This seems pretty inline with our leadership tho. This country has always put profits above people.
Hand-waving dismissiveness doesn't serve when there were, in fact, significant (and yet not sufficient) efforts written into law.
We can have better things, but we as a people certainly need to do better. There are Mamdanis and there are Trumps. There's a difference.
What about when Clinton signed NAFTA and condemned swaths of the US to poverty (rustbelt is not a term of endearment)?
I mean this country's founding document had carveouts for slavers and some of the first laws signed into Congress was the fugitive slave act.
Sorry but it's not US leadership that cares about Americans, it has always been Americans themselves fighting for justice + a better a life.
I am not hand waving anything, this is the reality of neoliberalism and has been a core American trait since our founding: some Americans are more equal than others, elites deserve more money.
There was only a small period of time in our country's history, 1940s to late 1960s, where workers had a true say at the table:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Compression
We have yet to return to the only period of history that not only improved the lives of workers materially, but also spiritually by increasing civil rights and making it so that the first time in our nation's history that every American had the legal right to vote.
I mean FFS our leaders are literally allowed to engage in insider trading and legalized bribes, you're trying to tell me with a straight face that these same ghouls somehow have a soul and want to save the planet?
Everybody loves clean air and water but apparently forget why they have it in the first place.
Lead causes brain damage and memory impairment...
Brought you proudly by Thomas Midgley, Jr., who solved science problems by making bigger ones.
- https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/thomas-midgley-and-t...
That doesn't make much sense to me. It would be more profitable to sell gasoline without lead tetraethyl because you wouldn't be forced to buy a patented product. Just pour a shot of pure grain spirit in your tank on every refill (or however much is needed).
It's more plausible that engine technology today has improved to the point that ethanol alone can eliminate knocking.
The link you provided gives more context.
> One already-known remedy was replacing a substantial proportion of the gasoline fuel with ethanol – though ethanol’s lower energy content made the engines less efficient...[General Motors and Standard Oil] claimed that ethanol – often used in automobile fuels before the war – was an unsatisfactory alternative.
and
> Unless the fuel producers themselves get into this work of investigating the properties of their fuels, there is a good chance that they may have to pay tribute to others
Translation: anti-knock compounds was a good business for Standard Oil to be in themselves. Instead of paying another company for a patented product.
Leaded gasoline caused colossal harm, but it did a good job of solving problems with fuel at the time.
No, lead poisoning makes you a brain damaged retard. They can probably hardly remember shit.
No because they were extremely rich and lived in massive houses set far back from the city streets filled with polluting cars and well away from factories spewing poison into the air. They've lived perfectly comfortable lives in climate controlled and filtered spaces and traveled around to beautiful remote areas where poor people can never go and the pollution had barely touched. They know that they and their families can buy a comfortable and safe life no matter how miserable and sick they make the rest of us. They will always have healthy food and clean water no matter how many of us don't.
Our government works best when it's "of the people" but instead the octogenarians in power have almost nothing in common with us (even most of us here, in a forum filled with very wealthy people) and so their interests are not our interests and our concerns are not shared by them.
Please, the correct word is "value". Using the word p-word makes people understand and get irritated.