nine_zeros

> If she committed a felony,

It is not proven. Trump is merely alleging - it is a manufactured allegation.

> If she committed a felony, she shouldn't be in charge of anything

Apply the same logic to the 34 count felon in the office of the President. Until you apply the harshest standard to the President, none of your other complaints hold any value.

> I don't understand how they can say Democrats are Communists while they do this.

The republican game is to call democrats <insert_any_label_here> and then do the same thing they allege democrats do.

>What's the biggest brand in the world? If you said Trump, you're not wrong. But what's the foundation of that brand? One that's more globally recognized than practically anything else.

I genuinely and sincerely wish that America can get past this level of mediocre sycophantic Idiocracy. What a pathetic administration that only wants to hear good news for their bad work.

> I think no matter what Mark does to shake things up. ~Facebook~ Meta will always be out-innovated by a startup

This happens to all companies that end up with - pardon my French - a shithole culture.

Everyone who was voting for trump because IlLeGaLs was made aware that this administration is fascist and doesn't care about criminals - they only care about appearance of doing something - even if it harms legal innocents.

Yet, people voted for trump. As much as it hurts to say this, America is truly a fallen country as evidenced by the hateful people.

Yeah you let them experience all this gradually once they are ready - just like you let them drive gradually after 16 - first with supervision and later independently in your car and later with their own car.

> This has crystallised something for me: I'm not letting my children anywhere near a Meta product. They can decide what they want when they're adults.

You know how parents are supposed to warn kids away from cigarettes? Yeah, warn them away from social media of all kinds except parental approved group chats.

>I'd take the people over the work anytime, the best places i've ever worked at are the places where the people are great to work with, even the slog/bureaucratic work is still good when you have people that are great at what they do and are fun to be around.

A variant of this that holds true for me is - less corporatized level-based ladder climbing 1:1, more just focus on work.

Well, companies want to chain employees to office desks for no real reason except to show that their office investment is important - that's not conducive to motherhood.

> Nonsense, it is a perfectly reasonable response to the crazy, abrupt, and possibly-illegal import taxes (tariffs) Republicans threw into Canadian everything while "joking" about annexing the country.

+1

>If he cared about reasonability and proportionality in trade, he should be aiming that at his own politicians.

+1 again.

Republicans are so dumb I can't even believe it. They seriously think they can bully their customers into buying their goods. I mean - what do they not understand here?

Yes

> How is it that a small grocery store can sometimes provide things (much) more cheaply than a megacorporation?

Mega corporations need to increase their returns to shareholders year after year. Mom and pops don't have anyone else to please but themselves - they're often ok with retaining same returns as last year

Brexit is so funny because it is literally a real world example of how isolation reduces economic growth and causes poverty - and yet, America goes ahead with similar isolation.

> That concentrated wealth has now been spread to other people around the world, and means that we don't get to live like kings, while the rest of the world lives in squalor.

This is untrue because the rest of the world also produced wealth that the West has a share of - due to being early investors. The West became wealthier when the rest of the world became wealthier.

But, WHO in the West became wealthier? This is the main question. The wealth clearly did not trickle down to the middle class or poors.

From the numbers, is it evident that shareholders became wealthier - especially large shareholders in the West - even when productivity and profits increased, the earnings of workers did not increase proportionately.

To me it seems futile to try to keep coming up with theories when the solution is as simple as higher taxes on the rich and zero taxes for the poor.

> Yes, and they can't even fill the positions they have under that cap.

Yes, they can't even fill positions - that is how incompetent Republicans are.

For a specific question about a single point? Yes.

For a nuanced answer, all providers are required. USPS and FedEx both serve meaningful markets.

Cost of FedEx from NYC to LA: Cheapest price for 1 lb letter is $60.37 before taxes

https://www.fedex.com/en-us/online/rating.html

Cheapest price on USPS for 1 lb letter is $9.70 after taxes.

https://postcalc.usps.com/Calculator/MailServices?country=0&...

That is 7x for a standard 1 lb envelope.

The claims are not as egregious as you think. You are not the only one shipping goods around. There is a market that USPS serves and I along with many others benefit from it.

> Is the privatized NC DMV any better than the public one?

Nobody knows. But the only things guaranteed are:

- service prices will rise because now shareholders will seek a return every year.

- AI powered elevator music phone service where you must wait 30 mins before reaching a human.

- Fees and costs for every interaction.

- Workers will be encouraged to do work fast - by providing less service to people, asking people to come over and over again

- More lobbying to reduce license and registration durations because they need people to constantly renew to collect fees and profits.

About FedEx, I don't know why you think US post offices are bad. I personally find USPS to be astonishingly high quality and decent humans. FedEx is decent quality but 10x higher prices than USPS.

Yes, it predates trump. But prior to trump, Republican voters would hold their representatives accountable. Today, trump's cult is so brainwashed that they are completely ok with pedophilia, internment camps, destruction of services, destruction of science - literally willing to burn American society to ground so that Trump continues in office.

Their priority is Trump and not America. Which is why no one can take republican voters seriously.

Tariff is a sales tax

I'll tell you what pisses me off: Having to be subjected to low security services because one political party wants to run a reality TV show instead of caring for people. The consequences are all for us to bear.

Ain't happening with the current party at the helm.

>Oh, that's a common misunderstanding, but they can't sue me in court – by accepting me as a customer, they accepted my binding arbitration agreement! It clearly said so on my luggage tag their authorized agent (i.e. the bellboy) handled as part of check-in.

Why can't there be a human membership union that sets these automatic binding arbitration agreements on service providers on behalf of members? Is there any law preventing a class of people from creating such a customer's union?

The goal of republicans was tax cuts for the wealthy. But that required cuts to spending - at least some cuts. So they wanted to cut Medicaid because Medicaid helps the poor. Republicans don't want to help the poor.

But Medicaid cut would have required a congressional bill with 60 votes in the senate. They were not going to get that. So they added work requirements which basically added a lot of friction to getting Medicaid. Effectively ensuring a spending cut.

All to give a tax cut to the wealthy.

> The funds then are redirected to a sclerotic and uncaring state, and then the productive people are shamed when they ask for less of it to be taken.

In republican governments, yes this is real.

In democrat governments, the vast majority of taxes goes into productive issues such as education, transportation, and healthcare. Even the type of bills passed by democrats are friendly towards building a society.

Now, YOU may not want to pay for other's education, transportation, and healthcare. But a lot of people appreciate that access to high quality is not merely limited to the wealthy. This is why you'll see amazing companies in blue states vs red, you'll see amazing companies starting during blue federal governments vs red.

The data is very clear on what produces great outcomes for society. You might not want others to get a decent life but you need to admit your selfishness.

> Government agencies that spend massive amounts of tax dollars while accomplishing nothing and being net-negative for society. Anyone who has worked for or dealt with the government for extended periods of time will clearly know how fucked it is

This is only true of republican governments. Republican-led governments are truly appalling in their spending, and wasteful tax cuts. Democrat governments are far far more efficient, effective, and work for the people.

An example of this is one beautiful bill which literally increased deficits while giving nothing of value to people but the biden-led inflation reduction act literally created new energy infrastructure without increasing deficit.

Wow, finally someone had the balls to say that stack ranking and PIPing people like a meat grinder is inhuman.

>people who will never make use of them have to subsidize it.

That is the cost of living in world class cities with services.

I don't use every single suburban street of the state or every single interstate freeway. I still must pay taxes for it so that society functions.

If you are really so opposed to a functional society, you should really consider moving to rural villages with no services, and no taxes for them.

They cut all these workers and services illegally to save on the deficit.

Then turned around and increase the deficit by cutting healthcare.

> Can someone discern why these layoffs are being done

They spent too much on AI without making enough revenue from it. So they need to cut elsewhere so that in quarterly reports, it looks like the AI investment returned the right numbers.