Vladz0r

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Everything posted by Vladz0r

  1. I'm just gonna say that it's counterintuitive and requires openmindedness. I have friends from within China and people who have moved there from the US and Europe. People are so easy to believe all the bullshit the media says about big scary China ever since Trump was elected, but can't even imagine things working in another country. People don't understand The Great Firewall and why toxic American media, which has been co-opted to start so many wars and coops in Africa and Latin America, would HAVE to be blocked in China and Vietnam. America does not represent freedom of speech, and people are finally at least realizing it from Twitter and seeing how Elon Musk continues to side with fascism and censorship when push comes to shove. This guy sums it up better than I could when it comes to US Imperialism: Anyway, as an American, you aren't even subject to the level of censorship and salary of Chinese people, but you can interact with native Chinese people if you really wanted to, and look into Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. There are plenty of books and YouTube videos on it. There is still a salary discrepancy for native Chinese people, despite a lot of their social support systems. Some topics are still taboo. Many western websites are blocked from access by default, but VPNs are readily available on the App Stores in Chinese on phones, for free use. Blocked, not illegal. On the Uyghur stuff By the way, the labor camps shit is propaganda pushed by the CIA's Adrian Zenz and has no merit whatsoever, and they're even using AI Generated photos with graphical errors to push the agenda now. Muslim culture is well respected and preserved in China. Did you know China actually has more mosques than most Muslim countries? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mosques_in_China - look, I even found it on freedom website Wikipedia If anyone open-minded stumbled upon this, the Uyghur situation is due to radicalization coming from beliefs of a radical group believing in East Turkistan, and there are legitimate terrorism that has to be worked on through economic poverty alleviation strategies, and there are training centers (which the west calls prison camps) https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/ANNEX_A.pdf Short Video on China's relief efforts in Xinjiang - https://streamable.com/46ykib People really act like they give a flying fuck about Muslims and race equality. The news talks more about what China is supposedly doing despite no evidence, but let's remember that the United States is one of the only countries in the world that will not denounce Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance Resolution - https://usun.usmission.gov/explanation-of-vote-at-the-third-committee-adoption-of-the-combating-glorification-of-nazism/ I remember one time that Leo said that he hoped you would come to realize something sound shocking and mindshattering. To me it was realizing that the US was a sham and that there's an alternative in the Orient, and seeing some of my closest friends go to China to work, travel, and raise their children there. The idea that you could just work over there, be a teacher, save up 80% of your income, take high-speed trains and get to anywhere, and that your kids could have safe, affordable, multilanguage schools, without fearing a school shooter... it sounds like what the West could've been if we didn't become so mentally diseased, greedy, and gun-crazy. It's so hilarious, because on the news we'll see all these videos about lockdowns and starvation in China that they just cycle with old reruns of footage, and then my friends in China are just streaming to me over Discord from their beautiful college campuses and downtown apartments in Hangzhou and Nanjing. People didn't even have to wear masks there most of 2020-2021 because of the zero covid policy. You just have food delivered for extremely cheap, since you don't have Private Organizations like Uber and Grubhub stealing money from working people. Just use Eleme over there. There are some issues with how the Shanghai government has been handling the reopening and reversing the Zero Covid Policy, as an issue between local and national government. Still, better than in the US when people had over a million die, riots in the street, police beating down disabled people, and tear gassing children. (you can google any of these cases during Covid in the US, if you didn't see them and live under a rock) I'll leave you with another cool Shenzhen video (should have spanish subs) Also, Merry Christmas in case I don't come back to this thread: Maybe next time I'll just post cool train videos like these
  2. China is authoritarian when you pay 140RMB to travel across the length of the entire continental US, and 2-3RMB ($0.40) to take high speed transit. Freedumb (Freedom) is when it costs 2 days of your monthly salary just to commute to work. Authoritarian is when trains, never forget it. Also, gotta love those mandatory paid vacation days in China, and the mandatory social security, and the mandatory lower tax rates than the US lol Authoritarianism truly is hell.
  3. I didn't want to respond to this but since Leo is reading it... Leo has no understand whatsoever when he brings up progressivism, socialism, and communism. He says communism has "failed" in spite of socialist states such as China and Vietnam, which has a thriving middle class. There's a lot of nuance and a ton of falsified history, with things like the "10 million deaths" figure of socialism. There's also so much to unpack on US Imperialism, how the US owns and runs the banks of 100+ countries, how it uses capital to export foreign businesses and steal money from workers overseas, through price manipulation, undercutting, American perception, etc. Cenk and The Young Turks and Woodrow Wilson and FDR are not "communists" or "socialists" or anything even close to that. Every US president has had the same agenda, which is capitalism. Capitalism means that private companies own the means of production. This means that you, the worker, must work increasingly worse wages, year after year, because you don't own the factories, the tools, or the companies that you work at. Those companies are owned by a minority. The efficiencies that technology and automation have provided to the world have been stolen from society at large, through capitalism, as these factories continue to reduce REAL costs (material, labor, units of electricity and oil required to produce goods) and because they own everything, they can force workers to pay more and more for products each year, while paying you less. Under socialism, the Working Class (Proletariat) owns the means of production. In China, the Chinese people implicitly have the right to the automation and improvements that are happening in China. Communism is not the same as socialism. Communism is a mode of thought, a philosophy, or political movement in which the end goal is the dissolution of the state. Until then, there is a democratic government under socialism, where the working class owns the means of production. This means that the laborers own the rights to the factories, tech companies, banks, etc. they work in. What this has done for China is provided real wage increases, while most of the western world has seen inflation r@pe their countries, in spite of "economic growth" each year. Suspicious? No, just capitalist. By design, what you do as a capitalist is you own an asset, like a house, an apartment, a business, or a factory. These assets which cost more than the average worker will ever afford, will continue to pay themselves off many times over, because the whole point of capitalism is that it allows private ownership of the means of production. This is different from personal ownership. Under communism and socialism, you still own your toothbrush, your car, your cell phone, etc. People are also not "paid exactly the same" and "de-incentivized to be productive" under socialism. There are plenty of billionaires in China that are hugely productive. The difference is that there are checks and balances so that the existence of these billionaires does not make the daily life of the average individual worse. When you go outside and see homes own by Berkshire Hathaway, hiking up the price of houses and apartments, and leaving a lesser % of houses on the market for purchase, this provides a tangible squeeze on working class Americans. Without going into too much detail, here's some videos so that you can better understand socialism and the fruits of it. What you attribute to "capitalism" - improvements, innovation, markets, trade, are not innate to capitalism. Socialism as a mode of governance includes all these features. When you run a pizza company as a business, and you pay your workers $7.25 an hour to sell $1000+ worth of pizza a day, and you steal the rest of the profit - this is capitalism. You own what costs too much for the worker, and by having more money and owning it, you can afford to produce this item. It will outscale any form of inflation, because you can just adjust prices. As long as you continue to exploit your workers, and run your company as a business instead of a co-op, it's wage theft, and capitalism. If you took the same company, and instead, you and your 3 good friends all worked together and split the costs and wages, you'd all probably be getting $30-80/hr before expenses. Socialism is a bit like this but scaled up to include all companies in the entire country, and giving ownership to the people. This means that as new pizza ovens are made, new buildings are created, and as the real price to produce flour and cheese goes down due to agricultural improvements, the average person will pay less in real wages for this food over time. The #1 video you could watch is downloadable here - https://www.mediafire.com/file/f2hkgdwl5q10o5w/American_EXPLAINS_Socialism_with_Chinese_Characteristics_in_30_Min_%28720p_30fps_H264-192kbit_AAC%29.mp4/file Unfortunately Bayarea451's identity was threatened and he has self-censored himself from YouTube, so I got this from an archive of his videos. On Chinese Automation and how it improves the lives of workers. Is China Imperialist? Chinese Infrastructure Projects in Africa. While we export war and suffering, China exports Infrastructure. On the fake concentration camps in Xinjiang Let's not even talk about the REAL slave labor in the United States. Did you know you can invest in Prison Stocks? Cool channel on Spanish perspectives on China Not everyone from the Global South sucks on the teat of its American tyrants. Debunking Anti-Communist arguments Cuba Elections - how Democracy Works in Cuba.
  4. All Right, I really was trying to resist the urge to post in this thread, because people have been misled by western propaganda. Let's start with what "communism" actually means: Proletariat - workers or working-class people, regarded collectively (often used with reference to Marxism). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletariat#:~:text=The dictatorship of the proletariat is the intermediate stage between,ruling proletarian state party%2C and Rule by the proletariat - means that the workers are the rulers of the party. This means that the employee actually has rights, and ownership of the profits of the country. This means that as the price of livin in your country increases, so does your standard of living. This means that your dollar is worth MORE each year, rather than LESS. You can no longer purchase a $100,000 family home everywhere in the U.S, as wages have not scaled with inflation. Who actually runs the "Media" that you're citing www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1_lCe3vyyc We're not even looking at all the war crimes committed by the U.S. in the middle east with how we dethrone governments, sanction them, etc. This is just what we do to countries that oppose the US - we bomb to the ground. We bombed North Korea to the ground as well, but like a phoenix, they've risen from the ashes. We do the same to Yemen, places in the middle east. It's literally a Google Search away - https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk02VzTEFocvI2oe0YqpB9HDbNBSwwQ%3A1613328316978&ei=vG8pYPuMO-Xl5NoPwuKQmAw&q=obama+war+crimes&oq=obama+war+crimes&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAM6BQgAELADOggIABCwAxCGAzoICC4QkQIQkwI6BQgAEJECOgIIADoLCC4QsQMQxwEQowI6CAgAELEDEIMBOg4ILhCxAxCDARDHARCjAjoFCAAQsQM6BAgAEEM6BwguELEDEEM6BQguELEDOggIABCxAxCRAlC0BliWEGC8EGgBcAB4AIABmgGIAZoJkgEEMTQuMpgBAKABAaoBB2d3cy13aXrIAQLAAQE&sclient=gws-wiz&ved=0ahUKEwj72vSphOruAhXlMlkFHUIxBMMQ4dUDCA0&uact=5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_North_Korea U.S. Vs. North Korea: https://imgur.com/Ax2qqZS Important video to actually understand how China's economy functions, and how it puts workers first in its economy. Explanation of Chinese with Socialist Characteristics - why China is not anti-democracy, or incapable of understanding markets. This one one of my favorites for explaining how Scientifically minded China is, along with the Deng Xiaoping video below. It serves as an economics lesson to capitalists and socialists alike. The Chinese transition between Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping who revolutionized modern china, paving the way for prosperity. This one goes into how China started ramping up the education of its citizens and paving the path for a high standard living and robust Middle Class in China. The planned economy in the Soviet Union - many people don't realize what rights were given in the Soviet Union, and how its planned economy that rejected capitalism helped serve its citizens. People talk about Taiwan and Hong Kong as if they aren't Propaganda machines and puppets of the United States. We quickly forget these acts of terrorism on China by the U.S. puppet states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan) - suppression of properly journalism. People say "Oh, it would be so much better if Taiwan or Hong Kong ran China" To this I just have this picture: https://imgur.com/HZrMByg Uyghurs in Xinjiang Food Culture and its preservation in China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_cuisine Uyghurs living in China This isn't even where Xinjiang is on a map. They've strategically positioned it near Hong Kong to ride off the "Free Hong Kong" propaganda. Learn about the history of the Hui people in China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hui_people List of Mosques in China - note that these have been maintained and rebuilt with state funding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mosques_in_China Americans feel more free in China than in the United States, especially in this generation of disparity in the US. In China, there is real class mobility compared to the U.S. China's Comprehensive Poverty Relief Plan for every family in the entire country: They have a bottom-up form of leadership to make sure that families can stay above the poverty level. Some people will say that the RMB to USD equivalent of the Chinese poverty line is too low. Let me remind you that in the US, the poverty line is $12,760. If you think that this is enough for Rent, Transportation, Utilities, Healthcare, Food, and proper education, which are all provided in China, well... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fare_of_passenger_trains_in_China Mind you, this is sponsored by the government anyway. Chinese Social Security provides a housing fund, medical, unemployment insurance, etc. https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-social-security-system-explainer/ Introduction to Shenzhen, China's technical powerhouse city: How expensive is it to live in Shenzhen: Cool Job Fair video in Shanghai, where they actually bring in people from poor countries. Africa on the road to having a better rail system than us: China involvement in Africa, specifically in Libertia: 26:22 is a nice place to start There are criticisms of Chinese involvement in the video as well, as there is still a debt cycle that happens, but they've allowed Liberia to refinance 83 times, and their dedication in Africa is not imperialism, as the US's involvement has always been. Xinjiang - walking through the area Sichuan University Campus Tour: "But in China you can't be rich! You can't own anything!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_by_net_worth But yes, you are not untouchable in China: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-29/china-finance-official-executed-in-bribery-case The number 1 tactic that the U.S. has to turn the people against their own government is sanctions. https://www.state.gov/cuba-sanctions/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_North_Korea#:~:text=In July 2017%2C after the,Through Sanctions Act was passed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iran And don't think that just because you live in the "Free West" that you have Freedom of Speech with no censorship: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/why-anthony-bourdains-parts-unknown-iran-set-episode-isnt-hulu-1270701 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4149112/ This episode of Parts Unknown humanizes the Iranian people, which is a big No No for the U.S. I can go on and on about how we sanction and dethrone communist countries because their higher-up fascist leaders line the U.S's pockets. Obviously we wouldn't want their people to have a higher standard of living - our economy is built off of their low paid labor. Mexico's Minimum Wage: https://www.mexperience.com/mexicos-minimum-wage-2021/#:~:text=Mexico's minimum wage was raised,the 2020 rate of %24185.56. Oreos made in Mexico - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oreo_boycott#:~:text=In 2015%2C Mondelez International%2C the,was moved to Salinas%2C Mexico. Would it surprise you to know that Mexico is a high crime capitalist Spanish country? Wealth Inequality and Crime - The Gini Index (can't embed, ran out of embeds perhaps): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3XYHPAwBzE Anyway, most of this is just to explain how China has ramped up their means of production via capitalism with socialist characteristics. The United Nations is still investigating the Uyghur camps. The problem is that investigative reporters have not actually come in to thoroughly review the areas and the evidence, so we are taking this on blind faith based on corroborated reports. I'm defending the structure of the Chinese economy and its support of workers' and individuals' rights, and their perspective of freedom, leadership, and poverty alleviation. The reason for censorship in China is due to the western propaganda machine that it uses to turn the people against their own governments, as we've launched in Cuba, despite Fidel Castro coming in and providing universal healthcare and vastly improving literacy rates, and having a higher life expectancy in the U.S. There's just too much to unravel that us proud westerners can't possibly begin to understand. Just follow the money, look at the capitalists, starve the people, and run the propaganda machine.
  5. Right now probably the toxic life purpose. I know in the back of my head I've been on the daily wage slave grind, but struggling to build up any skills on the side to build into a life purpose in the future. Trying to just stay afloat but I used to do way more than that.
  6. This is pretty much me. It's easy to criticize Peterson for his views on certain topics, especially on Marxism and Capitalism, but there's a lot of credit to the advice he says in regards to buckling down and facing the dragon and such. He's also one of the few people to point out the hypergamous nature of women, purely using the facts, and it's funny how he managed to do that with minimal criticism compared to what he does actually get critiqued about. I think Peterson was a bit of a father figure to me as well for a while. He's someone who builds up great arguments through his book and through some of his longer videos and lectures, but the debates and the soundbytes are sometimes crap. Peterson vs. Zizek for example was kind of unraveling into a shitshow after a while, coming from someone who leans communist but has a soft spot for capitalism. One thing he said in there that was amusing was that if people's basic needs were met (if we give the people bread), there would actually be more chaos and disorder in society, because people would stir things up just to see what would happen. He does that to refute things like the welfare state despite speaking to a primarily western audience that lives in less of a welfare state than his home country of Canada, where teachers and professors are paid more and economic safety nets are generally stronger than in the US. I dunno, I think you have to see Peterson as someone who encourages people to work effectively within the system and accept it completely first, and then hone your skills to deal with it, rather than complain about it.
  7. Is this like a meme or did Leo really make a video thanking us for his birthday wishes? :_:
  8. There are a lot of pieces of tech that are innovated through space, such as 3D Printing and Teraforming technology. Some fiber optic wires and human organs can only be made in zero gravity, for example. There's an idea going around that if we could teraform other planets, we could use the same ideas to improve earth's atmosphere.
  9. I did notice this one thing in the video: 12:09 BUT LEOOOOOOOOO Only OG Actualized.org watchers will get this.
  10. Everyone benefits from socialized programs that we pay into. Society as a whole is raised up, as the floor is heightened. People who will say otherwise tend to use metrics of comparative wealth and wealth inequality rather than looking at things like absolute poverty. If you're an upper middle class person in the US, or are making like $60-100k in a median cost of living area (cheaper than New York, more like Chicago) then really your quality of life is potentially what kings a hundred or two hundred years ago dreamed about, in terms of meeting your needs easily and efficiently. The idea is to get more people to that point as a sort of bare minimum, in my opinion. People that think the socialized programs are a waste of money I think are only slightly valid, and that's because public institutions take a while to catch up to the private sector. You do wind up having systems like USPS and public transportation and public schools which are not monetarily incentivized to innovate, because their funding is guaranteed regardless of yearly deficits. There should be incentives for optimization so that these public systems can be robust. There's too much gridlock in these public systems for whatever reason, I feel. Open sourced technology and material may improve a lot of these things over time, though. with minimal effort on the individual system's end to implement it. (ex. think of an open source free curriculum or software and APIs that Google lets you integrate into your phone apps for easy GPS tracking for delivery drivers.)
  11. Man this is such basic stuff. Of course the government controls the media, and the entertainment industry is full of child molesters. You'd have to be a boomer in order for any of this to be new.
  12. For some reason people have been sleeping on this, including some left-wing(ish) media like The Hill, The Progressive Voice, The Young Turks, and so on. Maaaaybe Kyle from Secular Talk mentioned it in 2016, and I think possibly The Progressive Voice or some people on twitter mentioned it for this year.
  13. You should probably just have a VPN anyway, but from here it looks to be accessible. https://www.comparitech.com/privacy-security-tools/blockedinchina/ Not sure how legitimate it is. If you're using your own devices I wouldn't worry too much about using a VPN, but research the laws yourself first. Make sure to have multiple VPNs setup and installed on your own devices, ideally locked and encrypted if possible. Know that big things like YouTube are blocked, of course.
  14. As a Math Teacher, I have to say that this would be a great lesson on exponential growth by comparing different countries' responses to covid-19.
  15. This is pretty much considered a conspiracy, but there are some some studies. Most people debunk it everywhere on reddit, but I did find this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/aren1k/5g_potencial_health_risk/egnccp3?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x "you can't lose weight with 5g" oh boy I'd like to see some type of a test or study to show the effects, but I guess it would be too hard to actually conduct. I mean, this whole thing is plausible. It's plausible that the coronavirus was some type of coordinated thing. I'd like to see if wikileaks ever reveals this or if someone connects the dots someday.
  16. If you're working for an employer who doesn't treat you like an equal, who doesn't listen to your ideas earnestly, and accept that they can learn something from you, chances are you're in a low conscious job. It's fine, I've worked for devils in disguise nonstop who will rat you out to save their own asses at the drop of a hat. Just need the money to fund our side hustle and turn it into a life purpose after all.
  17. I disagree because so many lives are savable through treatment. You basically just need enough treatment to stay afloat while your body can produce antibodies. Also, my dad is experiencing tremendous bodily pain, and is in need of a back surgery, and his doctors appointments to lead up to this have been postponed by several weeks, and we barely have a Covid-19 dozen cases in our large city. The system can't handle the influx, and people with and without the virus are suffering already. Let's also consider that if we let it collapse and infect hospitals, how many healthcare workers will die from this, as doctors are often a bit older. Italy has had over 2600 healthcare workers infected. People aren't trying to let their hospitals become a complete disaster inside and out, which is why they're turning away people to begin with. You have to realize that the 2% or 3% or whatever deathrate is the deathrate when a lot of people are able to get medical care and treatments. The rate could be a lot higher if everyone's sick, and inevitably there would be a bigger collapse if a large percent of the workforce is forced to call out sick. People think that the mild symptoms aren't bad for most people, but this is a respiratory virus. A lot of people have acute asthma and the like, and tons of babies will die from this. On the bright side, when every person starts to lose elderly people in their family, maybe they'd actually realize this shit is serious.
  18. I almost want Leo to get trendy, kind of like Alan Watts.
  19. There are some "good" things like the rollout of a work from home environment. It honestly makes me realize how retarded it is that these thousands of businesses who immediately deployed working remotely didn't just do that to begin with, at least on certain days of the week. Unfortunately I'll just get a temp suspension with no pay during this period since I'm contract. Thank you giant multinational corporation for continuing to screw over contractors yet again. No, 99% of people are going to rot away at home and watch Netflix. The other 1% might start to build some decent habits during this time. The young people continue to not vote, and voter suppression in major cities will continue to swing the election in Status Quo Joe's favor.
  20. Depends on what you find by healthy, and whether you can cook. Personally I would go for things that are shelf stable like coconut milk and tomato/sauce cans, and make things like curry. You could get a rice cooker and make some rice too if you find that to be healthy. Lot of keto things are shelf stable like nuts, seeds, legumes. A bit expensive depending on how far you go. Maybe fill your fridge with high density foods that are reheatable, stackable containers, make rice daily which is pretty doable. If you feel your kids need the sugar as an affordable energy source, maybe get a drink mix made with natural sugar or something, or maybe a fruit juice concentrate? Not sure, but there's probably some powdered alternatives.
  21. I agree. I think that with each election, the millenial generation and current generation is adding more and more voters to the process. If you look at people under age 35, they're overwhelmingly in support of Sanders. It even extends into the early 40s a bit. He managed to score some big demographics nationally. No we most likely won't win the primary, but we're getting more people into the political process. I think that alone was a noteworthy achivement that came out of the 2016 and 2020 election seasons. We'll hopefully scale up the production of more of our systems. Imagine in 2040 when electric vehicles and solar power are the norm, and we have a better idea on health and nutrition. Modern information and tech innovation is a positive loop imo. It will take some big players to enact certain policies, doing things like improving our food quality and choices for the masses for example, getting the right info into textbooks over time, etc. I'm optimistic for those who can access the information and those who have influence in setting the future trends, anyway.
  22. This is basically redpill in book form I have to agree with this one. In general, having a playful manner, doing things like teasing especially has been a good strategy for me. Just don't try too hard or you'll look like a tryhard or a troll. There's a time and place anyway. Also none of this stuff will work if you're not attractive, so gotta emphasize point #1 from the first post before working on game—err, can we call it that here? Let's call it relationship dynamics. Perceived social status is a big point I've found, actually. It's help to talk about being out with your friends in a very positive light, highlighting their funniness or coolness, and mentioning where both you and your friend contributed to the experience. Basically anecdotal stories and situations are good to bring up. You could bring up something like "I invited my Asian friend to this Indian restaurant (nearby), and dude had the whitest taste buds you could imagine. His mouth was on fire, we had douse him with water. Literally saw smoke coming out of his ears." or something like that. Make it known that you go downtown and hang out with cool people (even if you only do that occasionally). Women also like to meet up and combine social groups a bit, in my experience. Also can be kind of useful for building up social groups in general, if you're looking to do that and not necessarily go directly for a date or do pick-up or whatever you're into.
  23. Obama care is really almost like a Leninist-capitalist idea rather than a progressive one. Instead of actually fixing the system, he basically did the equivalent of giving poor people new $20k cars, and then raising everyone else's car price to buy cars. Oh and in this system, you can't be used cars of course. The obvious problem with Obamacare is that it's essentially wealth distribution + an inefficient system with middlemen, and then leaving the people in the middle class to pick up the costs. Thusly, pay wages haven't gone up significantly in certain industries due to healthcare gutting the cost for employees below 6-figures, since employers have to pay that higher healthcare cost. There's been a growing trend of non-percentage bonus incentives which may or may not be related to this recent spike in healthcare costs. Obama thinks he's a progressive but plays heavily within the system. Yes I did get to enjoy Obamacare myself for a few years. Yes is it coming back in the ass to bite me and every other middle class American.
  24. Yeah Trump will appoint a bunch of right-wing judges and the republicans will control the house of representatives. Unless you're making 7 figures, it's going to be a rough time being an American, with how ill-equipped we're going to be in terms of national infrastructure and job loss due to automation. It's just going to be a downhill spiral trying to get back on track after 4 more years of Trump. Expect plenty of anti-science anti-social justice, illogical, and racist and classist policies to pervade. The housing market will continue to be fu@ked as multi-national corporations continue to do $100,000,000 building renovation projects, continuing to outsource to India in some places and overpay in San Francisco to drive housing costs further to the moon.
  25. "This just in on CNN: Bernie Sanders, independent democratic socialist from Vermont, appearing on right-wing republican extremist network: Fox News. Sanders managed to stir up quite a crowd with the republican base. Could Sanders be more like Trump than he seems? It does appear that Sanders's coalition does appeal to the republican base, as his base is primarily white, college-educated voters, and he yet to expand his voter base beyond that. More news at 11." The media will continue to spin it this way even if they gave him the time of day to cover this thing in the first place.