics really kind of annoy me and I’m glad to see comments seem to grasp the problem better. It doesn’t really have anything to do with kids… in this economy where you have to work your dog ass off, any greater responsibility, no matter how rewarding it is, will feel like this at times.

I will say I think both sides of this particular question can be equally obnoxious.

I’m sure there are some areas where it truly is unsafe, but IMO most people who think this really just aren’t giving their kids enough credit. Especially in the US, city design and prevalence of high speed roads hasn’t changed significantly from back when this was more normal.

They really didn’t grasp at all the sweetheart deal they had with the EU… other countries would have killed for that.

It reminds me so much of the Americans complaining about their position in NATO and the “world policeman” that they fought tooth and nail to get because of the huge amounts of soft power it grants in negotiations and generally shaping world policy.

The irony of a Republican working to undo that… Kissinger’s gotta be able to power a small country with how fast he’s spinning. Ultimately, good for the world in the end, but another pretty hilarious example of a nation misinterpreting a boon as an albatross around the neck and shooting themselves in the foot by getting rid of it lol. Rhymes so much with Brexit.

Possible, but I think he is Hitler in the bunker at this point that still thinks Steiner can come support him in retaking Berlin. By all reports, the entire head of Fidesz was completely and totally blindsided by the loss, they had built so many yes men around them the idea was inconceivable. I think most have realized the music has stopped now, but Orban still hasn’t. I think he still imagines himself leading a glorious comeback. I think him being too egotistical to leave means Fidesz is going to die as everyone else leaves the sinking ship… unfortunately, the most likely lifeboat for them to scurry to is… Mi Hazank, which has already been courting them and is a much more explicitly hard right party. So Hungary may go from having a center right kleptocrat with a milquetoast center left opposition that was toothless, to having a center right [question mark on politics beyond that] with a hard right opposition.

Could be totally wrong, maybe he just steps away and Fidesz remains the core opposition for the right, but there are concerning signs that won’t be the case.

Not true. I’ve had my eye on a pair for awhile that has no camera, only microphone, but has a HUD. Having navigation, an irl minimap, without having to keep your phone out is nice and has some actual positive safety implications. Also, this might mean less to Americans, but as someone living in Europe, having in line translation is really, really cool. Could almost sell it on that alone. I’ve heard some deaf folks are also using it to help understand people by augmenting their lip reading (which usually doesn’t get all of the information across by itself) with summaries that the mic picked up.

I’ve only held off because the pair I was looking at seem like it isn’t quite there yet in reliability, but there are definitely some pretty big use cases I can think of. I would 100% get some of these without a camera.

I’m really interested in the non-cam models. There’s a set out there now that has a HUD with notifications, navigation, translation on the fly, notes for meetings, etc.

The recording audio surreptitiously could be… problematic, but I think somewhat less than video and the in-line translation is legitimately useful and cool feature.

I’ve also been saying for years that augmented reality games could have some real potential, especially for getting exercise while playing games… imagining like running through a field competing with other players collecting coins or a cycle path. Not sure some cool games is worth the tradeoff of having cameras everywhere though. I’d definitely support legislation that says a visible light needs to be on when recording anything.

Same, I’d never slight anyone for choosing otherwise, it’s a complicated choice with a lot that goes into it, but I do think society should give everyone that choice and there are definite benefits to it.

Very well said, very kind words!

Then why do we “need” age verification?

Apparently we do in fact have more privacy than some would like…

Eh, I see what you’re saying, but I think there’s always going to be a market for second hand hardware. And what new phone they decide to get, which might not necessarily be Google, isn’t going to be influenced by the purchaser, I don’t think.

Unless you do like people with iPhones do and you still pay premium prices for used phones… that I could see incentivizing Google specifically as holding value becomes a reason to buy them, as is true with Apple. But I don’t think eliminating the incentive for a second hand market altogether is really reasonably possible, personally. May as well pull a Google phone out of the ecosystem and deGoogle it. Who knows? Maybe you sell it yourself years down the line to someone needing a very cheap phone and end up introducing someone else to nonGoogle or Apple OS’s.