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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 14th, 2023

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  • I have worked hard to remind some of the Trump-voting Massholes I have the pleasure of interacting with on a regular basis of this. I think I’ve made inroads with at least one of them. I also make sure to bring this up:

    “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy.”

    Trump committed negligent homicide in blue states for political gain.








  • It’s not a Ponzi scheme because withdrawals and deposits are scheduled and mandatory. You don’t get into a situation where investors lose faith and ask for money that you don’t have because that’s not allowed. You get your money when you reach the requisite age. You also don’t get into a situation where you run out of investors because it’s a mandatory payroll tax.

    Essentially the only issue facing social security is the fact that since 1974, wage growth has become decoupled from productivity gains, meaning the payroll tax that funds social security captures a smaller proportion of business revenue over time - because businesses spend less of their revenue on payroll than they used to.

    Social security doomerism of the type on display here is a tacit acceptance of conservative propaganda on the subject. The government is fully capable of indefinitely maintaining a pension fund, we just have to stop accepting the lie that it isn’t.


  • I’m not going to tell you all the things you mentioned are impossible. I’ve read your other comments too. I’ve seen homeless women crying in the street, people with obvious mental or physical problems begging. Homelessness - visible homelessness - is terribly common. As far as crime goes, I don’t know, maybe people target tourists? My rental car visibly full of luggage was broken into in San Jose once, and they stole a bunch of electronics. Learned my lesson on that one. Apart from that I’ve wandered around some rough areas on occasion and in 36 years I’ve never been victimized in person.

    Anyway, one last point: according to official stats, the rate of homelessness in Australia is nearly 3x that in the US, although I imagine that Australia probably counts homelessness differently, so it’s hard to compare, but 3x seems like a big difference for simple differences in methodology to account for. That said, I’m sure Australia has better services, so it may not be as visible to the average person, and less of a struggle for those experiencing homelessness. Hard for me to believe things are all that much better in the land of Murdoch, though.