Joe Biden is now officially the 46th President of the United States of America

[Valwinz]

More popular than Obama we were told
Failed to fetch tweet https://twitter.com/QuarantinedCoof/status/1375150770681737216

 

[djpannda]

More popular than Obama we were told
https://twitter.com/QuarantinedCoof/status/1375150770681737216

yes 81 million.. how many tells do we have to tell you.

 

[Elvasat]

I can not comprehend as to why 80 Million Americans vote vote a man with dementia. I know people in the US can be whacky but that is a whole new level of crazy.

 

[Xzi]

Yes, but higher earners end up paying more in taxes than those on the bottom, and even then, how can you be sure the politicians and their lobbyists who support them don't use loopholes in laws that they sponsor and support and pay the writers to purposefully leave said loopholes in aforementioned laws to be treated as equals like the regular citizens?

Nobody gets to know exactly where their taxes go or what they're spent on, but that's ultimately irrelevant. At the end of the day they're still paying a small fraction of what we do for higher education, not simply to spite the US, but because they believe their own citizens are worth the investment. Most Republicans and even some Democrats would rather see you broke, dumb, jobless, and living in a trailer park after high school. Makes people that much easier to anger/manipulate.

All in all, it makes going to college to earn a better paying and more comfortable job than a retail stocker moot when you end up getting more money pulled out of your paycheck, less benefits from the government, and everything else in between that the regular people could honestly make better for themselves if the government and bureaucracy didn't have its fingers in more ways than I think a lot of you guys and gals think in everything.

In France, McDonald's employees make around $22/hour. Believe me, they don't care if a little extra is taken out in taxes, and they do get far more benefits from the government than we do. They also have a much higher standard of living. The idea that nothing can improve in America without sacrificing some other aspect of our lives or freedoms is nonsense, rooted in nothing but nihilism and Stockholm Syndrome.

As for your socialism diatribe, it was amusing, but that wasn't even the topic at hand. Universal healthcare, tuition-free college, UBI, and pandemic assistance...none of these things are are socialist by nature. We're literally comparing apples to apples here, the US against other capitalist countries, so there is no excuse whatsoever for why we can't do better.

These are all small things that, when you look at the problems of people back in the 1950's compared to today, you wonder what in the Hell happened? How did people go from being able to buy cars with no problem back then to now everyone just using Uber and not even knowing how to drive a damn car in 2021 as being the standard well into their 20's? It's because of government trying to step in and fill the roles that families, communities, and friends and neighbors did back in previous decades.

The tax rate for the top bracket in the 1950s was 90%. The minimum wage from the 1950s when adjusted for inflation and productivity would be over $20/hour today. In some cases, the government would literally provide you a house if you lost your job. So obviously that wasn't the best choice of decades if you were looking to make a point about the benefits of a hands-off government.

 

[Deleted User]

 

[Julie_Pilgrim]

Me checking this thread

 

[Julie_Pilgrim]

I can not comprehend as to why 80 Million Americans vote vote a man with dementia. I know people in the US can be whacky but that is a whole new level of crazy.

In our defense, it was either old white dude or other old white dude, we didn't have much choice

 

[Xzi]

It was either old white dude or other old white dude, we didn't have much choice

Yep, and one of the old white dudes had politicized a virus, causing the death of 500,000 Americans. That's why the general consensus of the Democratic party that Biden had a better shot than Bernie was idiotic, literally anybody would've beaten Trump with his record in office working against him. Well, almost anyone. Not Hillary.

 

[Silent_Gunner]

Nobody gets to know exactly where their taxes go or what they're spent on, but that's ultimately irrelevant. At the end of the day they're still paying a small fraction of what we do for higher education, not simply to spite the US, but because they believe their own citizens are worth the investment. Most Republicans and even some Democrats would rather see you broke, dumb, jobless, and living in a trailer park after high school. Makes people that much easier to anger/manipulate.


In France, McDonald's employees make around $22/hour. Believe me, they don't care if a little extra is taken out in taxes, and they do get far more benefits from the government than we do. They also have a much higher standard of living. The idea that nothing can improve in America without sacrificing some other aspect of our lives or freedoms is nonsense, rooted in nothing but nihilism and Stockholm Syndrome.

As for your socialism diatribe, it was amusing, but that wasn't even the topic at hand. Universal healthcare, tuition-free college, UBI, and pandemic assistance...none of these things are are socialist by nature. We're literally comparing apples to apples here, the US against other capitalist countries, so there is no excuse whatsoever for why we can't do better.


The tax rate for the top bracket in the 1950s was 90%. The minimum wage from the 1950s when adjusted for inflation and productivity would be over $20/hour today. In some cases, the government would literally provide you a house if you lost your job. So obviously that wasn't the best choice of decades if you were looking to make a point about the benefits of a hands-off government.

Nobody gets to know where their taxes go, except that they do when the money goes to Planned Parenthood and other programs they don't personally support for a whole host of reasons. And all politicians in Washington DC want us to be their slaves, on both sides of the aisle. People can get insurance from private businesses who, when the boot isn't being pushed on their neck thanks to taxes, regulations, and laws that limit the extent to which they, as a business entity, can exercise their liberty to give customers options that are way more effective than any government insurance or benefits package.

They make $22 an hour? So tell me if there's enough workers to get the job done in a timely manner, or if they hire less people and put the burden of the workload on fewer people to keep franchises from going into the red? And if the living standard is so much better in Europe, let alone France, then why are the people protesting the mandatory vaccinations? Might it be that they have nothing left to lose from rising up against their governments?

Pure capitalism hasn't been a thing ever since the days of the income tax, and as for your figures, how much of that do you think is because of The New Deal of FDR, the income tax, and other factors that led to the government getting more powerful slowly, but surely? It doesn't change the fact that the problems we view as being major weren't even a thing back then thanks to an economy and people who had savings that could weather an economic storm and who had more and better opportunities to build up said savings more easily back then compared to today.

 

[Xzi]

They make $22 an hour? So tell me if there's enough workers to get the job done in a timely manner, or if they hire less people and put the burden of the workload on fewer people to keep franchises from going into the red?

Yes and no. France's unemployment rate has never been much higher than ours, and we're talking about international conglomerates here, they aren't in any danger of going bankrupt. No reason to lick their boot.

It doesn't change the fact that the problems we view as being major weren't even a thing back then thanks to an economy and people who had savings that could weather an economic storm and who had more and better opportunities to build up said savings more easily back then compared to today.

So you agree that workers should be getting paid more in both minimum and average wages? And that healthcare and education should be cheaper? That's the only way we get anywhere close to recreating your idea of the golden years.

 

[Deleted User]

And if the living standard is so much better in Europe, let alone France, then why are the people protesting the mandatory vaccinations?

Well due to heighten hysteria and also the insane amount of mis information, there has been a large up tick in anti vaxxers.
Oh and by the way. The living standard is much better. you want to know why?
First off, the united states is the only 1st world country in the world that does not have proper paid maternity leave.
Second off the united states is not only the highest spender in health care, but also statistically get's the worst healthcare in the first world.

Here's a story that everyone has probably heard.
Your sick, you know you can't afford the doctor. and all you do is pray that it's not something awful. your condition gets worse, and worse and worse. Maybe you take a sick day longer than what your job offered. so your fired. So then you loose health care. And either you live with a giant ass medical bill you can't pay. Or fucking die.
A lot of people have died because the healthcare system here is not about being prevention, it creates a system where people are coming in at their absolute worst condition, and would cost more to fix. Than being preventive about it, and costing less.
meanwhile since there is little no price point in other countries. People are a lot more proactive if they notice something is wrong, and will go to the doctor asap.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

I think being able to not worry about fucking dying because of health care costs is a definite better living standard if you ask me.

 

[Silent_Gunner]

Well due to heighten hysteria and also the insane amount of mis information, there has been a large up tick in anti vaxxers.
Oh and by the way. The living standard is much better. you want to know why?
First off, the united states is the only 1st world country in the world that does not have proper paid maternity leave.
Second off the united states is not only the highest spender in health care, but also statistically get's the worst healthcare in the first world.

Here's a story that everyone has probably heard.
Your sick, you know you can't afford the doctor. and all you do is pray that it's not something awful. your condition gets worse, and worse and worse. Maybe you take a sick day longer than what your job offered. so your fired. So then you loose health care. And either you live with a giant ass medical bill you can't pay. Or fucking die.
A lot of people have died because the healthcare system here is not about being prevention, it creates a system where people are coming in at their absolute worst condition, and would cost more to fix. Than being preventive about it, and costing less.
meanwhile since there is little no price point in other countries. People are a lot more proactive if they notice something is wrong, and will go to the doctor asap.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

I think being able to not worry about fucking dying because of health care costs is a definite better living standard if you ask me.

And that's what insurance, having savings, investments that you allow to grow over the course of your life is all about; having money for unexpected events, emergencies, and for any rainy day in general. But when expenses start rising thanks to government suddenly stepping in to power their way over private insurers, you have to wonder what the government is mandating that would cause costs to rise so high in the first place.

Then, you also have the fact that a lot of the elderly that can afford to get healthcare in the first place have a lot of the three things I mentioned earlier due to them having planned ahead for a long time for the years where their bodies would start to break down. It's because of this philosophy that you see more of the elderly living longer than ever...meanwhile, Social Security isn't getting any cheaper due to it being a program that should've been allowed to go bankrupt long ago, but keeps getting bailed out by the groups that want to keep it going.

As for your point about wages, @Xzi, I think by mandating minimum wages, it makes businesses' abilities to compete with one another lesser. It's much like putting a price floor in the apartment market; when a price can't go any lower, then it's going to affect those who can be hired; often times, those who could've been hired end up suddenly being a bad hire due to an artificially inflated increase in the price of labor.

And education being as expensive as it is is thanks to the same kind of mismanagement: as opposed to paying professors less, or cutting back on the costs of operating campus sports and other clubs that can honestly be their own organizations with their own payrolls independent of the college and by extension, the state and federal governments and agencies they partner with, and by not being part of a push to get more people in higher education than what is necessary, colleges can go back to being about legitimate higher education as opposed to being about indoctrinating young adults, many of whom are looking to specialize in a job field and not have to learn the "significance" of the Humanities when the study of it, on its own, has nothing to do with one's pursuit of becoming, say, an accountant, or an investment banker, or a chemist at a lab on its own.

Basically, trim out all of the fat in the "general education "requirements,"" and you reduce the costs in terms of money and more importantly, time it takes for students to become whatever it is they're pursuing that probably doesn't require them to take all of the classes that are "general education."

 

[Xzi]

As for your point about wages, @Xzi, I think by mandating minimum wages, it makes businesses' abilities to compete with one another lesser.

If having lower minimum wages meant more competition, we'd have more than just two options for everything. That's not the way things work. McDonald's and Wal-Mart know they don't pay enough to live on, and they know that their employees have to compensate for their low wages by going on welfare, food stamps, or other assistance. We as taxpayers end up subsidizing starvation wages, so it's in our best interest to stop allowing corporations to game the system that way.

And education being as expensive as it is is thanks to the same kind of mismanagement: as opposed to paying professors less, or cutting back on the costs of operating campus sports and other clubs that can honestly be their own organizations with their own payrolls independent of the college and by extension, the state and federal governments and agencies they partner with, and by not being part of a push to get more people in higher education than what is necessary, colleges can go back to being about legitimate higher education as opposed to being about indoctrinating young adults, many of whom are looking to specialize in a job field and not have to learn the "significance" of the Humanities when the study of it, on its own, has nothing to do with one's pursuit of becoming, say, an accountant, or an investment banker, or a chemist at a lab on its own.

I have no idea where you're getting this shit. PragerU maybe? In any case, it's ridiculous. You can get a four-year degree in virtually any field and attend maybe one humanities class in that entire span. We get it, you don't like people in general. That has nothing to do with America's out of control education costs.

 

[Silent_Gunner]

If having lower minimum wages meant more competition, we'd have more than just two options for everything. That's not the way things work. McDonald's and Wal-Mart know they don't pay enough to live on, and they know that their employees have to compensate for their low wages by going on welfare, food stamps, or other assistance. We as taxpayers end up subsidizing starvation wages, so it's in our best interest to stop allowing corporations to game the system that way.


I have no idea where you're getting this shit. PragerU maybe? In any case, it's ridiculous. You can get a four-year degree in virtually any field and attend maybe one humanities class in that entire span. We get it, you don't like people in general. That has nothing to do with America's out of control education costs.

More than two options? Bro, c'mon, there's way more options in those businesses than what you listed! Let me help you:

Fast Food:
McDonald's
Burger King
Arby's
Wendy's
Culver's
Dairy Queen
Subway
Taco Bell
Chick-Fil-A
Popeye's
IHop
Hooters

Retail:
Walmart
Lowe's
Best Buy
Costco
Walgreens
Sam's Club
Meijer
Home Depot
Menard's
JCPenney
Kohl's
Five Below
Office Max/Office Depot
The Salvation Army
Goodwill
Micheal's
Hobby Lobby
GameStop
EBGames (where they haven't been absorbed by the above)
Ross Dress for Less
Micro Center

But, sure. We have just two options for everything. Totes.


And boy oh boy, calm your tits! I never mentioned PragerU, and I don't even know why you're bringing them up. I sure hope you don't teach school, because if "wrong" answers trigger you this much, students would feel very uncomfortable with asking you questions. What I outlined is basic cost/revenue analysis; every business has assets, liabilities, and equities. And in order to stay solvent, they must be bringing in revenue to at least break even and be able to pay their liabilities on time. If they can't do that, businesses and/or the individuals they do business with will sue, and then if the business can't handle the legal fees or be able to get their shit together, then in a free market, they'd have to declare bankruptcy, and the owner(s) would have to assume all the responsibilities that come with said declaration. Money is the lifeblood of any business. It's a powerful tool that can turn both a profit for itself, its employees, and those doing business with it. It can also be abused, and is why there's such a big debt crisis in America; people borrow against the future of not only themselves, but also the next generation because those doing the borrowing won't have to be around for when the chickens come home to roost.

By spending all this money on extracurriculars and on clubs that could be better managed by not being tied to the college's payroll itself, and by cutting how much they're paying professors or the benefits provided, the college can reduce the liabilities it owes, and thus the burden of the costs they have to charge its students, and make it easier for the organization itself to pay off its debts and to return to breaking even, with no subsidies or dependence on satisfying the demands of an external party that an organization that never got itself into debt that it couldn't easily pay off in the first place wouldn't have to do.

I know, this is basic stuff, but you'd be surprised how much people don't follow their own advice, and who's financial habits are the same as the government's. I was the same way until COVID hit; I had debt that I wanted cleared, but I figured, "eh, I'll get around to it when I have everything I want," a fallacy that's never ending because to want things, to be materialistic is to be human. But in a vacuum, where nothing matters, when there's no set goal or timeline, its easy to just have such an apathetic attitude towards important things in life. By wanting to be financially free by the end of last year so I could go and do whatever I want again like in 2019 and before, I did whatever I had to do to get to that goal; I cut down on the spending I'd normally indulge in, I decided to try and improve my standing in life by going from a job in retail at Walmart to a job in a distribution center with Target, and now, at another distribution center with a different organization that pays better and comes with more benefits, and I am growing and learning new skills each and every day, and am starting to gain a new perspective I didn't have before on my view of the world, especially seeing how this pandemic has, ironically, unmasked what side a person takes, and who and/or what they really put their faith and trust in more when the going gets tough.


Contrary to your assumption at the end there that's you also assuming other peoples' perspectives about who I am, I actually like people. If I didn't, why would I even be posting as much as I do here on GBATemp, a site where its more active userbase is by and large openly liberal at least, and baptized in the Bern and on fire for socialism as the leftist. I just want the best for those who I care about the most, and I can tell you that if, by some miracle I was to have kids, I'd want the best future for them. Believe it or not, but there's more people out there in the world who want to fulfill their natural urges in preferably more healthy and beneficial ways than there are people looking to become infertile or change their gender, and I can tell you that if and when push comes to shove, they will protect their own first before they will others. We are all going to die some day, and we're going to leave some kind of legacy to those around us. People in the world who might look on from the outside might not understand as much as those who knew the deceased, which is why education is so important to get right, which it hasn't if one was to look at declining test scores nationwide compared to those of other nations, which, while they might use other scales, if you have analysts saying that Japan and other Asian countries are performing better in school and getting higher standard jobs than the majority of the students in the US, and you have students who are getting into debt that they won't ever pay off because the college system lets them go into Gender Studies as a major which has very few job opportunities compared those available for an accountant, chemist, and engineer, then something must be corrected, and I can tell you that throwing more money to the wall and hoping it sticks has not, is not, and will not ever fix the problem.


You and a lot of other people on this forum and in related places need to grow the fuck up. There will always be another Tekken, another Street Fighter, another flagship Mario, Mario Kart, Legend of Zelda, or *insert game franchise/new game performing well critically here*, just like there's always going to be water running, food growing, cells replicating, and people who take assumptions like what you made at the end of your posts as being nothing more than that - assumptions, based on nothing but a worldview that you've formed that rationalizes wearing masks because you yourself don't want to talk to people in real life. That's your prerogative, and the choice is up to you. Don't expect the entirety of society to suddenly change because of your wishes, because while it's changed, the internal thoughts and feelings of every human being in this nation and other nations that locked down are not going to line up with what you and others on this forum think.

 

[KingVamp]

Well, the Republicans in Georgia have no one to blame but themselves if HR1 gets passed. They even banned giving out food in lines.

 

[Xzi]

More than two options? Bro, c'mon, there's way more options in those businesses than what you listed! Let me help you: snip

Lmao don't play dumb, I'm sure you're aware that a lot of those companies are owned in groups by even larger corporations. Consolidation is the name of the game when you have infinite money from stupid low taxes and corporate welfare to buy out the competition with.

You're never gonna be in the 1%. Stop licking their dicks and pretending nothing in America is their fault, or that they their precious income which they could never spend in a million lifetimes should remain untouchable forever. Capitalism has failed us in so many ways (each generation more than the next), it's okay to critique it. You won't melt.

 

[SG854]

Me checking this thread
View attachment 254157

For some strange reason I'm not heated. I fell oddly at peace and relaxed reading comments in this thread. Today is a weird day for me for sure.

 

[Elvasat]

In our defense, it was either old white dude or other old white dude, we didn't have much choice

Trump is an old white man, so lets vote an even older white man.
Trump is a liar, so lets vote someone who lied so much, you could write a book out of it.
Trump is a woman abuser, so lets vote a creepy old guy who sniffes on little girls.
Trump is a rich white guy, so lets vote someone with ties to several billionaires.

That logic.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Yep, and one of the old white dudes had politicized a virus, causing the death of 500,000 Americans. That's why the general consensus of the Democratic party that Biden had a better shot than Bernie was idiotic, literally anybody would've beaten Trump with his record in office working against him. Well, almost anyone. Not Hillary.

He didnt kill anyone, if you want to blame someone, blame Xi. I dont understand why American liberals dont whine infront of Xi about the Corona deaths since the Chinese were the ones who unleashed this bioweapon in the first place. I get the feeling that Progressives and Democrats are someonehow fond of the CCP which might explain why they endorse Antifa/BLM/PKK.

 

[Xzi]

He didnt kill anyone, if you want to blame someone, blame Xi. I dont understand why American liberals dont whine infront of Xi about the Corona deaths since the Chinese were the ones who unleashed this bioweapon in the first place.

This wasn't the first new deadly virus discovered and it won't be the last. Each country's leadership was responsible for protecting its own populace. Some succeeded beyond any expectation, such as New Zealand. Others failed worse than we possibly could've imagined in the beginning, such as the US. Remember when a projection of 250,000 dead seemed overblown?

 

[Elvasat]

This wasn't the first new deadly virus discovered and it won't be the last. Each country's leadership was responsible for protecting its own populace. Some succeeded beyond any expectation, such as New Zealand. Others failed worse than we possibly imagined in the beginning, such as the US. Remember when a projection of 250,000 dead seemed overblown?

You can't honestly compare New Zealand with the US, can you?
New zealand is an isolated island with 5 Million people and a population wuth a thin spread. New zealand has options in regards to lockdowns that other countries do not have. As for the US, each governor is responsible for their respective states lockdowns and its their responsibility to mandate it. As far as i know from relatives, who live in New York, their Governor Cuomo alongside other Democrat dems thought it was a good idea to throw the infected into Nursing homes, causing many deaths and Cuomo was also caught underreporting the whole nursing home debacle and still gets endorsed by most Democrats, even with the sexual herrasement allegations from 2 women. If you want to blame someone, blame your corrupt governors.

China on the other hand still have to reveal their statistics, which they still conceal to the public. Honestly, with all the shit China has been doing, unleashing a virus, stealing organs from Turkic people and enslaving them, we can all agree that Japan did the world a Public service back in nanking.