701–710 of 859 posts
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Yeah, that's weird in perspective. Snapchat's valuation doesn't give them buying power, but Apple has nearly 200B cash on hand -- they could theoretically buy and close down all of these manufacturers and test the hypothesis that Big Gun is causing all the shootings.
Theoretically, could Apple buy S&W and…just shut it down? Would the government allow it? Curious…
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I'm fairly convinced that having to do things as you described was better for mental health as well. The always on, always connected lifestyle has big downsides.
Driving with a map was better than how it is now? We're 10 years from having the damn thing drive itself for us. I suck at directions, I can imagine without the internet I would just avoid drives to places I wasn't familiar with and miss out on a bunch of things.
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How did the rich get trillions to prop up their assets?
Tax cuts for companies, increased government spending to boost stock markets, state subvenventions, significantly lower interest rate than inflation.
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>Isn't that kind of podunk scale for an industry to have a rock solid hold on US politics? Not when a Constitutional Amendment makes that industry "too big to fail" because its thesis on the necessity of the right to keep and bear arms depends on there being an industry manufacturing arms to begin with (at least at modern scale,) and when the industry overwhelmingly supports one political party, driving animosity wit…
The individual right to keep and bear arms is a natural right of all free people. It doesn't depend on the existence of the small arms industry. When the US Constitution was written there was hardly even an industry; most firearms were craft built.
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> So.. how does that imply that people are worse off now than in 1970? Your entire thesis seems to be that the jealousy people will feel from seeing others have things they don't will outweigh all of the material gains of the last half century. The point is that there are many things you are now required to have to meaningfully participate in society, that were just not required in 1970. For example, to get vaccinate…
> to get vaccinated in my country for COVID, you need to access a web page, sign up using email, and you'll get an SMS notification when your registration is accepted. I guarantee you that if you live in the developed world there are alternate pathways to getting vaxxed. > someone who can't afford a mobile phone and internet connection may be poor in 2021, even if people without an internet connection or mobile phone…
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> How much did an internet connection cost in the 1970s? What about a computer? What about a smartphone? This is the elitist fallacy that somehow having access cheap smartphones and plastics mostly manufactured in China at the back of our working class jobs make your life better while all else indicates life expectancy and quality of life across the board is declining for majority of Americans. Many Americans includi…
The causes of decreasing life expectancy are fairly well understood and have little to do with the economy. We know many young people are dying early deaths of despair. We can make mental health easier to access (there’s a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy just to get pills for well understood mental illnesses). We can help folks avoid drug overdoses. One piece of low hanging fruit is to make opioids over the counter —…
Real wages have been flat since the 1970s ( https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us... ). "Okay, so people's living standards are about the same since 1970?" Not even close. The problem with inflation is that its calculation is fraught with all kinds of selective weighting, bias, and politics. Take a look at the relative differences between the things which have decreased and increased in cost in…
Honestly I do not know how people are getting by given the cost of everything has gotten dramatically more expensive the past few years. In southern California gas is $5 a gallon, groceries usually are $200-300 a week for three people. Housing is beyond insane, every single family house in our city is now above $1M(you could find dozens of houses in the $800k-900k range a year and a half ago). This is not sustainable…
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Yes they were
The minimum wage went up to $1.45/hr in Feb, 1970. 2000 hours of that would be $2900. I used the following assumptions: 7.5% fixed-30, median house $17K, down payment of 20%. That was unaffordable by a factor of almost 2x. The house that seemed affordable with no car payment was a little over $9K (down payment of $1800). Adding in a $50/mo car payment took the affordable house down to a little over $8K, less than hal…
Wage: $7.25/h
per-month affordable: $362.50
median home price: $374,900
3.519% fixed, 30-yr
20% down
required monthly payment -> $1,350
In fairness, the comment chain you're responding to is talking about the thing you're responding to in your comment, but I think the increase in unaffordability at the minimum wage still speaks to the problem: while it wasn't likely to allow home ownership in the past, but it's even less possible now, and that translates up into the higher wages where people then might have afforded a home, but cannot now.
Plenty of maps have been drawn to show that minimum wage can't even afford to rent median 1-bed apartments.
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Yeah, that's weird in perspective. Snapchat's valuation doesn't give them buying power, but Apple has nearly 200B cash on hand -- they could theoretically buy and close down all of these manufacturers and test the hypothesis that Big Gun is causing all the shootings.
Theoretically, could Apple buy S&W and…just shut it down? Would the government allow it? Curious…