I'd argue that the greater risk of things falling apart is economic rather than political. We've built our society on two near-ponzi schemes that are in danger of falling apart. The first is pension funds which are paid into by current workers to pay out for past workers. Pension funds inherently depend on population growth to avoid shortfalls. They rely on the fact that more people pay into them then take out from t…
I think the ponzi-scheme is the lie of eternal growth with finite resources (real estate included) combined with the "trickle-down" narrative. It's a pyramid scheme in the sense that it will collapse by its sheer weight before the "trickle-down" effect reaches a critical mass of the population, but those at the top will be very well-off by then anyway. It's maybe just a parameterization problem (wrong initiatives).
> We need to swing back to a more US focused economy. > Cheaper medical, education, housing is what other 95% could use. Eds, meds, and beds can't be outsourced, which is why they're increasingly too expensive for workers. Fix the first problem above and the second will follow.
> Eds, meds, and beds can't be outsourced, which is why they're increasingly too expensive for workers. Fix the first problem above and the second will follow. Education has been forcefully disrupted, by the institutions themselves no less: Zoom School proved what most of us knew all along, most institutions are just costly degree mills with little to no emphasis on truly educated their students. I personally attend…
3d printed houses are a silly idea. Cost of construction is not the problem, the problem is zoning, NIMBY, low interest rates, and tax policies that favor long-term owners.
Organized religion is a different kind of societal harm, where personal religion can be good or bad, organized religion will always be a net negative.
Organized religion helped to defeat Communism, and tempered dictatorial control of many despots in the middle east. So your statement is far removed from reality.
Seems to me it would be more accurate to say that dictatorial despots helped temper organized religion.
If you ask me, humanity could really use some unifying influence right about now, for example to help tackle the issue of climate change...
The issue of climate change, among other issues, is being used to promote unity and one world government. But it doesn't follow that this approach is best to climate change or anything else. We need variation in policies and technologies in order to select the best approach (and not get locked in to a sub-optimal approach). One world government is bad because it will attract evil elements who use it to place all peop…
Currently, on climate change this variation is some countries doing nothing, others doing worse than nothing (e.g. encouraging mass deforestation, as in Brazil), and some countries doing a little more than nothing, but saying they are doing enough when compared to those who are doing nothing or worse, and that they can't afford to do more because it would put them at a disadvantage to the others. So this is less about "selecting the best approach" and more a race to the bottom of how little one can do while still pretending to care (or alternatively keep denying that the problem even exists and do nothing).
It got complicated when the steel mills went bankrupt and the pensions were taken over by federal agencies. The bankrupt company, in this case, was paying more for pensioners than what the federal agencies paid. I'm not entirely clear on why this was, but it may have been that they were not fully insured or that promises made by the steel mills were not backed by anything. In these cases, some pensioners actually had…
PBGC, government body that back stops is mentioned.
Yes, the backstop isn’t 100% and has a cap, but the pension is will never go “broke”.
I believe the coverage is something like 60% up to $64k/yr.
Do you have a source? I wonder if that covers all pensions or just public pensions? Or if that requirement is newer and didn't exist when the companies went under 50 or so years ago.
It was actually John Money who formed the basis of modern so-called Gender Theory by his twisted experiments on twin boys who he abused so thoroughly that they ended up taking their own lives. Check out the book "As Nature Made Him: The Boy who was Raised as a Girl" by John Colapinto
Some in the modern medical establishment appear to have taken his cue and ran with it, to similarly horrifying outcomes, e.g. https://4w.pub/tiktok-gender-doctor-per-breast-removal-on-13...
Many of these "doctors" are also trans themselves. It's disgusting that they prey on children.
Are you having a conversation with yourself? Your posts follow an uncommon, yet identical formatting and phrasing
No. I copied the person I was replying to's formatting because I thought it improved readability, and if there is any similarity in phrasing, it is coincidental.
Is this sarcasm? It's truly laughable if you don't think boomers had a clear advantage in comparison to Millennials, Gen X, etc; I'm sorry you didn't reap the benefits of the most benevolent time in America's history but plenty of your Boomer counter-parts sure as hell did. I've met enough Boomers that there is nothing wrong with generalizing Boomers as a whole. Just like a huge percentage of my generation totally ga…
'I've met enough __________ that there is nothing wrong with generalizing about ________ as a whole. Every last __________ are __________. You have no perspective, self awareness, nor understanding of economics and history so you blame it on boomers. The prosperity you talk of included smaller homes, built to different code, with a population of 205 million not 330, at a time with huge unemployment and high interest…
Don't forget the Vietnam draft (that's a big one) and the closing of factories and farms, computerization and automation went from 0-100 in the 80s, and the OPEC oil crisis where you had to wait in line for hours to get enough gas (if you were lucky) to even get to work. Speaking of, you know how soul sucking working in a factory is, day in, day out? I don't but I can only imagine. Big union busting under Reagan, pension stealing by corporate raiders, and social safety nets were cut pretty hard in the 80s as well. Oh yea and the whole looming Cold War, nuclear winter, getting your skin burnt off at any time. People are beginning to get a taste of that again. That's no fun either.
Organized religion helped to defeat Communism, and tempered dictatorial control of many despots in the middle east. So your statement is far removed from reality.
> Organized religion helped to defeat Communism The cold war propaganda was ratcheted down some time after Gen X; to a super-majority of under-30s, even conservative ones, this probably sounds more like a knave's laugh line than a sincerely held belief.
If that's the case, they have no clue what they're talking about. The Pope literally helped to organize and support the main opposition Solidarity movement.
With many churches across the world actively working to end it.