5318008
@5318008@lemmy.ml
- Comment on I neither confirm or deny that I just procrastinated away from jobs to draw my rendition of 'myth of sisyphus' laundry edition 3 days ago:
Cleaning up after a child is not the same as general cleaning.
If you’re an adult, you can get away with cleaning once a week, because you’re capable of taking food all the way to your mouth without dropping it, and you probably have a vague laundry organization system, and some of the time, you out stuff back where you foundil it when you’re done using it.
Kids cannot do any of that shit, so your house accumulates one week worth of responsible adult mess in 11 minutes.
- Comment on Make Congress Earn Average American Wage. 1 week ago:
if they make less that’ll suddenly inspire them to do a better job… Where is the common sense there?
If you were a house builder, but you could only live in the typical houses that you’ve built… would that inspire you to do a good job?
If a person’s job is public policy and legislation… but they have to live under typical living conditions for the citizenry… do you think that would be any different than a builder who has to live in the houses they build?
The solution is obviously
No intellectually honest thought starts with this.
- Comment on Make Congress Earn Average American Wage. 1 week ago:
that seems like there needs to be a restructuring
Who would be in charge of doing that? Would it be Congress? What incentives do they have to do this restructuring?
The proposal is that Congress be paid the median salary so that it is clear which things need to be restructured and why. If they want better living conditions, they would need to pass policies which improve the material conditions of a typical citizen.
you’re not 100% guaranted that you will be able to pay your medical bills and buy groceries… That’s just the cruel reality of living anywhere on this planet
We’re talking about median income. You said that the solution was to make more than median income. Are you now saying that you are willing to tolerate these conditions for 50% of people? I don’t like the idea of anyone being unable to afford rent or groceries or healthcare, but I would at least kind of understand if you were willing to tolerate 1% of people suffering. But 50%?
The point being made is that if 50% of people are struggling, something is wrong. It means a failure of governance. It’s the kind of mistake that can only be made by a Congress who makes 3 times the median income, and is populated almost entirely by people with rich parents, who have never ever struggled. It’s the kind of mistake that would not be made by a Congress that makes median income.
- Comment on Make Congress Earn Average American Wage. 1 week ago:
Ever think that the 50% that can do it, should…
Fair enough; also by definition, 50% of people make more than the median. Good for them.
hyper inflation
Well, not necessarily. I didn’t specify a period of time. In the past 30 years, nominal wages have grown 150%. So if, in the next 30 years, nominal wages grow 150%, we hit the numbers that I gave.
I’m on food stamps
gonna make bank in less than 2 years
gonna be making six figures
Right, so at this time, you are among the 50% of people who make below median salary. I admire your confidence, but… what if it doesn’t work out? There’s a small chance you get into a car accident and your ppan gets thrown off. There’s a small chance you have a medical emergency. There’s a small chance your house catches fire.
Success is not guaranteed just because you work hard. There’s a chance you make below median salary for the rest of your life. It is MY opinion that it doesn’t matter why you’re making below median salary; you still deserve a life that doesn’t involve making a choice between paying a medical bill or paying rent.
- Comment on Make Congress Earn Average American Wage. 1 week ago:
You gotta step up your game and find a profession that can earn you above that wage
Above median salary? What about the fact that, by definition, 50% of people won’t be able to do that?
Okay, okay, so wages rise over time, and eventually 99% of people are making anove 66k… but then the new median will be, like, 150k, and everything in society will be priced accordingly, and some other person will have the great advice that “You gotta step up your game and find a profession that can earn you above that wage” again ignoring the fact that, by definition, 50% of people cannot do that.
No. The solution is not to tell people to work harder. At the bare minimum for this conversation, we should ensure that people making median income have a good quality of life. At the bare minimum for an ethical society, wages would not be the metric that determines whether someone deserves a good quality of life.
- Comment on Tiddies are nice but the metric system is better 1 week ago:
I know I’m being silly, but my brain likes numbers like 5 and 10. I can’t imagine saying 10 to 13. And a 5 degree swing in C feels too big.
Yeah, but that’s because that’s what you’re used to with the F scale.
If you were estimating a number of tablespoons of sugar, you wouldn’t be estimating in groups of 5, because that’s crazy. You’re probably more accustomed to estimating one tablespoon at a time. Or, maybe measuring cups of milk.
Or, if you don’t cook very much, for estimating walking distances, you’re not estimating in groups of 5. You might group by quarter miles and say, “It’s a quarter mile away,” or a half or something.
There’s nothing special about thos scale. All of the supposed benefits are the reault of your familiarity with it. Had we been using °C the whole time instead, you would be estimating degrees two at a time instead of 5, and everything would be completely normal.
- Comment on Tiddies are nice but the metric system is better 1 week ago:
Celsius and L/100km are not useful or show it’s not a great system for everyday use.
This is probably just a matter of taste and convention. If everyone knew what 12°C was, then it would be perfectly fine for everyday use. Everywhere else in the world, people are using it for everyday use, and they’re doing just fine.
Same for L/100km. Oops, you specifically wanted to know how far you were going to go with 1 Liter? You can convert that just fine. But it’s just as likely that you’re looking at mpg, and you actually wanted to know how many gallons it would take for you to go from A to B, in which case you also need to do a conversion.
- Comment on TSA says officers must stand, chairs banned at airport checkpoints nationwide 2 weeks ago:
It’s crazy how bad most people are at thinking of rules that aren’t 100% of something.
“Always sitting” is a bad rule. “Always standing” is a bad rule. But authoritarians can’t seem to accept any rule that allows choice, nuance, or moderation.
- Comment on is there a name for when you stop preventing a problem thinking it's solved and it comes back? 1 month ago:
The best existing phrase I have is, “Dropping your guard.”
It doesn’t necessarily imply anything about why you dropped your guard, and only slightly implies that the bad thing happened while your guard was down.
We could coin a new phrase here by brainstorming. I’ll start:
Fumbled the shield
- Comment on A reminder 1 month ago:
So shifting the discussion towards that rigid quantitative numbers is shifting away from where the conversation should be. That’s been my point this whole thread.
You’re implicitly assuming that there’s one place that this conversation should be. MY point this whole thread has been that “where the conversation should be” depends on your audience. To repeat myself, “if your target audience consists of people who already agree with the basic economic principle, then by all means, add as much nuance as you like.”
If your goal is to be persuasive, you need more than just being right. OP is not about the pure distillation of facts. OP is about how to be persuasive. And he’s right. That IS something that can be persuasive.
- Comment on A reminder 1 month ago:
No, I’m not making an emotional argument.
Perhaps not, but you indicated that the “emotionless language of finance and economics” constitues “conceding ground”.
If you’re not making an emotional argument, then why would emotionless language be a problem? If we have no intention of making emotional arguments, why would we be conceding ground by focusing on “emotionless” disciplines?
And then we’re talking about “winning” an argument that no longer cleanly maps onto what actually matters.
I entered this conversation by specifying a target audience. In the same capacity, “winning” depends on who you’re talking to, as does the mappability of the argument onto real life.
If someone already agrees with the same basic principles you do, you can just talk, and they’ll believe you, because people aren’t skeptical of people they agree with.
But I’m not always having a discussion with someone who shares most of my fundamental beliefs. That’s simply not a situation where nuance matters. Just getting them to understand a single basic principle that they disagree with is already hard enough.
- Comment on A reminder 1 month ago:
implicitly conceding ground by framing things in the language of emotionless finance and economics
Your mileage may vary, but I do not consider this a concession. Anyone can make an emotional argument. You usually need to actually be right in order to make an emotionless academic argument.
may actually be fighting things on less friendly territory to begin with.
When it comes to arguing for the claim being discussed… whether you’re closer to homelessness or being a millionaire (the three month thing is incidental to the main point)… then whether these disciplines are friendly territory pretty much boils down to whether you can explain it or not.
- Comment on A reminder 1 month ago:
If your target audience consists of people who already agree with the basic economic principle, then by all means, add as much nuance as you like.
If your target audience is a single, white, cis male, 55k per year salary-making, apartment-renting, roommate-having, college dropout normie, then maybe a simpler distinction will be more effective?
- Comment on It's never been about helping people 1 month ago:
What is the y-axis of that graph?
- Comment on It's never been about helping people 1 month ago:
In California, the 2026 budget for homelessness prorgams is $1.7 billion. The homeless population is 181,000. This is an average of $9400 per person per year.
- Comment on This isn't fair 1 month ago:
There’s nothing that you can explain with that fact. Inflation is a measure of dollar value in relation to goods… including goods that you don’t actually need. Simply knowing that wages outpaced inflation tells you nothing about the economic conditions of individual people.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown, which DOES emphasize the things that everyone needs:
- Comment on Well if that isn't just about the most evil thing you could openly admit to doing. 1 month ago:
“Why techer onion are bad”
- Comment on "No precedent in American history!" NYT would have defended child labor. 1 month ago:
It makes her response idiotic because it has nothing to do with the article
It’s not a rebuttal of the article, no… but it IS definitely in the same topic as the article.
Twitter is a microblogging platform… not a debate platform. If you assume that she is trying to provide a counterargument in 140 characters or less, then yes, it would seem idiotic.
Are we making that assumption?
- Comment on "No precedent in American history!" NYT would have defended child labor. 1 month ago:
The person who commented is a fucking idiot who clearly didn’t read the article
Let’s assume that everything you just said about the article is true, without any flaws. Why would that make her response idiotic?
If we mentioned the impact that cutting defense spending would have on Raytheon, Lockheed, and Boeing… “Oh no, not my military industrial complex…”
If we mentioned the impact that a new public housing program would have on the housing market… “Oh no, not the sector of the financial market profiting from the endlessly increasing price of a basic human need…”
I understand that these things would have makor financial impacts. I also understand the value of NYT writing an article about the nuances of where it would have upsides and downsides. But also, the original commenter isn’t criticizing that. She’s criticizing the business model of private insurance. Your response just leads me to ask,
Wtf is wrong with you guys where you just assume every statement is some kind of personal dig?
- Comment on My hands are filthy, burned and calloused so hers can be filled with chicken nuggets. 1 month ago:
People, generally, are paranoid morons. Calmly processing the facts and assessing risk are the rare exception. Even people who are good at that kind of thing are just justifying their irrational decisions after the fact.
The solution isn’t to fact-check them about Flock having no inpact on their safety. The solution is to fear-monger even harder about cameras seeing into their houses, and a private company selling their data to telemarketers.
- Comment on Can't believe its been 2 weeks 1 month ago:
Show me the counterfactual proving those people would have survived under a non-capitalist system.
Are you going to apply the same standard to your original claim? How many of the alleged million would have survived under a non-communist system?
- Comment on Anon doesn't have a plan 1 month ago:
The tax revenue per capita in Massachusetts is about $9000. (source)
We should happily pay $9000 per year to not live in Oklahoma.
- Comment on Billionaires hate democracy 1 month ago:
A progressive wealth tax has benefits as well. I just think there’s value in pointing out the impact that such a small percentage has. Implementing even a fraction of a percentage would make a serious impact; we don’t need to go whole hog right here, right now.
My ideal starting point for a progressive wealth tax would max out at 2%, because that’s within a standard deviation of annual S&P growth.
I understand the perspective that the extreme wealth taxes wouldn’t change the quality of life of the ultra-rich… but do you know what the long term impact on the economy would be?
I don’t. And I study this kind of thing. This is not the kind of system that responds well to massive, overnight changes. Most Americans get their food by buying it… of we fuck up, and the economy irretrievably crumbles without a backup, people will starve
As desperate as people may be for radical change, it is worth it to make these proposals in a responsible way, and ensure that we’re not doing more harm than good.
- Comment on Maybe it's time for Penguin 1 month ago:
I third Linux mint.
- Comment on onions 2 months ago:
For jalapeños and other peppers, the pith is where most of the pungency comes from. It’s also more bitter than the rear of the pepper. If you chop into quarters lengthwise, it’s easy to cut the seeds and pith away from the flesh. You’re the left with a milder, sweeter result.
… in case you’re in an experimental mood.
- Comment on onions 2 months ago:
shit like onions and actually use some real fucking spices from India and Mexico
… but… India eats a lot of onions… because as great as the spices are, onions are also great. You can have both. You should have both.
- Comment on Billionaires hate democracy 2 months ago:
I don’t want a one-time, 5% wealth tax. I want a recurring wealth tax. At 0.5%, such a tax outpaces the one time 5% in ten years.
I would settle for one time 5%… but it’s just so short-sighted. 5% in one sudden movement is actually a big ask… and are we actually going to be able to pull that off more than once?
A recurring wealth tax 1) is better in the long-term, 2) is less disruptive to the stock market (which we should care about, as long as this is the sustem we have) 3) makes for a more predictable economic environment, so people with money might actually still want to live in CA.
- Comment on The woke liberals are making our wars gay 2 months ago:
They included the Spotify logo. It’s just <insert song here> rather than labelling the picture as “Fortunate Sons”.