Or, removing the cynicism and conspiratorial elements from your analysis:
Millions of people raised on labor/union/socialist/far-left dogma that was relevant in the 1800s and 1900s are realizing that the modern economy is in fact quite different. But because of a mixture of lack of knowledge and adversarial beliefs about capitalism and corporations, they failed to thrive in the system and are now learning the tools to succeed.
The system is flawed. You can work to fix the flaws without thinking you need to burn the whole thing down.
Is it time for the AP to move away from using the label "environmentalists" for stuff like this?
This isn't about some hippies saving a favored tree from getting cut down, this is spewing disease-causing air pollution and greenhouse gases so people can gamble.
This shouldn't raise the ire of "environmentalists" this should raise the ire of "everyone alive".
White may be helping you, but male is harming you in any interaction with police or criminal justice system.
From questioning to ticketing to arrests to prosecution to plea deals to jury bias to sentencing, literally every single step has a huge gender bias in favor of women.
Your point about politeness stands, just pointing out the common narrative of privilege in America is completely inverted for gender in this area.
No, that's absolutely not how most people want their online communities to work.
Sneaky, indirect, hidden advertising is worse than regular ads or 'spam'. Regardless of if a community is about gardening or guitars or cooking or basketball, most people don't want shills posting content that's secretly sponsored product placement related to their hobby or promotion of the poster for fame or profit.
Most subreddits have rules specifically against this, because otherwise the real, organic, genuine conversation and content gets drowned out by self-promoting shills trying to drive clicks to their website or views to their youtube or get free advertising/PR for their company. You're supposed to participate out of a genuine interest in the community, not to exploit them as an audience for making money.
Funny, it never occurred to me that you'd get to continue vesting while not working (I have no idea the policies at my current or former employers).
I get that people respond emotionally to these things and just go with "Amazon bad, mothers good", but this policy just seems... obvious?
If it cancelled or reset to zero that would seem harsh and not in line with norms, but a policy of "you vest for each month you work" feels perfectly fair and reasonable to all employees.
I appreciate that you have positive intentions, but you seem to have a faith in the government controlling assets which is unsupported by the facts of every government in recorded history.
Look at the current covid stimulus bill in the US as an example of how money gets allocated under a "democratically disbursed" system. Depending on where and when in human history you go, the majority opinion might have been "kill all the X people" or "do Z because God commands it".
Basically, "the most moral thing to do" is completely unrelated to "what the government will do" even if that government is democratically elected.
You didn't elect Bill Gates... so he shouldn't spend his money to make the world better? I have no idea what point you're trying to make here.
Is there anything in my above comment you actually disagree with? It seems like you're just advocating for 100% socialism where individuals don't have private assets.
Suppose you have $100. You go to the grocery store and have lots of choices, you can buy basic groceries to feed yourself for the week for $50 and then give $50 to research to a rare disease which impacted a family member, or you can spend the full $100 at the grocery store buying brand name prepared foods. Are you saying people shouldn't be allowed to make the choice between those? Are you saying the first person is doing something bad by giving their money to medical research instead of spending it?
Sadly, they probably did mean philanthropy. Many young Americans today have strongly embraced Authoritarian-Left political views and see any person who earns/saves/acquires enough money to give some of it away as a failure of the government to fully tax or control all resources inside the country.
Basically if you have a complete faith that the government always knows best, then anyone else (an individual, a charity, a business, a volunteer organization, etc) spending their time or money to solve a problem is a bad thing, because the money should have been controlled by the government so they could allocate it as they saw fit.
> "In my country"
> "In the US, it's very different"
If I had a dollar for every time someone on HN who doesn't live in the US nonetheless weighs in as an expert on American life I could retire.
Do you think a data scientist who had ethical concerns about covid data manipulation is a violent murderer? Do you think America in real life is like a movie with gun fights and explosions?
There is essentially zero risk of someone shooting a cop in a routine situation. They weren't raiding some druglord gang headquarters or ISIS terrorist operation.
I disagree with your claim that Biden and Clinton are "well to the right of the median US citizen". They are clearly to the left in literally every assessment - whether in the actual elections or polling done by any reputable organization. You're imagining that "median US citizen" is somehow far left of "median US voter" and that's just not true.
Additionally, everything you listed is just exposition on your initial claim. Saying that you will "End Welfare As We Know It" sounds like a potentially wildly liberal plan - perhaps UBI, government-guaranteed employment, housing and healthcare or some other fundamental shift. The victims of crime are disproportionately the poor, people of color and people who are structurally disadvantaged so removing the threat of violent crime from their lives falls well within the standard goals of liberals (even if the actual implementation of the bill you're referencing had more mixed results).
All the political terms - left, right, conservative, progressive, liberal, etc have definitions which vary greatly from country-to-country, over time, and by which group is using them. Clinton and Biden are representatives from American's dominant liberal party and represent views which are left-of-center when you do the sane thing and define center as "median voter in the country being discussed" and not "my group of friends" or whatever time or place you're imagining.
You might as well say 'Bill Gates is very poor, by any reasonable standard' (because unlike the rich people of 2,000 years ago, he can't raise an army that rivals that of his home nation-state or the rich of the future who take vacations on the moon).
That people would suggest screen time, rather than pollution and exposure to chemicals which impact brain development seems unlikely.
BPA, atrazine, PM2.5 air pollution, dozens of chemicals classified as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) which are nonetheless present in everyday items and our drinking water.
Assuming humanity survives another couple hundred years, I assume people will look back on our current situation as akin to drinking from lead cups.
People constantly, openly make statements like "We don't need any jerks working here!" or "We don't hire jackasses" and are lauded and supported. Switching to a synonym which is maybe more often associated with female instead of male gets everyone in the entire department fired?
What a horribly toxic environment. I can't imagine any employees slept soundly at night knowing that if they were in the room when someone said a PG-13 word that they'd be fired on the spot.
Taxes are necessary to fund shared infrastructure and services. They're not supposed to overtly punish success or prevent people from earning a high salary.
There's an argument that high earners can (and possibly should) pay a higher share of taxes because they have the most ability to do so, but you seem to be just advocating taxing away people's earnings out of a jealous desire to not see anyone have more than you.
He raises prices to support higher pay, dog grooming now costs $500, none of his former customers can afford it, the company goes bankrupt and the employees are back on unemployment again.
You can't just pretend that every business can magically afford to raise wages. This isn't Apple paying kids in China 50 cents to build an iPhone they sell for $1,000, this is a local business that's probably barely able to pay the founder a middle-class salary in the best of times.
I bounced back and forth between Denmark and the US for many years, though I've been in the US for the past 4 years now.
The best way to understand Denmark from an American perspective would be something like "Imagine if everyone in America was lower-middle class". Whether this is better or worse for you obviously depends on whether you're poor, middle, upper middle or upper class.
For me, Danish culture was something of a nightmare of 'tall poppy syndrome' and bleak, hopelessness that hard work doesn't pay and that no matter what you do, you're stuck eating sack lunches and taking the bus to work because your spouse needs the one car your family can afford. That said, if I had an intellect that limited academic abilities or a more naturally lethargic approach to school and work, I'd certainly find my life more comfortable in Denmark and see the American model as unforgiving.
Basically, Denmark pulls up the bottom towards the median, at the cost of pulling down the top towards the same point, to a far larger degree than the US. Everybody gets just enough, but nobody is allowed to have more than just enough.
Everybody in the US has insurance, that was literally a major point of contention to Obamacare - the left didn't like that the solution still used private insurers and the right didn't like that they were forced to buy something. If you have a low income, you get subsidized premiums.
For sick pay, it's just a lack of budgeting and planning. If you have a job that pays you $12/hr with no paid leave time or a job that pays you $10/hr with an accumulation of leave hours, it's still the same in the end if you work X days and are sick Y days and get a monthly income of $ZZZ, just in one case your employer is holding back your leave pay and in the other case you're paid full value up front and save for your leave period yourself.
Millions of people raised on labor/union/socialist/far-left dogma that was relevant in the 1800s and 1900s are realizing that the modern economy is in fact quite different. But because of a mixture of lack of knowledge and adversarial beliefs about capitalism and corporations, they failed to thrive in the system and are now learning the tools to succeed.
The system is flawed. You can work to fix the flaws without thinking you need to burn the whole thing down.