RustyEarthfire @ RustyEarthfire @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

This article is an abuse of the source data. "Working class" here is closer to manual laborer and excludes teachers, farm workers, military, emergency services, nurses, law enforcement, and others. The data is also fairly noisy, with typos and 2% of values being empty affecting the calculation.

To conclude that anyone not "working class" by this definition is "upper-class" is absurd. I guess for some it is hard to imagine the lofty former assistant manager at Burger King (D-AR) understanding the struggles of the common man.

There are certainly interesting discussions to be had about the disruptive influence of wealth on elections and about balancing representation with competence -- and folks are having that discussion -- but this article contributes less than nothing to those conversations.

Industrial strength anthropic principle

Oh man, don’t stop

You got it! Here's some other consumer protections the administration has introduced recently:

• Direct filing with the IRS
• Price limits on asthma inhalers and insulin for seniors
• Requiring ISPs to provide consistent up-front information and pricing
• Restrictions on college junk fees and disallowing witholding of transcripts

Hungry for more? Check this out:

White House Statement on Junk Fees

That's from October, so some of it overlaps, but among other stuff there's still a "Click to Cancel" rule working its way through the FTC.

Sadly Biden has been spending a bunch of time on lame crap like climate change, human rights, health care, infrastructure, election integrity, etc., so it might take a bit longer for him to single-handedly usher in consumer utopia.

This seems entirely opposite to my observation. I'd say Biden and his administration are unusually focused on unfair or annoying business practices. In just the past two weeks the Biden administration:

• Set clear rules requiring cash refunds for flight delays
• Banned non-compete clauses
• Set new rules on "junk fees" for credit cards
• Increased the minimum salary for overtime exemption
• Expanded fiduciary duty to retirement "advisors"
• Announced a lawsuit against Live Nation (TicketMaster)
• Re-instated net neutrality

Testing helicopter capabilities.

CH-53K carrying an inoperable F-35C airframe (CF-1) refueling from a KC-130T

https://interestingengineering.com/photo-story/in-photos-us-powerful-helicopter-transports-f-35-airframe-while-refueling

There are over 2 million animal species on Earth, and one species is responsible for 99.9% of all lethal attacks. Ban Humans (from existing)!

It's a long-standing observation of economists that government spending leads to inflation. Probably the simplest model is that the government is increasing demand without increasing supply.

Note that in this model, taxes have a deflationary impact because they reduce demand from individuals.

This is not an opinion on how much government spending is affecting current inflation (nor how much inflation is to blame for any particular category of goods).

I oppose beef subsidies, but the unsubsidized price seems entirely fabricated. How can $38 billion across 80 billion pounds of meat and 25 billion gallons of milk make hamburger $25 cheaper per pound?

The complete rules are here: https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/refundsfinalruleapril2024

The meat of it is the table on pages 9-14 and mostly comprehensible.

Worth noting:

• A change to your flight number is always a "cancellation" and you may choose to accept a refund
  • The expectation is most people would not, for the same reason most don't cancel their refundable tickets - they want to go on the flight
• There are no carve outs for weather, etc.
  • I am really glad to see this because airlines could claim "weather" for connecting flights, so any weather anywhere meant they could delay your flight

The carbon dividend makes the policy overall progressive, like a mini-UBI. It seems we agree that helping the poorest people is a good thing, and they will benefit the most.

The carbon tax should not be an exclusive policy. Canada estimates its tax will account for 1/3rd of its emissions reductions by 2030. That's a nice big chunk for one policy, but plainly insufficient on its own. Absolutely fund renewable infrastructure (including subsidies), public transport, walkable/bikeable housing, etc. Set hard limits / bans where appropriate (banning all emissions is not remotely feasible). A carbon tax is highly complementary to these.

Politics is messy. In Canada the Conservative Party (remind me -- are they for or against fighting climate change?) opposes the carbon tax, and associates it with Labor, so they have a ton of propaganda against it. Half of Canadians don't even realize they are getting a huge rebate back, let alone that it's more than they are paying in taxes (Abacus Data). That's why it's important to get people to understand how a carbon tax actually works.

Funny running across this article after reading https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

Spoiler: the author does not have a high opinion of Raghavan.

If you think businesses can just absorb a tax without changes, then great: set the price of carbon emissions at the cost to remove it from the atmosphere and problem solved.

More realistically, theory and practice both predict that businesses will look for cheaper (i.e. less polluting) approaches and consumers will choose cheaper (i.e. less polluting) products. And both will do so in ways that have the highest impact for the lowest effort.

Maybe you can clarify what you mean by taking money out of the equation, because it's not clear to me what steps that involves or what the expected outcome looks like.

And the best thing to push the government to do is pass a Carbon Tax -- tax polluters and give that back to the people.

🎵 Mister every ounce of beer is precious man 🎵

Possibly from here: https://lemmy.world/post/14481959

I agree that saying gerrymandering affects everyone is sort of off-topic and distracts from discussing the precise impact being discussed, but it's really not equivalent to "All Lives Matter".

• "Black Lives Matter" => Stop police murdering black people
• "All Lives Matter" => La la la, I can't hear you

• "Gerrymandering Denies Incarcerated People Fair Democratic Representation" => We should stop gerrymandering for the sake of prisoners
• "Gerrymandering denies everyone fair democratic representation." => We should stop gerrymandering for the sake of everyone

The dinner example assumes only one person didn't get dinner. If instead everyone went without dinner, wouldn't it make sense to point out they weren't the only one affected?

That's not a wealth tax, that is an income tax (+4% for the 1M+ tax bracket).

Countries that have a general wealth tax are Norway, Spain, and Switzerland. Countries with a selective wealth tax (beyond property taxes) are Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands. Source: https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2023/10/what-is-a-wealth-tax-and-should-the-united-states-have-one (under the heading "How have wealth taxes worked in other countries")

NHS to discontinue delivery of babies until double-blind study is done vs just leaving it in there.