You will end up paying the share of taxes to your state government that you currently do to the federal government. If the federal government collapses, all 50 states are now de facto independent. Those states can now start forming a new country or new collection of countries as they will.

Even better, add emotions!

Season with salt until it tastes angry.

I prefer milligallons myself.

Microacres^(3/2)

And by that, I mean that Hollywood seems to place something related to lgbtq in nearly every show, and so “culture” here means tv/movies/games

LGBT people are something like 10-20% of the population. It would be insane for them to not be in a movie that has more than a handful of cast members. Why do you want your movies to show some weird unrealistic version of reality, one where queer people are just mysteriously absent? That’s pretty fucked up.

I mean, sure, I could maybe see the argument for a period piece. Maybe it’s not too realistic to have a bunch of out queer characters in a drama set in Elizabethan England. But in something modern? Again, one in ten to one in five people is queer to some degree or another. Statistically speaking, if you select a cast at random of anything other than a handful of people, you’re going to have some queer people in that sample.

Why do you want your movies/games to be less diverse than reality? Do you really need to live out some straight fetishistic fantasy that badly?

The reason studios put LGBT content in movies and games is that a lot of people in the real world, aka their customers, are LGBT. If a studio rarely if ever did so, they would quickly and rightfully be labeled as “that bigoted studio that likes to pretend queer people don’t exist.”

Yup. Raise the income cap. That’s all you have to do.

The last time Social Security was majorly reformed was back in the 1980s. They did it specifically to handle the pressures the Baby Boomers would be putting on the system. They set it on a path then, that while not as progressive as anyone on the left would like, was financially sustainable. But when planning something like that, it’s a big demographic puzzle. When trying to plan a system for decades into the future, you have to assume a certain population pyramid and income distribution. They set the income cap then at a level where 90% of the income earned in the country would be subject to Social Security tax. We’ve had similar economic growth to what they estimated; we’re not poorer, in terms of raw GDP, than we should be. What’s changed is the income distribution. More of the nation’s income is earned by those at the top. So now only 80% of the income or so earned is subject to the tax. In reality, we should just eliminate it entirely. Let all income be subject to it. If that ends up with billionaires paying a fortune in to Social Security and receiving a relative pittance of benefit in return, so be it.

Is there really a difference? If Democrats are willing to vote for anti-trans bills, then on that issue, they’re no different than Republicans. At that point, they’re just saying, “well, we support extermination, but we have pronouns in our bios, so it’s OK!”

I voted for the Dems in 2024. And honestly, I wish I hadn’t. I was disgusted by their stance on Palestine, but I figured at least they would support trans people against conservative extermination efforts.

For my vote and vocal support, how did Dems reward me? Democrats rewarded me by voting for the first anti-LGBT federal law in 30 years, willingly sentencing several hundred trans children to death for cheap political points. All Republicans had to do was attach their persecution bill to a “must pass” defense spending bill, and Democrats folded like a house of cards. And they also refused to stand to defend the first trans person elected to the House. I have no doubt that this pattern will continue. To laws that must pass to fund the government, Republicans will just attach one rider after another that strips my civil rights away one at a time. And Democrats will tit tit and say, “well, I really wish we could prevent Republicans from murdering innocent people, but this bill simply has to pass, so our hands are tied.”

Even AOC, who was one of the few people to say anything in defense of the new trans representative, didn’t have the courage to actually stand up for trans people directly. She said bathrooms bans were bad because cis women might get caught up in them. And they demonstrated this complete surrender to fascism before Trump even came into office.

In the end, I did not get the satisfaction of a clean conscience. I held my nose and voted for a pro-genocide party, because I hoped they would at least stand up for my rights. But I didn’t get even that. Instead I got a party that is perfectly willing to throw people like me to the wolves, as long as Republicans give them a fig leaf excuse to use. Honestly, I wish I hadn’t voted for Kamala. Democrats aren’t going to stand up for my rights, and I still have the guilt of voting pro-genocide on my conscience.

I suppose it should have been pretty obvious. Dems were willing to throw one minority group to the wolves for political expediency, why wouldn’t they do it to another?

Get a bidet.

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.

I work in higher education, and I have to say, I think we probably have been pushing it too hard. I want to see everyone have access to tuition-free university education, but I also expect enrollment to decline. I’m an elder Millennial. We were pushed hard that we had to go to college. It was that or work a retail or fast food job. Where I grew up, in white suburbia, trades weren’t even seriously discussed among my peer group. My parents were college graduates, and unless I showed some really strong self-interest in a trade particularly early, it was just assumed I would be going to college as well.

College turned out well for me. But I know many in my peer group weren’t so lucky. I managed to graduate with a modest amount of debt I was subsequently able to pay off, but I knew many with crippling levels of debt. I work in higher education, and I see many students today with crippling levels of debt.

In my peer group, we were told to go to college, and we did. And some of us found success with our degrees, and some didn’t. But now people in my peer group have had to deal with paying student loans while ALSO paying far higher prices for any kind of trade service than our parents did. We have people with masters degrees working as baristas, but now we have to pay out the nose for any kind of plumbing, electrical, HVAC, or carpentry work. There are millions of people in my generation that probably would have been better served with an apprenticeship in the trades than a university diploma.

So yeah, I have no doubt that the parents of today, people my age, are likely having much more nuanced conversations about potential career paths than we received. Are you a 16 year old that likes electrical stuff, but are terrible at and have little interest in math or physics coursework? Are you considering studying electrical engineering? While you might be able to struggle through an electrical engineering degree by the sheer force of grit, you should seriously consider whether being an electrician is a better option. So go study your options. Go learn quite a bit about what the actual day-to-day work of electricians vs electrical engineers looks like. If you decide you hate working on your feet, have zero interest in outdoor or dirty construction work? Well, maybe an electrical engineering degree is worth struggling through. Does the thought of doing office work fill you with dread? Do you love getting your hands dirty? Maybe an electrician is the path for you.

Repeat that conversation across a thousand disciplines, and I think that’s the kind of thing that’s happening now a lot more than it did for my generation. And I expect it to have a negative impact on college enrollment.

People demanded unity.

Who are these ‘people’ that demanded unity? Centrist Democrats reflexively dash towards the center. It’s just part of their belief system; they’re personally centrist and fundamentally opposed to major transformative policy. No one ‘called’ for Biden to be some big unity candidate. That was his choice, not the peoples.

Obama proved himself a centrist, but he ran as a progressive. That’s the crucial difference.

Because it’s a meaninglessly vague phrase that is just a mirror into what you already believe.

It’s certainly possible. The polls are showing it’s effectively a tossup. But my real theory is that things are fundamentally different after the death of Roe, and that the pollsters really don’t have a way to capture that. Yes, it is a harsh year for the Senate, but there are some dark horse races, namely Texas and Nebraska, that may really surprise us.

There have been a lot of Republican polls posted, part of their “flood the zone” strategy. But I think even the nonpartisan polls are underestimating Dem support a bit.

I think we’ll have a Dem trifecta after election night. I feel the even the nonpartisan polls have overcorrected in favor of Republicans after 2016, and since the overturning of Roe, polls have been underestimating Dem candidates.

Seriously. I didn’t realize President Erdogan had a lemmy accout!

Populist candidates used to actually argue for higher inflation. See the free silver movement of the late 19th century. With some inflation present, the real value of all debts goes down over time, as long as you make the interest payments.

That’s just how inflation works though. Wages tend to rise slower than prices do. In economic terms, wages are “sticky.” They rise and fall slower than prices do in response to market conditions. Long periods of slow gradual inflation are fine, as people simply demand that their wages rise at a steady 2-3% to keep up with inflation, and employers expect it. But if there is a sudden spike in prices, it’s a lot harder for employees to suddenly negotiate wage increases. Instead, the slower process of labor market competition, employees leaving underpaying jobs for better paying jobs, has to take over. It’s going to take a few years for wages to catch up with the spike in prices, but it does happen with time, primarily from people switching jobs.