Last year I returned to Australia from a trip where I passed through 6 countries. Of all the borders I went through, the Australian customs guys were by far the worst.
Total cunts, talked to me disrespectfully, took apart all my stuff, forced me to unlock my phone so they could do a digital scan of the contents. I was literally treated better in Albania where I was the only one with an American passport and didn't know the language.
Just like oxygen, free speech is one of those things that you don't miss until you lose it. You use it everyday without even realizing it.
In a country without free speech protections, expressing an unpopular opinion about a political party or hot topic can get you thrown in prison. Look at the Syrian Assad regime or the current Chinese administration. People are arrested for merely being negative in social media posts. I can totally see the US going in that direction.
You can be nonchalant about this if you want, be there are very good reasons people are getting up in arms about this erosion of our protections.
I pay my accountant 500 USD to file my taxes. I don't consider that "through the nose" relative to my my inflated tech salary.
If a person is making a smaller income their tax situation is probably very simple, and can be handled by automated tools like TurboTax (as the sibling comment suggests).
I don't see a lot of value add from LLMs in this particular context. It's a situation where small mistakes can result in legal trouble or thousands of dollars of losses.
I'd unironically be interested in hearing what economic benefit you think is coming in the next two years?
The nonsense tariffs being thrown at allies and uncoordinated destruction of government foreign aid/social services seem like net negatives to me. I could see the United States Bitcoin reserve thing bumping up the value of crypto, but that whole space is so volatile I would only put in money I'm willing to lose.
I don't have stats, but I strongly suspect the set of NYC people aiming to burn others to death in public (and ruin their own lives in the process) is quite small. The presence of cameras is almost certainly a net positive for reducing crime
Total cunts, talked to me disrespectfully, took apart all my stuff, forced me to unlock my phone so they could do a digital scan of the contents. I was literally treated better in Albania where I was the only one with an American passport and didn't know the language.