PPS - the money saved by investing in services goes straight back into the economy -- it gets *spent* in the private sector. This fuels growth, as even a right wing economist has to admit. (Most of those who say we should go all libertarian get stuck on the issue of motivation; oh, the Calvinism!)
PS - investing in public child care --which my own family benefitted *hugely* from back in the 70s -- is also an effective wage increase. So is public transit -- there's a time cost, but were I driving to work I'd be losing $50-100 a month in gas + $200.month in insurance.
This is despite the reality that we as USians pay a ton more in "taxes" to the private sector for services that are by any measure inferior to the public services provided even by some developing nations. /end
At ev ery step, Americans have left themselves -or rather, our leaders have left us -- with no solutions other than ones that are marginal at the very best. And it's why the rhetoric of "my taxes are too high" is such low hanging fruit /5
You could build a ton of housing as was done in the 50s, with all the knowledge we've gained about urban planning, and invest in infrastructure (which would provide better jobs and once again, boost incomes across the board). Nope! /4
Or you could have a more robust labor movement forcing wage increases, including people at the bottom end. But the US managed to destroy that. Or you cold have a system that encourages higher-on-the-value chain jobs, But we don't do that either. /3
As in, as workers' wages lose ground to the very wealthiest, one could invest in something like health care (via, for example, Medicare for all) and that's effectively a wage increase (since you aren't losing money to insurance as much). But that doesn't happen in the US /2
There's a whole thing you could get into about the relative fairness of various tax schemes, but a lot of this misses a crucial bit: if wages don't rise over time, and there's no investment in public services, the only way to increase incomes is fiddling with the tax code. (short thread) /1
So is there still anywhere hosting them?
Michael, the American ethos is to celebrate immigrants in sepia tones (as long as the immigrants are "white") -- others are, well, "others" and therefore a problem.
The Heritage foundation has long been Klansmen with better suits and larger vocabulary.
Whiteness is a hell of a drug, as they say.
I'm surprised, honestly that he's still working (I'd have retired already, lol). I still remember The Pleasure Principle, and how wild that sounded to teenage me.
(It dawned on me that I am old, surly and decrepit, and artists like Numan had and have a hopeful vision that seems so... lost?).
Hypothesis: The number n' of links to Lasker: n' is proportional to unironic use of the term "priors" + number of times the person refers to themselves as "rational/ rationalist."
“Listen up, I am not talking over people today.”
I wonder if the people who voted for this atrocity read the original German.
A few years back I started referring to anyone who calls women “females” as a Ferengi.
YES. The techies refuse to acknowledge anything like basic humanity, and every. single. one. of these monsters deserves none of our compassion or humanity since they are so eager to throw it in the garbage. I wish I could re-institute shunning as a consequence to all of Silicon Valley.
I finally lost my shit about so-called AIs, LLMs, enshittification & everything fucking evil that @officialgrammarly.bsky.social is doing. I'm fucking furious, and not just about what 1 company has done. An open letter to Grammarly & the rest of the LLM hype machine www.moryan.com/an-open-lett...
And as importantly, visit horror on a country that many Americans have been conditioned to see as the enemy for decades, and that had the temerity to tell us "no."
(All of Trump's cultural references, such as they are, date to ca. 1985, so IMO this tracks).
Lower Decks was the only Trek show to
a) have unironic *fun* and
b) talk about class in the ST universe in a for-real way
I think it opened up a lot of storytelling possibilities, honestly, that the other shows didn't seize on nearly as much.
Yeah, when my dad rented out the two apartments in our building (a New England three decker) he wanted long term tenants because people moving in and out was a hassle as much as anything, so he kept rent stable. (Have to say I learned a ton about home repair in the process).
That's a funny thing about when I read old X-Men now -- as a kid they are power fantasies, and as an adult you see the problems there but also think, "wow these folks are much younger than I am now," and wish they'd listen to advice lol.
Like, maybe it's also 45 years of perspective -- I first read this as an 11-year old -- I think it hits me in some really interesting ways now, when I think of moral choices. I can see the flaws in Claremont's setup, but at the same time I see very young people grappling with something *huge*
I read this when it came out. It was a big goddamned deal -- issues got sold out crazy fast, and at that time X-Men was Marvel's best selling title (and *the* best selling comics title).
While the theme of women and power has its issues, I think even reading it now the story hits some great beats.
I wonder if Powell read an old piece (I wish I could dig it up now; haven't the time/energy) that the crazy socialists at the WSJ did back in oh, 2004? 2005? - a study on why few make gains on their home; post 1990s it was harder to build wealth with it. I recall it was a real eye-opener for me.
I can't get past the paywall (and don't want to, really) but there's a very real difference between simple home ownership and being a landlord (I mean, my leftist parents did both!).
So I think at some level some things can be forgiven a tad tho I think you are writing pop sci books it behooves you to keep up with where the fields you write about are more recently than 30 years back.
(I have an Astro text by Payne-Gaposchkin, from 1948- think how wrong it is on many things!)
That makes sense, though Sagan’s book came out before then- it was published in 1985.
Probably they did not (I worked in a library and we didn’t- too much to do!) but that sounds about right for out of date-ness. I mean I am old enough to recall when all of them got a bit of press. The DM disc was one idea from about the 90s? Correct me if I am wrong about the timing.
Is this because of Sagan’s book Comet? I recall he posited that small disturbances could create comet showers, and that the K-pg might have been such, but that was what, almost 40 years ago.
(To be fair most people’s astronomy /planetary science knowledge is about that vintage, IME)
David Landes wrote a great book on the invention of watches and clocks - Revolution in Time. Gets into a bit of why clocks were on towers in the center of town, initially, and how bad some of those early ones were.
