I gotta agree. All we need is corporate-run militaries and we're living in Heinlein's Friday. All the other dystopian predictions seem to be happening at once.
Yes, doubling the price of oil, and setting random maybe-not-enforceable tariffs and embargoes, is a net positive because it has the unintended effect of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
This is my experience. It normally doesn't bother me, and I didn't think about it until I read this article, so now it is driving me crazy. Please let's stop posting articles about Tinnitus unless the article describes a CURE. Thanks.
Cars are not expensive. A $60,000 car, when calculated for inflation, costs the same as a $30,000 care did in 2000. What's not kept up is wages, including the minimum wage, for most of America. Had the Epstein class allowed wages to grow alongside inflation, as had been done since 1950, nobody would be complaining about affordability.
Total employee compensation has increased a lot during that period but most of that has gone towards employer contributions to group health insurance rather than cash wages.
That too. I did a comparison with my brother recently, who lives in France. His effective net tax rate in France was 39%, my effective net tax rate in the US was 43%. That includes all taxes, what he gets from healthcare, etc. We really don't get a good deal here in the US, what we save in taxes gets eaten up by corporations.
Ironic that this post is flagged. But honestly, I probably sound like an extreme leftist in my comments. I can assure you that I am a political moderate, and would be considered a conservative in Europe because I am very pro-capitalist and pro-entrepreneur. But the political situation in the USA has swung so far to the right as to make it seem like I am a social democrat. And yes, those of us who are utterly horrified by what we are seeing and reading about are making some completely understandable noise on HN. I'm kinda horrified that more people are not, to be honest. The American experiment is a fragile thing, and as we teeter on the brink of losing it, I would hope most of us hackers would look at the world we've been able to build and understand better the foundations of freedom and democracy that keep it healthy.
Good to know. What I want to know is, who will stop him? If Congress impeaches, will the Senate ever move to convict him? His MO is to push everything to the limit and beyond, so even if they do, what's to stop him from ordering the military to attack Congress?
Using the military to attack Congress is unlikely. What's stopping him is that the military itself believes pretty firmly in the Constitution. He has control over a lot of top leaders, but there are a lot of intermediate levels that will reject it. That itself might lead to a conviction.
However, he has a ton of other tools at his disposal: ICE, national guard, a bunch of governors, etc. A lot can happen, and it is not clear what the responses would be.
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