U.S. Depression Rates Reach New Highs

People publicly display their support for Biden as well: https://cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tbt/DW.... Worth noting that this photo was from an article about how neighbors get along despite voting and supporting different politicians.

> even after his terrible behavior

I presume that you could equally have voted for Bill Clinton without approving of his infidelity or Obama without approving of his extrajudicial killing of American citizens. A vote for a politician does not imply that you condone everything about that person.

> I worry for the safety of my family

I don't know where you are, but for what it's worth, I am a visible ethnic minority living in stereotypically conservative Deep South state where virtually every state and local office is held by a Republican; I have neighbors of many different colors and creeds and I do not feel unsafe.

It's actually kind of funny -- I used to live in a major coastal metropolis of the kind where BLM signs were on every other lawn, yet approximately zero black people actually lived in the nice parts of town with those lawn signs. Here, there are approximately zero BLM signs, but plenty of white and black people living as neighbors, friends, and coworkers.

> inflation means despite me having a six figure job we have to pinch pennies

Since we're talking about presidents, I have to point out that the CPI rose 7.8% during Trump's four-year term and 15.6% during Biden's term so far, a little over two years in.

How many have you seen? How many have you 'seen' on social media?

As for laws, I really think you're missing the bigger picture. Anti-LGBT people had the law on their side a few years ago much more than today (and accordingly, they had less reason to protest.)

As far as general sexuality, the keyword you can look for is 'sexual fluidity', and as far as pedophiles are concerned, Mashall's "Are pedophiles treatable?" covers current approaches that seem to be successful in attenuating or replacing attraction to children.

>Aversion conditioning is understood to change behavior more than desire

Behavior and desire have a complex relationship, it's not necessarily the case that behavior follows from desire.

>And many people do not develop a taste for leafy greens or heterosexuality after decades.

Many people don't, but some do, and my comment concerns the 'some', hence my saying 'occasionally'.

> it doesn't even guarantee everyone a job

> everyone who has a job has a very real opportunity to make themselves a comfortable life

I want to go further on this point. There have been plenty of empirical studies evidencing the Econ 101 maxim that a government-imposed price floor causes a surplus, and conversely a price ceiling a shortage. A minimum wage is a price floor on labor that causes a surplus of it, meaning unemployed people. Rent control is a price ceiling on housing that causes a shortage of it, meaning people on waiting lists for affordable housing. So on and so forth; in every case it's great for the people in the system, and terrible for the people outside.

There's a second-order effect to this, especially deleterious in the case of the minimum wage, which is that the young and the marginalized take the brunt of the impact of missing out on the upskilling, networking, and building experience that comes from having a job, even if it pays very poorly, maybe not even for the necessities of life, let alone the enjoyment of it. So over time, the difference between the ones who were lucky enough to get in and the ones who were unemployed because the economic value of their labor was less than the minimum wage broadens, and you run the risk of the latter group becoming a permanently unemployable underclass.

In other words: even a shitty, poorly-paying job is likely to be better for the employee over the long run than no job at all; and because of this, a high minimum wage is likely to result in an unintentional increase in the disparity of outcomes between the haves and the have-nots.