Putting it in context, it's probably right. There are a lot of different swathes/classes of boomer, and the ones that would be able to do the listed in lines 7-10 are probably not the ones that were targeted for conscription in vietnam.
It's Korea that typically gets ignored in the US. In fact, that war does fall under the time-frame we're looking at and wikipedia says about 1.5 million were drafted for it.
Korea wasn't legally considered a war for bullshit political reasons for far too long and as a result veterans and families of veterans were denied benefits they should have received after giving some or all for the country now fucking them over
My dad was born in 49, he never had to fight in a war. On the other hand it would have been a hell of a ride for him to tramp to Woodstock from western Europe.
To be fair, the requirement to provide health insurance and other benefits for full-time workers is definitely one of the leading causes of the reduction in full-time jobs. If lawmakers were really putting the peoples' interests first, they would have just said that for a part-time job the employer would have to provide benefits based on the fraction of 40 hours the employee worked (e.g. 20 hours is half-benefits).
Look I'll be honest with you. As someone outside the US the idea that your workplace is responsible for your private insurance / healthcare is bug fuck insane and open to exploitation on a mind boggling scale.
Not just open to exploitation; openly exploited. Disruption to coverage and questions about what could be covered differently are significant factors that cause people to choose not to take a job elsewhere.
The trick is that health insurance can be bought directly, but it's just so insanely expensive to do it that way so nobody does. Companies get a huge discount to buy bulk enterprise packages, and then their employees pay for a lot of it themselves. The portion that the company pays for is just an expense of labor, the same as salary, and offering better than the company across the street is an incentive to get better hires.
The ACA basically was just "hey, you know that discount that companies are getting? Now do it for the state and we'll offer it to everybody. And insurance companies will like it because people are given incentive to buy this because we're gonna fine people for not being insured." Pretty shitty deal, but at least people had the freedom to jobhop or become unemployed and keep their doctors.
It's cheaper and easier to buy a gun than to get an abortion in this shithole country.
Look at it like this: in America, a sizeable portion of people think that your direct economic utility is a good measure of if you deserve to live. They'll justify it by saying things like "they don't think it's governments place" to provide social services, and that it's better handled through charity.
If you don't have a workplace you need to go for real American style socialized medicine: GoFundMe.
(The history behind it is that before anyone was really doing socialized healthcare workplaces in the US started offering health insurance as a way to increase compensation during the WW2 wage freezes. Eventually it was so pervasive that it was a recognized form of compensation, and then it was the easiest way to dictate that everyone had insurance, since a lot of people listened to the fear mongering that was going on. "Nothing changes you just can't get kicked off for developing cancer". It also lined up with the beliefs of those who think that people who aren't working don't deserve support)
lawmakers were really putting the peoples’ interests first, they would have just said that for a part-time job the employer would have to provide benefits based on the fraction of 40 hours the employee worked (e.g. 20 hours is half-benefits).
Then shitty jobs would only give people up to 10 hours per week so they'd have to work 4 jobs to get close to 40 hours, and of course that quarter benefits wouldn't cover jack shit. Quarter benefits and people working 4 jobs would also make it a 75% chance that any employee you hire and schedule at ~10 hours per week doesn't accept the benefits thereby saving the business money
Better solution would be single payer healthcare, i.e. Medicare for all, plus expanding social security to pay more than a starvation amount would also be ideal. I've also previously outlined the thoughts of expanding SNAP/Foodstamps to all, housing assistance vouchers to all and Social Security to all to effectively reach UBI based entirely off of existing programs that tens of millions of Americans are already on right now. Work becomes how you fund hobbies and a better lifestyle and economic downturns don't hurt normal people as much
It's 4Chan, "Obongo" is one of the more polite names they could say.
Obamacare is corporate medicine, designed to give more money to the health insurance industry. Anyone in support of socialized medicine should not be a fan of it just because it's marginally better than before.
Obamacare isn't perfect and made some things more expensive for some people. Yes it helped others and overall I think it's beneficial, but covering your ears and pretending that anon is blaming socialized medicine entirely is just inaccurate.
yes, which would make this specific criticism of Obamacare nonfactual, but anon is still not blaming socialized medicine like the person I replied to thinks
I know what obongo means, don't know what "other side" discourse you think I'm looking for, but you seem to have made up your mind about what kind of strawman I am, so have fun I guess.
I assumed you were acting like this was a fair and factual criticism of Obamacare, since you responded to someone calling it bullshit by defending fair and factual criticism.
Since you also said you thought Obamacare was a net positive, I assumed you were arguing that we should be open to listening to criticism of things we approve of, or listening to the "other side of the conversation", and just misunderstood what you were defending.
I really don't see this as a negative strawman, but I'm quite curious to know what you thought I was arguing against.
All strawmen are negative, if a person (or their argument) needs to be caricatured to be attacked, it shouldn't be attacked. If it can be attacked and you're just caricaturing for fun, then you're diluting the argument and shouldn't.
Do you think that my description is negative, a caricature, or a strawman now that I've said what I was responding to? How was I misrepresenting your opinion by, I thought, assuming positive intent?
One of my first jobs in 1984 would not give me more than 24 hours a week because they would be required to pay healthcare. This was a thing long before the ACA
Obamacare mandates employers offer healthcare to people working 30 hrs a week. A lot of places will only allow you to be scheduled for less than 30 hours a week, even if you are able and willing to go full time. It's stupid, but some people have convinced themselves that it's Obamacare's fault that their employer is shitty and the subsequent governments have been unwilling to close that loophole. It's also worth mentioning that employers did this even before Obamacare because there are other things that full time employees are entitled to that part time employees aren't.
OP also has a shitty mind set because he sides with the oppressor (his boss is the one denying him healthcare) and not the oppressed (everyone that can't afford healthcare).
If he understood the situation he would not call it "Obongocare"
i’ve personally had more than one job that limited our hours to under 30 because of (i thought federal) laws requiring employers to offer health insurance plans to employees who work 30 or more…
in multiple states….
well before obamacare… now get off my lawn.
It's also worth mentioning that employers did this even before Obamacare because there are other things that full time employees are entitled to that part time employees aren't.
People often refer to the ACA as Obamacare. Obamacare did change requirements for employer provided health care, not just marketplace plans. So, prior to the ACA full time employees had certain benefits that part time employees did not. Post ACA there were changes to mandatory minimum benefits that employer healthcare packages provided. If you can articulate what the issue you are raising is, that would be helpful.
Also called it Obongocare which made me immediately lose any empathy to them for the racism, but it is 4chan I guess.
99% likely they vote Republican based on the attitide also, which is the root cause of a lot of their complaints (min wage, shitty employee protections, expensive Internet [almost certainly one of the monopoly ISP areas], has to rely on a car because public transit is socialism).
Yeah, the Democratic party sucks by and large for many other reasons, but id rather live in a D city than an R one any day of the week. /end obligatory response to "but Dems"
99% likely they vote Republican based on the attitide also
Are you sure it's real? Maybe they're just doing the racism bit for the shock value. You can post anonymous shit in 4chan without actually having any opinions on anything, and half the point of 4chan (AIUI) is getting reactions from people.
4chan users love playing Schrodinger's Racist, so we'll never know for sure.
I just treat racism as racism, unless it is set up with the most obvious irony or sarcasm beforehand - this ain't, seems like a genuine whine at their real situation.
I commented above, but in the US some employers will refuse to give you more hours to keep you as a part time employee, since full time employees are guaranteed certain benefits. Those benefits include access to healthcare. They would rather hire 2 people part time than 1 person full time. This is not Obamacare's fault, but for some reason people in the middle of nowhere who make very little money have convinced themselves that it's Obama who's to blame instead of the shitty companies and their shitty owners.
I would also like to add, that it's sometimes almost impossible to have a 2nd part time job because one or both are not regular schedules.
People won't know when they are working until the week before. If both jobs do this you will end up with scheduling conflicts.
Like it would be better if you were scheduled the same 3 or 4 days a week and had the rest of the week off.
At least then you could either chill or find other activities. But they want you at their mercy and constantly in crisis.
Like you said,
All Obamacare did from a company standpoint was make people no longer reliant on their employer for healthcare. So it has no bearing on 25 hr work weeks. Although with subsidies going away, a lot of people are becoming uninsured again.
FMLA was 1993, so Clinton
Required lunch breaks, etc are state laws, so not Obama
OT pay and some other federal protections were pre-WW2
Oh, definitely. And having 2 part time jobs, if you can manage it, often means you end up working more hours (25+25), and are still not given the benefits of a full time employee because you aren't technically full time anywhere. It's terrible and for what it's worth I do feel bad for anon here. They are drinking the right wing kook aid, which sucks, but it's an awful position to be in. There's comments calling them a moron or that they just have to make minor changes etc, but the reality is, especially in these small towns, there's not a lot of options and acting like it's the fault of individuals is really missing the point.
For what it's worth, Obamacare did technically add to the employer burden by making good healthcare a mandatory offering for full time employees, so I understand why some people have convinced themselves it's the ACAs fault, but employers were doing the 25 hours thing to skirt other benefits way before Obamacare.
We were paid 19/h doing barista work working 30-39 hours (never allowed to hit 40 because they would have to give us more rights blah blah stuff) had to live in a tiny illegal room for rent and was barely surviving. After we saved up a little bit of money we moved into a van and now we’re in EU.
Mind you, not flashily, not rich, not even making it. Had to get so much help friends and family and especially our significant other just to get here by the skin of our teeth and now that we’re here we’re struggling to even stay due to visa issues. So fucn scared to go back we literally cry almost nightly every day our last chance to stay here slips away only because we just need 1500€ euro more… hhh when will this stress end?
I hate to break it to you 4chan dwelling normie fucking stupid shit head, but that 25 hrs a week is not because of the Affordable Care Act. It's because of greedy capitalist fucks who are squeezing you for every cent they give you to maximize profit margins well beyond what they need to for a healthy business model.
Yeah that stuck out at me too. I love how the conservative media has thoroughly convinced the average dimwitted moron from flyover states that all of their problems are because of Obamacare and not because of the greed of their employer and the laws that they have enticed Congress to enact in their favor to prevent them from having to employ people full time.
Obamacare includes a minimum hour exemption and it should have been obvious to the authors of the bill that employers would cut hours to hit that mark.
You're expecting people who are worth a minimum of 7 figures to consider the plight of people who struggle to maintain 5 figures. Companies were already lowering time employees worked to begin with regardless.
I'm saying the ACA was a bad bill that was never intended to help anyone but insurance companies. We shouldn't be shocked that it includes workarounds for other businesses. Of course it does. Obama and the others who passed it knew that when they passed it. Thats why they wrote it that way.
It's kinda both. The ACA was based on Heritage Foundation work that was done for the benefit of insurance companies. Not much consideration was put into the behaviors it would incentivize in employers.
Which seems like a decent plan, untill your house breaks down or runs out fuel in the middle of nowhere, or your apartment gets impounded while you're at work or using the gym shower, or even just while you're sleeping in it..., and then auctioned off after the mail notice they sent to your last physical address was not responded to in time.
Its basically not legal, anywhere in the US, right now, to live in a car and park it almost anywhere.
You have to be hypervigilant, to survive this way, and ... that just is PTSD, it'll make you worse at your job, more likely to lose it.
So we're basically just making a permanent, sub-proletariat class, thats just gonna get funneled into jail or some kind of concentration camp, probably just turned into some kind of functional, if not formal slave class, whether by debt or criminal conviction or both... within, I dunno, 5 years or less?
I wish we lived in a society where the common belief was that a rising tide lifts all ships, instead of this pull yourself up by your bootstraps rugged individualism nonsense.
Funny thing about that one, the original meaning of that bootstrap idiom was to mean basically impossible, and yet it’s used about as unironically as trickle down economics was
I don't think I've heard the bootstrap phrase unironically in the past decade. I truly don't remember even hearing it outside of contexts like this on reddit or similar.
It's a nation of individual freedom taken to the extreme. That includes the freedom for wealthy individuals to exploit everybody else. And Anon is on the side of the exploited. Anon does seem as a person that will always argue for complete freedom, so finally maintaining the exploitation of themselves and the situation they find themselves in.
The HOA is not a government body its a group of unregulated individuals who claim damages against you and eventually take your home away as per a contract between individuals.
It's weird to see this kind of hypocrisy and also... no, wait, it's the same username who thinks adult women can't have small breasts. Kindly fuck off.
I just ran the numbers through a tax calculator for my province (Quebec). It says that on a salary of $18,000, I would pay about $1,200 for the pension plan and employment insurance. $0 paid for taxes, and I would actually receive a $4,000 as a tax refund.
And, of course Healthcare is free, Quebec has pharmacare so prescription drugs would be free, childcare is about $10/day if I need it, and since my salary is less than $90,000/year, I would qualify for free dental care.
There would also be a few things like the GST refund that would be about $500/year in my pocket.
Canada is not paradise, but I sure prefer living here.
America is just an arbitrary area on the ground some of us were born inside. It's not some erudite experiment and it never was. It's five corporations in a trench coat pretending to be a country.
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."
In its conception is very much was an experiment. "A republic, if you can keep it" so to say.
I mean, I agree, but that's what people mean. And the perception of a thing is (like it or not) often just as important as the reality of the situation when it comes to how people make decisions. I'm not arguing that America was some shining city on a hill, I'm arguing that people perceived it that way. That said, I think the republic was a step in the right direction and the DOI and constitution had some really forward thinking stuff in them. I think several influential Americans really did care about doing the right thing. Nuance can exist
All governments are experiments in how we organize and order society. Some experiments (governments) lead to greater flourishing than others, like socialism and communism (in theory). We'd have better evidence that those forms of government actually bring what they promise if oligarchies didn't shut that shit down as soon as it takes route (see South America).
$115 a month phone/internet? Are US prices really that insane? My phone is £4 a month for unlimited calls/SMS and got an unlimited data SIM for a 4G router that costs £24/month.
That's about correct, idk what everyone else is on about, but my phone costs me $70 a month, and my Internet costs $60, and those were the cheapest plans I could get. Not to mention that the reason my phone bill isn't higher is because I had to buy my phone outright at $600.
Shits expensive here, for no reason other than corporate greed.
Phone service is only expensive because your paying for the privilege of priority. Go with MVNOs and its reasonable, just the service is slower in congested areas.
To add onto this, there are MVNOs for basically every carrier.
Visible uses verizon, and their cheapest plan is $25/month, taxes and fees included. There's currently a promo that brings it down to $19/month for 26 months.
Mint and metro uses tmobile. Metro offers unlimited at $25.
Cricket uses at&t, they also have unlimited phone plans in the $25-35 range.
Limited-time offer available to new MINTernet customers who purchase the 3- or 12-month MINTernet plan with any Mint Premium voice plan. MINTernet plan requires upfront payment of $75 for 3-month or $300 for 12-month plans (each equiv. to $25/mo) & AutoRenewal enrollment. Mint Premium voice plan requires upfront payment of $45 for 3-month, $90 for 6-month or $180 for 12-month plan (each equiv. to $15/mo). Combined equivalent is $40/mo. After introductory rate, standard rates apply. Taxes & fees extra. Fixed wireless gateway provided on loan; return of equipment required upon cancellation or subject to fee. Service delivered via cellular network; speeds vary & may be reduced during congestion after 1TB/mo for MINTernet. MINTernet service limited to registered address at time of enrollment & cannot be relocated. Premium “Unlimited” data may be slowed during congestion after 50GB/mo; video streams at 480p. Includes 20GB/mo. mobile hotspot. Not combinable with certain other offers. Terms subject to change; additional terms & conditions apply. See terms for details.
It's not actually as cheap as they say, and what you're getting isn't really worth the price.
Regardless, when the thing being said is "wages are crap, things are expensive, people are trapped and can't afford a future" it sorta misses the point to say that they could get substantially worse service for roughly half the price.
I appreciate you quoting all of the fine print, what is the actual gotcha you're taking away from it? The biggest "gotcha" that in seeing is you have to prepay, which is mints while thing. The second gotcha I can see is that the free phone line they throw in is only good for a year? Which is fine. You'd go from $40/month to $55, still less than half of what was described in the post.
Regardless, when the thing being said is "wages are crap, things are expensive, people are trapped and can't afford a future"
I understand that's the point of the overall post, but I'm answering a question asking if internet and cell service is really that expensive in the US.
It's doing a disservice to pretend like it is when there are much more affordable alternatives. Not only is the typical market price cheaper than what is mentioned in the post, but if you're on many government aid programs, you qualify for subsidized phone and internet. Pairing the two seemingly adds up to $25/month.
How much do you pay for Internet and cell service that meets your needs?
My Internet is about $80 a month, and my phone is roughly $30 per line per month, $120 total because of regulatory fees and such. Looking at what mint typically delivers for internet they wouldn't work for my requirements, purely for work and not considering I like my streaming to be good quality.
My "gotcha" was the bit I said right after the fine print: not as cheap as advertised in the long run
It's...it's a promotion. I didn't even mention it in my post, where I said internet can typically be had for $40-$50.
After the promotion, the Internet still stays the same price, it's the free voice line that you don't get.
I don't think it's much of a gotcha worth flourishing the terms and conditions over, but....sure, you've pointed out that additional discounts that were never factored into my initial comment expire, so the baseline offering goes back to what I mentioned in my post. $40-$50. This is also entirely avoiding the discussion of the government subsidized internet if you're on SNAP, etc.
It's directly applicable when you say cheaper options are available and then link to a promotional offer where the pricing expires.
Government subsidized free Internet is currently not a thing in the US because the government is actively hostile to most of the citizenry. We still have the program to get up to $9.25 off if you make less than $25k a year though. It also requires enrollment in a program whose funding is being cut, is kicking people off , and doing everything possible to reduce enrollment.
Please read the rest of the comment I previously made where I linked to some actual averages for cost, because again: a lower cost existing isn't the same as the average cost being low.
It's directly applicable when you say cheaper options are available and then link to a promotional offer where the pricing expires.
Just to make sure we're on the same page.
I said you can get Internet for $40-$50.
I linked a provider which provides a non-promotional rate of $40/month for Internet.
As a promotion, they're throwing in a cellular line for free. This expires.
Does this somehow invalidate my claim of you can get Internet for $40-$50?
Government subsidized free Internet is currently not a thing in the US because the government is actively hostile to most of the citizenry. We still have the program to get up to $9.25 off if you make less than $25k a year though.
Yes. I never said it was free, just that it was subsidized.
Please read the rest of the comment I previously made where I linked to some actual averages for cost, because again: a lower cost existing isn't the same as the average cost being low.
Sure - the average, non-promotional rate of $60 is still cheaper than what this post implies.
If we're being real, in many markets (hello Xfinity/comcast) you're oftentimes expected to be on a promotional rate more often than not. When I was living by myself, I could call Xfinity and ask for a promotional rate, and be told that I'd be eligible in x months, usually 2-4. If you live with others, you can swap who the Internet is under each year to always be getting a promotional rate.
In a country with a reputation of overconsumption, I think when someone asks with incredulity about the price of something, it's valid to include the floor in addition to average/median/etc.
When discussing in the context of someone making little money, the floor is probably more relevant. Someone who's barely making ends meet is not going to worry about splurging for the no data caps (fuck Xfinity) package for the streaming services he does not have.
So the $40/month at mint isn't a promotional rate, and the $50/month price at Xfinity says it's good for 5 years.
I mean you can find alternatives that do exactly what you're talking about, but I feel the examples I provided are valid, sustainable prices for Internet.
Why would you pay $30 for unlimited data and then pay another $50 a month on top of that for a second unlimited data? Unless you are running a bunch of servers for people outside of your LAN, what is the point?
Don't know about US, but where I live, the "unlimited mobile Internet" is always "fast connection up to X GBs used, then you slow down to a crawl where loading a text-only website takes three minutes, but you're still technically not limited and can access the Internet" kind of deal.
Not sure exactly what they go with but it's never been a problem even downloading several big games from steam. I suppose if you want TBs a month you may want to look into the fine print.
I'm laying out what I think are reasonable options that folks would want. Unlimited cell phone data for $30 paired with a steady, low latency cable line for $50 seems to be a combination that most folks could use.
It's definitely not optimized for saving money. You could save a lot of money if you wanted to focus on that. Helium mobile has a free 3gb/month plan, no credit card needed. For home Internet you'd be at the mercy of your local ISPs, but I'm sure there are more affordable plans that could be picked.
Anecdotally: I've lived in the sort of place he's describing and the internet was an overpriced monopoly. Farmers and people in larger cities both paid much better prices for better service. But the ISP had some deal where they had exclusive rights to run equipment on the power poles (or other companies needed their technicians present first or some bullshit which they would delay to the point of impracticality).
At $115 he probably didn't get the lowest speed and could have done like $60 for internet and $40 for phone but yeah, I can believe it.
4/5G, fuck their monopoly. If people leave they will have to actually compete. It's fine for gaming too, been using 4G for years without an issue. At some point I should upgrade my router to 5G though.
If people leave they will have to actually compete
Assuming people even have the option for a speedy, uncapped 4G/5G, or one with a very high cap. USA is known for abusive pricing on bandwidth, like "every GB used over 50GB will be charged 10 dollars"
Damn, lack of choice sucks. Have you looked into visible wireless? They're a Verizon mvno, so they'll have coverage wherever Verizon does. Plans are in the $20-$30 range.
Out of curiosity, what does Verizon get you that visible doesn't? Visible plans are unlimited with mobile hotspot, which ticks a lot of boxes for basic service.
Most ISPs and cellular plans charge out the ass for arbitrary data limits and faster speeds in the U.S. Some areas have decent ISPs not trying to nickel and dime you but not super common.
Their employer is a scumbag. Instead of being mad the actual problem, they choose to believe their exploitative employer, who throws their hands up and claims "it's not MY fault you aren't paid enough!"
Do you know if they get a second part time job and still qualify for Obamacare? If they can subsist on 25 hours a week, then adding another 15 would really help with savings.
If I'm understanding comments in other parts of this post, I don't think Obamacare is cutting into his profit. His employer is making sure his hours are sub-full time, i.e. less than 40 hrs a week, to ensure they don't have to provide him with healthcare, which is required by Obamacare.
So getting a second job and qualifying for Obamacare are not part of the equation.
My impression from the rest of the thread is that his current employer is the one that wants to avoid Obamacare.
So if he just finds a second job with another employer, he can at least be earning more money, instead of being capped at 25 hours at his current one. And since he already is able to sustain himself on the first job, the 15 hours of working can significantly boost his savings from ~$100/month to 4 weeks *15 hours per week * 7.25 (fed min wage) ~$500/month. Doesn't solve all problems, but just finding a full 40 hours of work quintuples how much financial slack they have, which is very significant.
Don't feel great dropping personal info online just to prove a point. I've had 3 concurrent part time jobs in the past, but one was tapering one off, so it was only 3 jobs for a few months, rest was 2 jobs. I was lucky that I had a regular schedule for all of them so I could make it work.
I mean, yeah it sucked, but so does only being broke and I wanted out of it.
For similar reasons in my current independent contractor role I'm limited to working less than 32 hours per week, presumably to prevent claims of being misclassified as a contractor.
Now as for why I'm an independent contractor and not a full time employee that's down to freaking corporate politics following being laid off, leaving for another role and then being begged to come back because they needed my expertise and organizational knowledge (I've been heavily trained to pick up the torch for an employee who's retiring in 2 years, which with the amount of undocumented nonsense and organization-specific decisions it would take a solid 2 years just to get anyone trained up on everything and I'm the only one with the technical and organizational knowledge in the organization right now) so in short they'd greatly reduce costs by bringing me on full time but the CFO won't approve the job offer (and that's literally the only stakeholder holding it back)
I hope you're spending all your time looking for a new job (I know, I know, go down to the jobbie tree and just get a job, right). But if you can get any kind of leverage or safety net to walk away you might be able to get the job offer by threatening to leave. Best of luck to you
I absolutely have been, but holy crap this job market sucks. I've gotten so close on multiple interviews just to get passed up at the last minute (or scarier, they'll announce they've decided not to fill the role at all!)
On the upside, with this contracting gig I'm making more than I made when I worked for them full time while only working ~30 hours a week fully remotely so it's not a bad gig at all. I'm just frustrated that my boss wants to get me a job offer, the CTO wants to get me a job offer, I have the director of safety saying he wants me to get a job offer, but the CFO just isn't budging
I was born into one of those nowhere low wage "right to work" shitholes and I have some advice for people in them.
Leave. GTFO. Get a passport or move to a state with a high minimum wage. Your family doesn't matter. Your education options don't matter. You will be better off somewhere else, I guarantee it.
your quality of life will be much higher. in high wage states you get way more for your dollar in terms of opportunities and services.
in CA op wouldn't need a car, would have way more opportunity/choice for jobs, and probably could take classes at a community college to improve their life.
I am 100% doing this. My family doesn't matter. Fuck my family. My wife is a piece of shit and the kids are too. A random stranger online said it and that's fucking gospel to me. Good luck to the kids. I'm outta here. Thanks buddy. You are SO right.
I was implying the family as in the larger social network of parents, grandparents, cousins, etc. The leading cause of homelessness is not having exactly that sort of network, I think about a third are foster care children who aged out of the system.
If you have a wife and kids then you've already made your bed. Best you can do is take them with you to Colorado or Washington.
I can't recall the details because it's been too long since I worked in the States, but it was something like if you work more than 30 hours per week the employer has to pay certain benefits. It's cheaper for them to hire two 20hr workers than one 40hr worker, and then the two employees aren't seeing any of the benefits they're supposed to be getting. I assume that loophole is by oligarchical design.
When I worked in California I had to turn down raises/promotions because they would have knocked me past the cutoff for socialized healthcare, and the increased cost of mandated private health insurance would have been a massive pay cut.
Before Obamacare companies had the option to not provide healthcare at all, and more often their cutoffs when they did was 39 hours. ACA moving that to 30 was an attempt to get around employers hiring two people for part-time rather than 1 full-timer. And then they also made the norm of providing health insurance into a standard requirement.
Well-intentioned, reasonable compromise, modest reform-type stuff, but with raging Republican opposition to anything ever getting better and the inevitable min-maxing of loopholes, it only got us so far. And mail multiple key provisions has been repealed by the Republicans so...
While admitting that my recollection is flawed as hell, I remember it being the case that you couldn't get a full 40 hours, but that you could easily get 30+ hours so long as you didn't hit 40 enough times to count.
I'm not trying to agree with OOP that the ACA ruined everything, but it is a truly bizarre and flawed alternative to universal healthcare.
Also it turns out Republicans can oppose anything they've previously supported if they want. There's no magical force that imposes consistency on them.
Fair, but I guess beyond that it's worth observing that the Republicans specifically have moved away from their previously declared beliefs quite fully. The ACA is the quintessential market-based solution. The Democrats have taken over the pro-market position, while the Republicans have adopted something that is somehow worse.
Send military help. It took wwii to get rid of (some) of the nazis from power, and it's looking like it's going to be the same course of events in america. They're starting by bullying their neighbors and wanting to take land (greenland, canada, mexico, now venezuela is actually getting attacked), and you wanna bet that we're going to see a repeat of germany/russia's agreement to not attack each other and split poland (the eu)?
My personal bet is that everything will kick off because trump decides to froth out enough hatred about china to have a fishing dispute escalate into military actions.
imo, everyone right now left, right, and center are all coping on the idea that things "return to normal" (ie. unsustainable ratfucking) when trump croaks.
i...don't think this happens, what ends up happening who the fuck knows, but i doubt it's good. personally, my guess is the people who said violence will be required to remove them require violence to be removed, but i would be happy to be wrong there.
i definitely tell you nobody from outside the US will be coming to save america though
It happened to me a decade ago before I switched careers. I did substitute teaching and once I hit 29 hours for the week they’d send me home so I wouldn’t qualify for healthcare. I was regularly told I was one of the good subs, and I loved working with the staff and kids.
I tore my rotator cuff one summer and just had to grin and bear it for a year because I had no coverage and was worried about the bills. Thanks Uncle Sam!
I was working floating hours (unpredictable shifts, can't work second job easily) for a chain store, I did this for the promised health care plan after six months employment.
I was fired one week before my insurance was to start; I was accused of stealing by a manager (who was doing the stealing himself).
I have had the exact same thing coincidentally happen at two other shit jobs, all three times it was actually the night manager. So they all had insurance and much higher pay, and they still stole from the business and screwed over their poor coworkers who had to be available for three different shifts every day of the week (unlike them, they worked the same shift every day).
businesses with over 50 full time employees are required under obamacare to offer minimum health insurance. it doesn't have to be affordable. most full time workers can't afford their company's family insurance, and don't qualify for any subsidies because their employer offers insurance.
some places it is cheaper to hire only part timers. other places they just get the option with the lowest employer cost share.
health insurance in the US is a byzantine maze of combinations that change radically from state to state, town to town, and business to business.
edit: so, aflac offers a supplemental insurance, so your employer can buy a high deductible plan, and aflac steps in to pay enough of the remainder to make it a low deductible plan. you have two insurance cards, and a third party insurance management firm who takes a cut just to manage it all.
Those companies would be screwing you regardless, you can't get a company to do anything but acquire profit without government to restrain them, otherwise they run the show and would own you as a slave. Only government limits their power, which would be absolute otherwise.
Unfortunately, our government is now under the control of corporations and has been for some time (since at least "money is free speech" and "corporations are people" court victories), defeating it's purpose. We used to break up monopolies and remove business licenses for unlawful practices! The good old days.
Hmmm, if corporations are people, and they make and employ AI, that means AI is people or something. So that's kinda neat.
Besides fighting the system, a good solution in cases like this is to find roommates. You can easily drop your rent and utilities cost to a third of what you'd normally pay.
A half or third of the cost... that has been doubled or tripled due to enough space that you're not sleeping together. I lived in a flyover town in a situation similar to the poster. A studio apartment sucks. Trying to shove another person in there is a nightmare, and getting a slightly bigger apartment balloons your rent in a cartoonishly exaggerated manner.
If you have absolutely no standards, it’s easy. If you’re trying to filter out the assholes who will make your life hell, then you’re right, it’s not easy.
Isn't it weird how half the paycheck goes to rent? It's not like housing is a new invention, why's it so expensive?
IMO, it's some combination of ideologically-driven failures of town planning (the distance from buildings on one side of the street to the other is legally mandated to be ~20m wide, when it could be ), financial fuckery (investors drive housing prices through the roof by buying housing as speculative vehicles, and investors do so because investors are driving housing prices through the roof by buying housing as speculative vehicles - an ouroboros of shitfuckery) and lobbyist-driven partisanship on public transport (car companies hate trains, so they wage propaganda war against them and in support of overly-large roads with mandatory lanes for vehicle storage).
I agree with you in general, but 2m isn't wide enough for fire truck access. Some regulations are based on the prevalence and nature of natural disasters in a given area.
I'm also not sure about your 20 meters figure because I can't find that there is a federal minimum. 20 feet is the minimum for fire trucks though.
2m isn't wide enough for fire truck access, sure. Why do you need to drive a giant fire truck down the alley? The standard response (besides "we need to carry water and I don't know what a fire hydrant is") is "we have a ladder on the top of the fire truck", which might be relevant in some contexts but the picture is of 2-storey buildings which could be easily handled with man-portable ladders.
My main concern here is that people demand wide roads for fire access to the tall buildings (that can only be fire-fought with trucks), then demand tall buildings because "it's the only way to build densely", ignoring the fact that narrow roads with shorter buildings are just as dense, cheaper to build, and have lower firefighting requirements. It's an idiotic catch-22 that people keep painting us into.
My 20 metres figure isn't a hard number, it's my eyeballing the 2 lanes + 2 parking vehicle storage lanes, plus a footpath plus a nature strip plus the required building setback/front yard.
Why do you need to drive a giant fire truck down the alley? [...] "we need to carry water and I don't know what a fire hydrant is"
Fire hydrants provide water, but you need to run the water through a pump to increase the pressure, and a fire truck acts as that pump. It also allows for the attachment of multiple hoses so that water can be sprayed in multiple locations.
And if all the roads are very narrow, how are you going to get a moving truck or other delivery vehicle in? What about a plumber's van? What about a small personal vehicle? Two meters isn't wide enough for any of those, especially not with outdoor seating. Six meters gives space for service vehicles to coexist with pedestrians, cyclists, and seating.
I don't agree with not having tall buildings either though. If the majority of housing is dense apartments above ground-floor businesses then there's much more open space left for nature preserves, parks, and gardens. I mean, they don't need to be skyscrapers, just 3-10 stories maybe. You can also save a lot of space with row houses.
Fire hydrants provide water, but you need to run the water through a pump to increase the pressure, and a fire truck acts as that pump.
Finally, someone with something approaching an answer!
I'm looking for hard info one way or another, but it looks like some fire hydrants provide much more pressure than others. It seems weird that there would need to be a mobile pump attached to the stationary fire hydrant, when it could be built in. I imagine the reason it's not, is a combination of 1) if the street is wide and the fire engine has a pump built into its water tank anyway, why spend extra on a redundant stationary pump on the fire hydrant? and 2) the pump needs to be powered somehow, and the electrics might be knocked out in an emergency relating to a fire anyway, so it's neater to simply not rely on mains electricity for the pump.
Which begs the question: what do genuinely narrow (<2m) streets do about fire? Well, sometimes they just run a big hose from a hydrant on a wider street. And sometimes...
(Kei trucks are <1.5m wide! They easily fit down a 2m street!)
And if all the roads are very narrow, how are you going to get a moving truck or other delivery vehicle in? What about a plumber’s van? What about a small personal vehicle? Two meters isn’t wide enough for any of those, especially not with outdoor seating.
The moving truck isn't important for apartments - everything needs to fit through the front door/corridor/stairwell anyway, so having a 6m-wide street is just about efficiency.
Again though, a kei truck is max 1.48m, so just use a flatbed kei truck and these problems magically disappear. I really don't know why you want to run your small personal vehicle down an obviously for-pedestrians street, but it is possible (if not legal).
More broadly, if the street is tiny then you bring a tiny vehicle. It's like being mad that KFC doesn't have a vegan option. If you really need to use a truck, then drive it to the entrance of the alley and either carry it the rest of the way to the door, or use a trolley.
There's also another precedent here, from delivery vehicles: take a look at the various cargo ebikes used by delivery services, like Amazon's "cargo ebike" that fits in a bike lane. Two of them should be able to pass by eachother in a 2m-wide street.
Six meters gives space for service vehicles to coexist with pedestrians, cyclists, and seating.
So I should clarify: 2m should generally be for the less-used streets. Not all streets should be 2m, if a street is frequently used it could obviously benefit from more space. But conversely, if a street is rarely used then it really shouldn't be overbuilt just to accommodate 'efficiency' of extremely rare events (like a moving truck).
Service vehicles don't need to coexist with that seating/etc. You limit deliveries to a specific hour of the day (say, 8AM-9AM) and pack up the seating during that hour, and if a kei truck is coming down the alley then you squidge over into the remaining 50cm of the street, or duck into a doorway or something, for the ~5 seconds it takes for the truck to go from right behind you to right in front of you. Obviously, a 2m street requires the truck to give way to pedestrians, so they'll want to slow to a crawl as they drive past you.
And FWIW, I'm not opposed to taller buildings. I am opposed to the mindset that automatically assumes they're the only option, though. Short buildings are very cheap-per-sqm and mesh well with incremental development, and short buildings with narrow streets (particularly rowhouses!) are IMO just a straight upgrade from the plenty of places with height restrictions and a requirement for wide streets. It's not like you need to commit to one or the other for the whole city - you can have a 6m street parallel to a 2m street, easy.
There is so much wrong with the logic of that sentence. I'm going to start with basic economic/town planning theory:
The core function of a city is that everything is close to everywhere else - you live in a city because it's close to your job/a hospital/a nice lasertag place/whatever, which are located there because 1) you and lots of other people are located in the area, and 2) because other businesses they rely on are located closely. The other businesses are located closely for the exact same reasons 1 and 2 (if the Obscure Thingy repair shop is 2 minutes away instead of 3 days away, then you reduce downtime and save money, etc). The more densely you build, the more these virtuous cycles are amplified. Incidentally, this is why cities are roughly circular (which maximizes the number of places close to other places), and not a 170KMx200mx500m line in empty desert.
"A midsized town" is vague as heck but the logic of the previous paragraph applies just as well to small towns - if you keep stuff compact then you make it easy to walk to places, instead of needing to constantly drive everywhere (and waste even more space on roads and redundant parking at every single destination). In fact, if you have a town of, say, 30 000 people, and you maintain a density of 30 000 people per sqkm, then guess what: literally everything is within a km, which means everything is within a 10minute walk (and statistically, 5mins or less, since 10mins is the distance from one edge of town to the opposite edge, and a naive-average trip would be half of that).
You're technically correct that there's plenty of room on the edge of town to build low-density housing. In practice though, people want to live close to the centre of the city, rather than on the outskirts with a 3-hour commute. The USA having "an abundance of space" on the outskirts means jack shit. Cheap rent on the outskirts just means high mechanic/fuel costs and lots of unpaid hours spent driving to/from work (or literally anywhere else in the city that you want to go - I hope you don't have friends in the city centre that you want to see regularly).
I can't remember the video about it all that well, but wasn't 'the line' supposed to be using the concept of the 15 minute city? So, while, yes... there are very good reasons circles are city standards, if everything magically worked out and they built the thing it wouldn't matter whether it was a line or a circle.
I hope you don’t have friends in the city centre that you want to see regularly).
So much fuck this. I have a friend who decided to go that exact route, because it put him 'halfway' between multiple family members and friends... and now he sees none of them because they're all ~an hour away. Suburbs fucking suck, and the car brained society we have is so fucking foolish.
if you keep stuff compact then you make it easy to walk to places
Never going to happen in america :( I lived in a small city (2,500), and it was spread out enough that walking anywhere sucked, not even counting the horrible roads (it was a crossroads of two semi-important highways). I want to say it was 4km x 4km. The medium sized city (for the area, it's medium sized, we'd consider 30,000 to be large [and in fact, the closest large city was ~30,000, and that's where you had a real hospital, and all the services you would imagine a city having]) of ~9,000 was more like 10km x 10km.
Those are rural cities. Suburbs get so fucky so quickly... I think the town of 70,000 I lived in for a while was something like 9km x 18km, and that was a factory town. The not factory town suburb of 90,000 was around 15km x 20km. Just mind bogglingly spread out. The developers of an area are trying to maximize profit, and the car culture allows them to buy the cheapest land that's far away, sell the idiot housebuyers the idea of driving down a (currently, lol, not once everyone moves in) idyllic little road with no traffic to the center of the city and have everything they could want in a 15 minute drive.
The problem with 'The Line' is that travelling 170KM in 15 minutes requires an average speed of 680KM/h (I wrote out why that's insane lunacy from an engineering perspective, but I shoved it in a footnote), but you can achieve a 15-minute city of the same volume just by having an, IIRC, 13KM square with 100m-high buildings (and building 100m-high buildings is waaaay cheaper than building 500m-high buildings), built on a simple grid of normal 100KM/h trains - the Manhattan Distance of the maximum distance in a 13KM square is 26KM, which to be fair is still 36 seconds over the 15min mark even if your average speed is 100KM, but 1) it almost achieves the exact same thing as the trillion-dollar sci-fi tech, and 2) if you really care about the sharp 15-minute city premise then you can bump your trains up to run at 150KM/h (which is perfectly doable and only a little more expensive).
Anyway, point is that the only way The Line can fulfil its promises is by casually dropping a trillion dollars on a problem that may or may not be solvable, and will almost certainly be an order of magnitude or three more expensive than the bog-standard existing solution. A 680KM/h train is fucking expensive and while yes, it might be physically possible, most people want the cost of their commute to be lower than their daily wage earned from the job they commute to.
If The Line was ever built (and was cheap without subsidies somehow and became populated), then the first thing to happen after its populated would be a ton of building sideways, mostly around the midpoint/centre of The Line. Why? Because that's the prime land that's empty and therefore cheapest to build on, that's closest to everything (the midpoint of The Line should be ~7.5mins away from everything at most, and would also be the most accessible spot in the city and therefore have the most desirable business locations). And new buildings would be built around there, not at the ends of The Line. They'd add extensions to the train line that turn 90 degrees out, so that people further away from The Line could access the train system. This all would continue until The Line became The Circle.
The only way The Line stays a line is with economic antigravity. Metaphorical antigravity, to be clear. Not the sci-fi tech.,
Never going to happen in america
...why? I'm not saying it'll be easy, but half the time I see that line it's used as a justification for why people shouldn't demand it happen. And frankly, "never" is too strong of a word.
680KM/h isn't even possible with a normal maglev, you'd need to either shove the maglev in a vacuum tube or build a rocket train or something equally insane just to have a maximum speed of 680KM/h. But you actually need a higher speed than 680KM/h since you start out at 0KM/h and 680KM/h is just the average - and since your acceleration is limited to speeds that won't kill the passenger, you really do have to factor it in, one way or another. See, your train has to either permit passengers to stand (which sharply limits safe acceleration without someone being knocked over and bashing their head open on a rail) or it has to give everyone time to board and then seat (all of which takes time for boarding), and you also need a way to ensure that random dickheads won't ignore the rules and stay standing. A boarding delay will kill your average speed just as much as low acceleration.
Which definition? Some people just made up their own. The definition I used in the above comment was "a city where you can travel everywhere within 15 minutes", no more, no less. Also, I kind of ignored walking times.
This really puts to heart one of the issues with our current perception of minimum wage.
People will look at that and say... Yeah but they can afford to live and not realize that we have made a slave out of the worker who can neber better themselves or get more.
They have barely enough to have the barest essentials and tell them unironically to just better themselves or figure out how to be more productive and they can be rewarded while the reward just being a nicer endenturement.
The american experiment was to get people to be able to grow and develop more because of the new efficiency giving more spare money amd resources to create more. When you have more spare money you can buy more things at the end of the day.
Now its ablut how long can we keep it chugging along with nothing changing so the same people and same groups can keep everything as it is.
This is no longer a wage that makes us all equal but gives us the right to fail of our own accord but makes it so that you must struggle to keep going at all.
The rich have optimized too much "slack" out of the system. Every optimization is more profit to the rich and less flexability and benefits to the working class.
He's got a roof over his head, food to eat, and a ton of leisure time. That is dignified.
His comment about one accident away is something he'd still be facing with 40 hours a week. We could all do with improvements to the social safety net.
I don't know how leisurely that leisure time is gonna be, considering he's only got a hundred bucks to play with, coupled with the stress and anxiety of being one car repair or injury away from financial ruin.
You're absolutely right that the social safety net needs improvements, but that net should be there for everyone, not just those that work some arbitrary number of hours.
No. That's not full time work. Full time is 35-40 minimum, often closer to 50.
That's the type of job you have while you are in college or pursuing education for a better job.
I worked 10-20 hours a week in college. Work 25 hours a week and having nothing else to do is working 3 days a week. If OP worked 5 days a week they'd up theri income substantially, but they refuse to do so.
Big "just pull yourself up by your bootstraps" energy with this comment.
It's insane that you think people have to hit a minimum bar of "productivity" to justify living above a barely-scraping-by level, and that you set that bar at over half a person's waking hours.
Yes, why the fuck not? Social safety nets and access to basic human necessities like food, shelter, and healthcare should not be gated by some arbitrary number of "working hours".
I graduated in 1984 when unemployment was 10% and minimum wage was $3.35/hr. My friends and I all left the burbs for the inner city and we would live 5-7 of us in a house. Nonskilled jobs were more plentiful and there was public transportation. Sometimes we had a land line phone, never had cable. Plenty of parties and beer though. Don't know if this helps anybody but it's how we got by
Universal healthcare is one. Completely separate employment from healthcare.
Restore the tax structure we had in our most prosperous decade: 91% top-tier rate. Nobody ever paid that rate; nobody will ever pay that rate. That rate compels businesses to spend $10,000 on "business expenses" rather than keep $900 and pay Uncle Sam $9100. They get to keep $10,000 worth of tangible goods and services, purchased on the market. Or, $900 cash, that they can convert into financial instruments.
We could assign all healthcare bills to the richest person in the country. When we take enough from Musk that Bezos catches up, they can split the bill between them. When they get down to Zuck, they split it three ways. Nobody gets to be the richest. The competition switches from dollars to number of lives saved.
Or, we could roll out the guillotines again. Behead the most problematic tranche of capitalists (as evidenced by their degree of wealth). Repeat as necessary.
That situation sucks but something that could get you a bit more money is donating plasma. It's a couple hundred bucks a month if you do it twice a week. It can be done in less than an hour if they aren't busy and you can be on your phone while it's happening.
Wait, is this true? Should we do daily bloodletting into the toilet to lose weight? Or are we counting the blood as calories.. since it technically is?
The only problem is, that it takes your body 1-2 months to rebuild the lost blood cells. So, daily bloodletting will definitely cause weight loss, but probably more permanently than you're intending. ☠️
General blood donations do use that delay, but just plasma replenishes much faster. I don't think either is good at making you lose weight. It's basically dehydrating yourself.
Yes, it was a joke, please don't take health advice from memes and don't try to loose weight by donating blood. While it allegedly has some health benefits, your main motivation should be to help people who need the blood.
Why do we pay taxes before we pay for rent? If the government won't provide housing at least they could be nice and not ask for their cut before we get that done.
I mean, I don't want to say that the american system is perfect - or even good. But anon is really missing out on some significant and obvious financial options, and really this is due to the defeatist, doomer attitude they express in their last few sentences. They are effectively resigning themselves to the life of poverty they envision because they don't want to consider that there might be things within their control to inprove their situation.
i know people making 150K a year, who complain they are broke.
and they often actively refuse any suggestion of cutting their spending, getting a roommate, etc. if you suggest maybe their trade in their 50K car they are spending $1000/mo that that they never drive... they tell you to f yourself.
it's hilarious. and they go on and go on just like OP about how it's the government's fault. Nothing, including their own personal choices, is their own responsibility. They are just a hapless victim and the world is a big mean place oppressing them for choosing to waste $100 a day on uber eats rather than cook and spend $10 a day for food.
I'll second stray's opinion, but also add on that you're typically fighting for a job in those shitty areas. Anon is likely incredibly lucky to have gotten the above average wage job, and will still be in a big competition with others for the average wage jobs.
I get that. I do feel that with 15 extra hours per week, I could figure out some kind of side hustle. Even if all I did was sell random crappy art for cheap, it'd keep me saner than if I spent that time on 4chan
Working two jobs can be difficult to impossible. The schedules usually aren't fixed and cause frequent conflicts. A lot of places aren't even willing to hire you if already work elsewhere because they don't want the hassle.
The problem with saying obvious things to people with doomer attitudes is that they dismiss them out of hand as soon as they hear them. Literally any suggestion that is made is "dumb" or "impossible" or ends up being more evidence that the system is out to hurt and oppress them specifically.
And of course, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right - or at least the latter part is true.
Overcoming any doomer mindset and beginning to work on your problems starts with admitting that maybe things aren't quite as bleak as you think they are, and allowing yourself to believe that a better life is possible. Without that, no advice -regardless of content - will help
This is why no therapist will ever say "okay, so here's what you need to do to solve your fucked up problems." Their patients need to come to the answers themselves to accept and take action on them.
This is not controversial. It is literally standard practice among mental health professionals.
Right, but the reason it was posted here is to garner sympathy for this sort of doomer attitude, and I see this sort of attitude on Lemmy quite frequently. It's the attitude of all the people downvoting me. So I figured I'd address the issue directly
Nah, im downvoting youcause you are not providing a lot of value to the conversation and keep dancing around with statements meant to look down on others.
Basically im downvoting you cause i dont really care to watch you metaphorically masturbate to your own intelligence as a conversation style.
People are downvoting you because you claim that they could do better relatively easily but refuse to explain how. It's hard to not take it as insensitive bullshit when you don't substantiate your claim, and why wouldn't people downvote insensitive bullshit in a thread like this?
You still have not disclosed the quote "serious financial options", and as an autistic person who is not able to deduce conclusions based on breadcrumbs all you're doing to me is withholding information. So, congratulations I guess. You made your point while filtering the disabled.
Don't be too hard on yourself, I'm not autistic and I also don't get the point he's trying to make. Probably something like "get a better job", "leave to somewhere where things are better", "go live with your friends/parents/whatever".
Usually these people take it as an article of faith that there's something you could do to unfuck your situation, without necessarily having any idea what that something is. I think he's just fundamentally speaking abstractly.
They are literally in the other response saying they dont really have any real suggestiins but are sure that if they were in that situation that they woukd come up with something cause they are soooo clever. Like it purposely lacks empathetic insight or any awareness of luck and situational start points.
Its really just fluff to boost their ego and keep a negative view on others. It just isnt conversational, its the same as chest pumping but with fancy sounds.
I, of course, have my own ideas about what I would do in OP's shoes. But I don't claim that these are the "right" answers, and I don't think these are the answers you "should" give. Literally all I'm saying is that OOP has options, and his biggest problem is that he refuses to believe they exist. So if you are in a similar situation to OOP, or empathize with him and want to know what advice would improve his situation, what I am saying is that you should start by opening up to the possibility that OP improving his life is under his control, and then just start thinking of ways that he could. And sure, some of these ideas you come up with will be dumb, or wrong. Some will seem like great ideas but will fall apart during implementation. And that's all fine. There are no bad ideas, even if they don't work, because the process of creating these ideas in the first place is the most important part of the process.
Still not enough cookies. Nice improvement though.
Anon needs to redirect his hatred.
Hmmm
Putting it in context, it's probably right. There are a lot of different swathes/classes of boomer, and the ones that would be able to do the listed in lines 7-10 are probably not the ones that were targeted for conscription in vietnam.
No doubt, but at least we're acknowledging 'Nam.
It's Korea that typically gets ignored in the US. In fact, that war does fall under the time-frame we're looking at and wikipedia says about 1.5 million were drafted for it.
Someone born in 1949 would not have to fight in a war that ended when they were 4 years old.
Korea wasn't legally considered a war for bullshit political reasons for far too long and as a result veterans and families of veterans were denied benefits they should have received after giving some or all for the country now fucking them over
nam wasn’t a ‘war’ /s
My dad was born in 49, he never had to fight in a war. On the other hand it would have been a hell of a ride for him to tramp to Woodstock from western Europe.
you could pay not to fight iirc, like straight up just pay to not go. didn't even have to fake it via some bullshit doctors note like vietnam
Dog whistling bullshit. "Obongo", "waahh socialised medicine is the reason i'm trapped in a poverty spiral" get faaarked
To be fair, the requirement to provide health insurance and other benefits for full-time workers is definitely one of the leading causes of the reduction in full-time jobs. If lawmakers were really putting the peoples' interests first, they would have just said that for a part-time job the employer would have to provide benefits based on the fraction of 40 hours the employee worked (e.g. 20 hours is half-benefits).
Look I'll be honest with you. As someone outside the US the idea that your workplace is responsible for your private insurance / healthcare is bug fuck insane and open to exploitation on a mind boggling scale.
Not just open to exploitation; openly exploited. Disruption to coverage and questions about what could be covered differently are significant factors that cause people to choose not to take a job elsewhere.
The trick is that health insurance can be bought directly, but it's just so insanely expensive to do it that way so nobody does. Companies get a huge discount to buy bulk enterprise packages, and then their employees pay for a lot of it themselves. The portion that the company pays for is just an expense of labor, the same as salary, and offering better than the company across the street is an incentive to get better hires.
The ACA basically was just "hey, you know that discount that companies are getting? Now do it for the state and we'll offer it to everybody. And insurance companies will like it because people are given incentive to buy this because we're gonna fine people for not being insured." Pretty shitty deal, but at least people had the freedom to jobhop or become unemployed and keep their doctors.
It's cheaper and easier to buy a gun than to get an abortion in this shithole country.
Classic US capitalism: Take a product, triple the price, and then offer a generous 50% discount if you sign up on unfavourable terms.
But yeah, I guess I am preaching to the choir here.
Look at it like this: in America, a sizeable portion of people think that your direct economic utility is a good measure of if you deserve to live. They'll justify it by saying things like "they don't think it's governments place" to provide social services, and that it's better handled through charity.
If you don't have a workplace you need to go for real American style socialized medicine: GoFundMe.
(The history behind it is that before anyone was really doing socialized healthcare workplaces in the US started offering health insurance as a way to increase compensation during the WW2 wage freezes. Eventually it was so pervasive that it was a recognized form of compensation, and then it was the easiest way to dictate that everyone had insurance, since a lot of people listened to the fear mongering that was going on. "Nothing changes you just can't get kicked off for developing cancer". It also lined up with the beliefs of those who think that people who aren't working don't deserve support)
If lawmakers were really putting the peoples' interests first, they'd pass socialized medicine
Then shitty jobs would only give people up to 10 hours per week so they'd have to work 4 jobs to get close to 40 hours, and of course that quarter benefits wouldn't cover jack shit. Quarter benefits and people working 4 jobs would also make it a 75% chance that any employee you hire and schedule at ~10 hours per week doesn't accept the benefits thereby saving the business money
Better solution would be single payer healthcare, i.e. Medicare for all, plus expanding social security to pay more than a starvation amount would also be ideal. I've also previously outlined the thoughts of expanding SNAP/Foodstamps to all, housing assistance vouchers to all and Social Security to all to effectively reach UBI based entirely off of existing programs that tens of millions of Americans are already on right now. Work becomes how you fund hobbies and a better lifestyle and economic downturns don't hurt normal people as much
It's 4Chan, "Obongo" is one of the more polite names they could say.
Obamacare is corporate medicine, designed to give more money to the health insurance industry. Anyone in support of socialized medicine should not be a fan of it just because it's marginally better than before.
Obamacare isn't perfect and made some things more expensive for some people. Yes it helped others and overall I think it's beneficial, but covering your ears and pretending that anon is blaming socialized medicine entirely is just inaccurate.
Criticism, when factual, is good.
Schedules one hour under benefits have been a feature for a lot longer than Obamacare.
yes, which would make this specific criticism of Obamacare nonfactual, but anon is still not blaming socialized medicine like the person I replied to thinks
Anyone using the word Obongo to refer to Obama does not make that distinction. Anything left of YOYO plans is socialized healthcare to them.
idk, that's a strawman. Obongo is often just used as a funny word because it's 4chan
That's not the vote of confidence you think it is.
He called it "obongocare." He isn't operating in good faith.
Sure, that's plausible, but that's also just 4chan lingo.
That's not exactly a criticism and more of a dog whistle, as the person you replied to said.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Obongo
Congratulations on not hearing the whistle, but this is not the "other side" discourse you were looking for.
Sounds like he has plenty of free time, and a car, so get a second job. That's what MAGA wants him to do.
I know what obongo means, don't know what "other side" discourse you think I'm looking for, but you seem to have made up your mind about what kind of strawman I am, so have fun I guess.
I assumed you were acting like this was a fair and factual criticism of Obamacare, since you responded to someone calling it bullshit by defending fair and factual criticism.
Since you also said you thought Obamacare was a net positive, I assumed you were arguing that we should be open to listening to criticism of things we approve of, or listening to the "other side of the conversation", and just misunderstood what you were defending.
I really don't see this as a negative strawman, but I'm quite curious to know what you thought I was arguing against.
All strawmen are negative, if a person (or their argument) needs to be caricatured to be attacked, it shouldn't be attacked. If it can be attacked and you're just caricaturing for fun, then you're diluting the argument and shouldn't.
Do you think that my description is negative, a caricature, or a strawman now that I've said what I was responding to? How was I misrepresenting your opinion by, I thought, assuming positive intent?
The ACA is not socialized medicine. It is health insurance reform and only partial at that.
Also, I don't agree that "Obongo" is a dog whistle. It is so openly racist no one is going to miss it.
It's just an expression of the republican fantasy that a strong welfare state causes people to be lazy
When in reality they make it so you have to choose.
Yep, at that point I just said "Suffer MAGA, you voted for this."
One of my first jobs in 1984 would not give me more than 24 hours a week because they would be required to pay healthcare. This was a thing long before the ACA
Ah yes, "I don't care who pays for my benefits or how much they suffer, they're probably racist dickheads anyways".
Very compassionate indeed.
Where to even start with your fallacies here. So many places.
How about “you’re racist”? That’ll negate anything and everything I could possibly say in my defense.
eh, you keep going to that well then you're kinda hanging yourself.
I’m sorry I said a bad word 😢
What does Obamacare have to do with working 25hrs a week max?
Obamacare mandates employers offer healthcare to people working 30 hrs a week. A lot of places will only allow you to be scheduled for less than 30 hours a week, even if you are able and willing to go full time. It's stupid, but some people have convinced themselves that it's Obamacare's fault that their employer is shitty and the subsequent governments have been unwilling to close that loophole. It's also worth mentioning that employers did this even before Obamacare because there are other things that full time employees are entitled to that part time employees aren't.
Thanks. So OOP just has a shitty boss. Got it.
OP also has a shitty mind set because he sides with the oppressor (his boss is the one denying him healthcare) and not the oppressed (everyone that can't afford healthcare).
If he understood the situation he would not call it "Obongocare"
“Obongocare” also reeks of racism, but that’s a given- it is 4chan after all.
They just work for a typical capitalist company. They're all like that.
Obamacare didn’t start that…
Employers definitely used it as an excuse to cut a lot of people's hours. It was a big deal at the time
i’ve personally had more than one job that limited our hours to under 30 because of (i thought federal) laws requiring employers to offer health insurance plans to employees who work 30 or more…
in multiple states….
well before obamacare… now get off my lawn.
No one said otherwise. The ACA bill lowered the amount of hours that qualified as full time, which lead to the shittier employers cutting hours again.
no it was already 30 hours
Your state may have had stricter standards than federal
From my comment:
one of them is health insurance
Also from my comment:
one of them is health insurance
obamacare isn’t what you think it is
People often refer to the ACA as Obamacare. Obamacare did change requirements for employer provided health care, not just marketplace plans. So, prior to the ACA full time employees had certain benefits that part time employees did not. Post ACA there were changes to mandatory minimum benefits that employer healthcare packages provided. If you can articulate what the issue you are raising is, that would be helpful.
Also called it Obongocare which made me immediately lose any empathy to them for the racism, but it is 4chan I guess.
99% likely they vote Republican based on the attitide also, which is the root cause of a lot of their complaints (min wage, shitty employee protections, expensive Internet [almost certainly one of the monopoly ISP areas], has to rely on a car because public transit is socialism).
Yeah, the Democratic party sucks by and large for many other reasons, but id rather live in a D city than an R one any day of the week. /end obligatory response to "but Dems"
Are you sure it's real? Maybe they're just doing the racism bit for the shock value. You can post anonymous shit in 4chan without actually having any opinions on anything, and half the point of 4chan (AIUI) is getting reactions from people.
4chan users love playing Schrodinger's Racist, so we'll never know for sure.
I just treat racism as racism, unless it is set up with the most obvious irony or sarcasm beforehand - this ain't, seems like a genuine whine at their real situation.
Calling it obongocare is racist. Therefore, racist.
Fucking insane mental gymnastics really
I'm not saying he's not racist, I'm saying he's not necessarily Republican.
As a middle of nowhere failson 4chan user the odds of him being a Democrat are extremely low.
Even ironic racists are racist. There’s no middle ground to be found there.
Same with ironic nazis just being nazis.
No middle ground! None.
Also curious about that. Why not work more and cry less?
I commented above, but in the US some employers will refuse to give you more hours to keep you as a part time employee, since full time employees are guaranteed certain benefits. Those benefits include access to healthcare. They would rather hire 2 people part time than 1 person full time. This is not Obamacare's fault, but for some reason people in the middle of nowhere who make very little money have convinced themselves that it's Obama who's to blame instead of the shitty companies and their shitty owners.
I would also like to add, that it's sometimes almost impossible to have a 2nd part time job because one or both are not regular schedules. People won't know when they are working until the week before. If both jobs do this you will end up with scheduling conflicts.
Like it would be better if you were scheduled the same 3 or 4 days a week and had the rest of the week off.
At least then you could either chill or find other activities. But they want you at their mercy and constantly in crisis.
Like you said, All Obamacare did from a company standpoint was make people no longer reliant on their employer for healthcare. So it has no bearing on 25 hr work weeks. Although with subsidies going away, a lot of people are becoming uninsured again.
FMLA was 1993, so Clinton Required lunch breaks, etc are state laws, so not Obama OT pay and some other federal protections were pre-WW2
Oh, definitely. And having 2 part time jobs, if you can manage it, often means you end up working more hours (25+25), and are still not given the benefits of a full time employee because you aren't technically full time anywhere. It's terrible and for what it's worth I do feel bad for anon here. They are drinking the right wing kook aid, which sucks, but it's an awful position to be in. There's comments calling them a moron or that they just have to make minor changes etc, but the reality is, especially in these small towns, there's not a lot of options and acting like it's the fault of individuals is really missing the point.
For what it's worth, Obamacare did technically add to the employer burden by making good healthcare a mandatory offering for full time employees, so I understand why some people have convinced themselves it's the ACAs fault, but employers were doing the 25 hours thing to skirt other benefits way before Obamacare.
Interesting! In summary:
Anon brags with above-average hourly wage. In the meantime, their employer will not let them work more to dodge paying social security.
Anon proceeds to cry that they don’t earn enough money, even though they’re payed above-average.
Anon‘s a moron.
We were paid 19/h doing barista work working 30-39 hours (never allowed to hit 40 because they would have to give us more rights blah blah stuff) had to live in a tiny illegal room for rent and was barely surviving. After we saved up a little bit of money we moved into a van and now we’re in EU.
Mind you, not flashily, not rich, not even making it. Had to get so much help friends and family and especially our significant other just to get here by the skin of our teeth and now that we’re here we’re struggling to even stay due to visa issues. So fucn scared to go back we literally cry almost nightly every day our last chance to stay here slips away only because we just need 1500€ euro more… hhh when will this stress end?
Damn, that sounds rough, sorry to hear - hang in there ❤️
I hate to break it to you 4chan dwelling normie fucking stupid shit head, but that 25 hrs a week is not because of the Affordable Care Act. It's because of greedy capitalist fucks who are squeezing you for every cent they give you to maximize profit margins well beyond what they need to for a healthy business model.
A healthcare system that makes everyone dependent on employers really makes it easy for them.
Medicare For All is about a lot more than just healthcare.
Yeah that stuck out at me too. I love how the conservative media has thoroughly convinced the average dimwitted moron from flyover states that all of their problems are because of Obamacare and not because of the greed of their employer and the laws that they have enticed Congress to enact in their favor to prevent them from having to employ people full time.
Obamacare includes a minimum hour exemption and it should have been obvious to the authors of the bill that employers would cut hours to hit that mark.
If you think cutting hours to avoid providing benefits originated with Obamacare, then I've got a bridge to sell you
I think Obamacare was designed to accommodate it and give an additional incentive to do it.
You're expecting people who are worth a minimum of 7 figures to consider the plight of people who struggle to maintain 5 figures. Companies were already lowering time employees worked to begin with regardless.
I'm saying the ACA was a bad bill that was never intended to help anyone but insurance companies. We shouldn't be shocked that it includes workarounds for other businesses. Of course it does. Obama and the others who passed it knew that when they passed it. Thats why they wrote it that way.
True enough. It's your typical Democrat work, make a half measure that doesn't readily improve the situation but looks like it can.
It's kinda both. The ACA was based on Heritage Foundation work that was done for the benefit of insurance companies. Not much consideration was put into the behaviors it would incentivize in employers.
Healthy businees model will not cut it these days. Infinite growrh or your investors abandon you.
They were keeping people below full time hours to begin with, it just got lowered to squeeze that extra penny from their buttholes.
The capitalist fucks are swinging the whip. The 25-hour limit is the whip they are swinging. Both are a problem.
So it's because of Biden? I will not listen to your sourced explanation BTW
And this is why some people are voluntarily living in their cars, you can't save for shit when rent eats 2/3 of your paycheck
"Voluntarily"
For many, they get the air quotes
Which seems like a decent plan, untill your house breaks down or runs out fuel in the middle of nowhere, or your apartment gets impounded while you're at work or using the gym shower, or even just while you're sleeping in it..., and then auctioned off after the mail notice they sent to your last physical address was not responded to in time.
Its basically not legal, anywhere in the US, right now, to live in a car and park it almost anywhere.
You have to be hypervigilant, to survive this way, and ... that just is PTSD, it'll make you worse at your job, more likely to lose it.
So we're basically just making a permanent, sub-proletariat class, thats just gonna get funneled into jail or some kind of concentration camp, probably just turned into some kind of functional, if not formal slave class, whether by debt or criminal conviction or both... within, I dunno, 5 years or less?
I wish we lived in a society where the common belief was that a rising tide lifts all ships, instead of this pull yourself up by your bootstraps rugged individualism nonsense.
Funny thing about that one, the original meaning of that bootstrap idiom was to mean basically impossible, and yet it’s used about as unironically as trickle down economics was
I don't think I've heard the bootstrap phrase unironically in the past decade. I truly don't remember even hearing it outside of contexts like this on reddit or similar.
it's mostly a boogeyman.
Ah well, last guy who talked like that got his cranium evacuated by the CIA in broad daylight, so uh...
... yeah ...
who is coming to help you? or anyone?
until then all you can do is help yourself.
and if you refuse to do that... well you get what you get.
The American experiment has succeeded, because the suffering is the point and the system is working as intended.
Exactly. The wealthy are living beyond reality now and have adapted the population to working for pittance, living in squalor, and are above the law.
America is the nicest 3rd world country anywhere in the world! America #1
It's a nation of individual freedom taken to the extreme. That includes the freedom for wealthy individuals to exploit everybody else. And Anon is on the side of the exploited. Anon does seem as a person that will always argue for complete freedom, so finally maintaining the exploitation of themselves and the situation they find themselves in.
Why am I not free to ingest what drugs I want if we are so free?
Usually because a group beneficial to rich folks didn't like it.
Drugs makes the chattel lazy. Can't have that. It might hurt GDP.
Nixon wanted to legally bash up hippies and black people.
If you're rich you can.
It is ?.Have you not lived with a HOA ?
No
Thats exactly the point they were making.
The HOA is not a government body its a group of unregulated individuals who claim damages against you and eventually take your home away as per a contract between individuals.
It's weird to see this kind of comment and also a Ukrainian flag in the username.
It's weird to see this kind of hypocrisy and also... no, wait, it's the same username who thinks adult women can't have small breasts. Kindly fuck off.
I have never made any such claims.
I just ran the numbers through a tax calculator for my province (Quebec). It says that on a salary of $18,000, I would pay about $1,200 for the pension plan and employment insurance. $0 paid for taxes, and I would actually receive a $4,000 as a tax refund.
And, of course Healthcare is free, Quebec has pharmacare so prescription drugs would be free, childcare is about $10/day if I need it, and since my salary is less than $90,000/year, I would qualify for free dental care.
There would also be a few things like the GST refund that would be about $500/year in my pocket.
Canada is not paradise, but I sure prefer living here.
Les enfants étaient un peu traumatisés quand on est allé à LA cet été. Beaucoup de gens qui se parle tout seul ou qui font dodo dans le gazon.
Immediately identified the biggest problem with Canada right there.
What do you mean?
It's an anti-French-Canadian joke I think.
That was my guess also. I'm just surprised the bigots are also here in some capacity.
"American experiment" I hate that phrase.
America is just an arbitrary area on the ground some of us were born inside. It's not some erudite experiment and it never was. It's five corporations in a trench coat pretending to be a country.
This is what people mean by that:
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."
In its conception is very much was an experiment. "A republic, if you can keep it" so to say.
They'd already failed the experiment before the ink dried: 34 out of 47 founders owned slaves. I guess the natives weren't too equal, either. Oops!
I mean, I agree, but that's what people mean. And the perception of a thing is (like it or not) often just as important as the reality of the situation when it comes to how people make decisions. I'm not arguing that America was some shining city on a hill, I'm arguing that people perceived it that way. That said, I think the republic was a step in the right direction and the DOI and constitution had some really forward thinking stuff in them. I think several influential Americans really did care about doing the right thing. Nuance can exist
All governments are experiments in how we organize and order society. Some experiments (governments) lead to greater flourishing than others, like socialism and communism (in theory). We'd have better evidence that those forms of government actually bring what they promise if oligarchies didn't shut that shit down as soon as it takes route (see South America).
$115 a month phone/internet? Are US prices really that insane? My phone is £4 a month for unlimited calls/SMS and got an unlimited data SIM for a 4G router that costs £24/month.
Yes, in fact that's on the cheap side for unlimited with decent speeds for both services.
That's about correct, idk what everyone else is on about, but my phone costs me $70 a month, and my Internet costs $60, and those were the cheapest plans I could get. Not to mention that the reason my phone bill isn't higher is because I had to buy my phone outright at $600.
Shits expensive here, for no reason other than corporate greed.
Phone service is only expensive because your paying for the privilege of priority. Go with MVNOs and its reasonable, just the service is slower in congested areas.
To add onto this, there are MVNOs for basically every carrier.
Visible uses verizon, and their cheapest plan is $25/month, taxes and fees included. There's currently a promo that brings it down to $19/month for 26 months.
Mint and metro uses tmobile. Metro offers unlimited at $25.
Cricket uses at&t, they also have unlimited phone plans in the $25-35 range.
No, it's definitely on the pricier side.
$30/line is a common price for unlimited phone service.
You can get home Internet for $40-$50/month.
I think I pay 25 for Internet and 30 for unlimited phone.
EDIT: in fact if you're income limited there are cheaper government subsidized plans.
It's not actually as cheap as they say, and what you're getting isn't really worth the price.
Regardless, when the thing being said is "wages are crap, things are expensive, people are trapped and can't afford a future" it sorta misses the point to say that they could get substantially worse service for roughly half the price.
I appreciate you quoting all of the fine print, what is the actual gotcha you're taking away from it? The biggest "gotcha" that in seeing is you have to prepay, which is mints while thing. The second gotcha I can see is that the free phone line they throw in is only good for a year? Which is fine. You'd go from $40/month to $55, still less than half of what was described in the post.
I understand that's the point of the overall post, but I'm answering a question asking if internet and cell service is really that expensive in the US.
It's doing a disservice to pretend like it is when there are much more affordable alternatives. Not only is the typical market price cheaper than what is mentioned in the post, but if you're on many government aid programs, you qualify for subsidized phone and internet. Pairing the two seemingly adds up to $25/month.
How much do you pay for Internet and cell service that meets your needs?
My "gotcha" was the bit I said right after the fine print: not as cheap as advertised in the long run and not a good value.
The existence of a lower price for some people in some circumstances in some parts of the country doesn't do much to address actual measurable statistics on us internet costs: Monthly Internet Cost: https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/internet/internet-cost-per-month/
My Internet is about $80 a month, and my phone is roughly $30 per line per month, $120 total because of regulatory fees and such. Looking at what mint typically delivers for internet they wouldn't work for my requirements, purely for work and not considering I like my streaming to be good quality.
It's...it's a promotion. I didn't even mention it in my post, where I said internet can typically be had for $40-$50.
After the promotion, the Internet still stays the same price, it's the free voice line that you don't get.
I don't think it's much of a gotcha worth flourishing the terms and conditions over, but....sure, you've pointed out that additional discounts that were never factored into my initial comment expire, so the baseline offering goes back to what I mentioned in my post. $40-$50. This is also entirely avoiding the discussion of the government subsidized internet if you're on SNAP, etc.
It's directly applicable when you say cheaper options are available and then link to a promotional offer where the pricing expires.
Government subsidized free Internet is currently not a thing in the US because the government is actively hostile to most of the citizenry. We still have the program to get up to $9.25 off if you make less than $25k a year though. It also requires enrollment in a program whose funding is being cut, is kicking people off , and doing everything possible to reduce enrollment.
Please read the rest of the comment I previously made where I linked to some actual averages for cost, because again: a lower cost existing isn't the same as the average cost being low.
Just to make sure we're on the same page.
I said you can get Internet for $40-$50.
I linked a provider which provides a non-promotional rate of $40/month for Internet.
As a promotion, they're throwing in a cellular line for free. This expires.
Does this somehow invalidate my claim of you can get Internet for $40-$50?
Yes. I never said it was free, just that it was subsidized.
Sure - the average, non-promotional rate of $60 is still cheaper than what this post implies.
If we're being real, in many markets (hello Xfinity/comcast) you're oftentimes expected to be on a promotional rate more often than not. When I was living by myself, I could call Xfinity and ask for a promotional rate, and be told that I'd be eligible in x months, usually 2-4. If you live with others, you can swap who the Internet is under each year to always be getting a promotional rate.
In a country with a reputation of overconsumption, I think when someone asks with incredulity about the price of something, it's valid to include the floor in addition to average/median/etc.
When discussing in the context of someone making little money, the floor is probably more relevant. Someone who's barely making ends meet is not going to worry about splurging for the no data caps (fuck Xfinity) package for the streaming services he does not have.
That's more like $100/month once the temporary pricing ends and the bullshit fees are applied.
So the $40/month at mint isn't a promotional rate, and the $50/month price at Xfinity says it's good for 5 years.
I mean you can find alternatives that do exactly what you're talking about, but I feel the examples I provided are valid, sustainable prices for Internet.
Why would you pay $30 for unlimited data and then pay another $50 a month on top of that for a second unlimited data? Unless you are running a bunch of servers for people outside of your LAN, what is the point?
The $30 is for mobile service, the $50 is for home Internet service.
4G can be home internet too, stick a regular SIM card into a 4G router. Probably 5G now but my setup is a few years old.
Don't know about US, but where I live, the "unlimited mobile Internet" is always "fast connection up to X GBs used, then you slow down to a crawl where loading a text-only website takes three minutes, but you're still technically not limited and can access the Internet" kind of deal.
Not sure exactly what they go with but it's never been a problem even downloading several big games from steam. I suppose if you want TBs a month you may want to look into the fine print.
My cheap phone plan came with 10gb of data until they throttled the speed to a crawling pace. 10gb isn't a lot to run for home Internet.
That is pretty shit, not had a problem even after 100GB with mine.
I'm laying out what I think are reasonable options that folks would want. Unlimited cell phone data for $30 paired with a steady, low latency cable line for $50 seems to be a combination that most folks could use.
It's definitely not optimized for saving money. You could save a lot of money if you wanted to focus on that. Helium mobile has a free 3gb/month plan, no credit card needed. For home Internet you'd be at the mercy of your local ISPs, but I'm sure there are more affordable plans that could be picked.
Anecdotally: I've lived in the sort of place he's describing and the internet was an overpriced monopoly. Farmers and people in larger cities both paid much better prices for better service. But the ISP had some deal where they had exclusive rights to run equipment on the power poles (or other companies needed their technicians present first or some bullshit which they would delay to the point of impracticality).
At $115 he probably didn't get the lowest speed and could have done like $60 for internet and $40 for phone but yeah, I can believe it.
4/5G, fuck their monopoly. If people leave they will have to actually compete. It's fine for gaming too, been using 4G for years without an issue. At some point I should upgrade my router to 5G though.
Assuming people even have the option for a speedy, uncapped 4G/5G, or one with a very high cap. USA is known for abusive pricing on bandwidth, like "every GB used over 50GB will be charged 10 dollars"
Regional mobile companies sound crazy
that's cheap. i oftne pay well over $150 a month for basic interent and phone plan for single person.
Oh wow, what companies do you use?
verizon for both. it's the only choice i have.
Damn, lack of choice sucks. Have you looked into visible wireless? They're a Verizon mvno, so they'll have coverage wherever Verizon does. Plans are in the $20-$30 range.
No, because I need a legit full service.
Out of curiosity, what does Verizon get you that visible doesn't? Visible plans are unlimited with mobile hotspot, which ticks a lot of boxes for basic service.
Most ISPs and cellular plans charge out the ass for arbitrary data limits and faster speeds in the U.S. Some areas have decent ISPs not trying to nickel and dime you but not super common.
Can you only get regional 4/5G plans?
It depends on the plan but for a premium you can get international coverage through most carriers that is to some extent 4G/5G?
If he wasnt stuck working 25 hours a week and was able to do 40hr a week he'd be living pretty well.
Why is obamacare limiting him to 25 hours?
Their employer is a scumbag. Instead of being mad the actual problem, they choose to believe their exploitative employer, who throws their hands up and claims "it's not MY fault you aren't paid enough!"
Do you know if they get a second part time job and still qualify for Obamacare? If they can subsist on 25 hours a week, then adding another 15 would really help with savings.
If I'm understanding comments in other parts of this post, I don't think Obamacare is cutting into his profit. His employer is making sure his hours are sub-full time, i.e. less than 40 hrs a week, to ensure they don't have to provide him with healthcare, which is required by Obamacare.
So getting a second job and qualifying for Obamacare are not part of the equation.
My impression from the rest of the thread is that his current employer is the one that wants to avoid Obamacare.
So if he just finds a second job with another employer, he can at least be earning more money, instead of being capped at 25 hours at his current one. And since he already is able to sustain himself on the first job, the 15 hours of working can significantly boost his savings from ~$100/month to 4 weeks *15 hours per week * 7.25 (fed min wage) ~$500/month. Doesn't solve all problems, but just finding a full 40 hours of work quintuples how much financial slack they have, which is very significant.
A lot of part time jobs are inconsistent and demand full time availability so there's no way to have 2 at once without them inevitably overlapping.
Yeah that's fair. When I was working multiple jobs I was lucky enough that none of them demanded full time availability.
How old are you and what type of jobs have you worked in your past?
Don't feel great dropping personal info online just to prove a point. I've had 3 concurrent part time jobs in the past, but one was tapering one off, so it was only 3 jobs for a few months, rest was 2 jobs. I was lucky that I had a regular schedule for all of them so I could make it work.
I mean, yeah it sucked, but so does only being broke and I wanted out of it.
No, what type of work? And is it fair to assume under 25 years old?
Part-time employees don't get benefits, so they limit you to just under what is considered full-time employment because they hate you.
Isn't being poor cool?
For similar reasons in my current independent contractor role I'm limited to working less than 32 hours per week, presumably to prevent claims of being misclassified as a contractor.
Now as for why I'm an independent contractor and not a full time employee that's down to freaking corporate politics following being laid off, leaving for another role and then being begged to come back because they needed my expertise and organizational knowledge (I've been heavily trained to pick up the torch for an employee who's retiring in 2 years, which with the amount of undocumented nonsense and organization-specific decisions it would take a solid 2 years just to get anyone trained up on everything and I'm the only one with the technical and organizational knowledge in the organization right now) so in short they'd greatly reduce costs by bringing me on full time but the CFO won't approve the job offer (and that's literally the only stakeholder holding it back)
I worked for one of those for a while. Worked in their office, on their computers, on their schedule, but somehow I was still 1099?
I just stopped showing up one day and let all of their maintenance systems fail. 🤷
They're taking advantage of you.
I hope you're spending all your time looking for a new job (I know, I know, go down to the jobbie tree and just get a job, right). But if you can get any kind of leverage or safety net to walk away you might be able to get the job offer by threatening to leave. Best of luck to you
I absolutely have been, but holy crap this job market sucks. I've gotten so close on multiple interviews just to get passed up at the last minute (or scarier, they'll announce they've decided not to fill the role at all!)
On the upside, with this contracting gig I'm making more than I made when I worked for them full time while only working ~30 hours a week fully remotely so it's not a bad gig at all. I'm just frustrated that my boss wants to get me a job offer, the CTO wants to get me a job offer, I have the director of safety saying he wants me to get a job offer, but the CFO just isn't budging
It's not, his boss is.
I was born into one of those nowhere low wage "right to work" shitholes and I have some advice for people in them.
Leave. GTFO. Get a passport or move to a state with a high minimum wage. Your family doesn't matter. Your education options don't matter. You will be better off somewhere else, I guarantee it.
You'd be right back in the same boat. You might make more, but now you live where the cost of living is way higher, too.
California has the second highest minimum wage in the cou try at $16.90/hour, and it's still not enough to live off of in California.
your quality of life will be much higher. in high wage states you get way more for your dollar in terms of opportunities and services.
in CA op wouldn't need a car, would have way more opportunity/choice for jobs, and probably could take classes at a community college to improve their life.
Maybe if they choose to live in LA or the bay area. You definitely need one in the central valley, foothills or Sierras.
You would not be back in the same boat. Your life will improve. Make the move.
I am 100% doing this. My family doesn't matter. Fuck my family. My wife is a piece of shit and the kids are too. A random stranger online said it and that's fucking gospel to me. Good luck to the kids. I'm outta here. Thanks buddy. You are SO right.
I was implying the family as in the larger social network of parents, grandparents, cousins, etc. The leading cause of homelessness is not having exactly that sort of network, I think about a third are foster care children who aged out of the system.
If you have a wife and kids then you've already made your bed. Best you can do is take them with you to Colorado or Washington.
OOP can live alone and pay bills on part time minimum wage is insane
15 bucks is like double minimum wage in most places. But yeah, I'd love $750 rent, but he obviously lives in the middle of nowhere
How is Obamacare limiting your hours? Are you a truck driver?
I can't recall the details because it's been too long since I worked in the States, but it was something like if you work more than 30 hours per week the employer has to pay certain benefits. It's cheaper for them to hire two 20hr workers than one 40hr worker, and then the two employees aren't seeing any of the benefits they're supposed to be getting. I assume that loophole is by oligarchical design.
When I worked in California I had to turn down raises/promotions because they would have knocked me past the cutoff for socialized healthcare, and the increased cost of mandated private health insurance would have been a massive pay cut.
That shit was true long before Obamacare.
Before Obamacare companies had the option to not provide healthcare at all, and more often their cutoffs when they did was 39 hours. ACA moving that to 30 was an attempt to get around employers hiring two people for part-time rather than 1 full-timer. And then they also made the norm of providing health insurance into a standard requirement.
Well-intentioned, reasonable compromise, modest reform-type stuff, but with raging Republican opposition to anything ever getting better and the inevitable min-maxing of loopholes, it only got us so far. And mail multiple key provisions has been repealed by the Republicans so...
While admitting that my recollection is flawed as hell, I remember it being the case that you couldn't get a full 40 hours, but that you could easily get 30+ hours so long as you didn't hit 40 enough times to count.
I'm not trying to agree with OOP that the ACA ruined everything, but it is a truly bizarre and flawed alternative to universal healthcare.
For some reason people thought if they used the Republican's plan for healthcare then republicans would have no choice but to support it.
All that happened is they got a shitty healthcare plan and the Republicana had nowhere to go and nothing to offer as an alternative.
Also it turns out Republicans can oppose anything they've previously supported if they want. There's no magical force that imposes consistency on them.
Pretty sure that’s universally true
Fair, but I guess beyond that it's worth observing that the Republicans specifically have moved away from their previously declared beliefs quite fully. The ACA is the quintessential market-based solution. The Democrats have taken over the pro-market position, while the Republicans have adopted something that is somehow worse.
It never ceases to amaze me the way Americans are dealt such a shitty hand these days
Send military help. It took wwii to get rid of (some) of the nazis from power, and it's looking like it's going to be the same course of events in america. They're starting by bullying their neighbors and wanting to take land (greenland, canada, mexico, now venezuela is actually getting attacked), and you wanna bet that we're going to see a repeat of germany/russia's agreement to not attack each other and split poland (the eu)?
My personal bet is that everything will kick off because trump decides to froth out enough hatred about china to have a fishing dispute escalate into military actions.
imo, everyone right now left, right, and center are all coping on the idea that things "return to normal" (ie. unsustainable ratfucking) when trump croaks.
i...don't think this happens, what ends up happening who the fuck knows, but i doubt it's good. personally, my guess is the people who said violence will be required to remove them require violence to be removed, but i would be happy to be wrong there.
i definitely tell you nobody from outside the US will be coming to save america though
It happened to me a decade ago before I switched careers. I did substitute teaching and once I hit 29 hours for the week they’d send me home so I wouldn’t qualify for healthcare. I was regularly told I was one of the good subs, and I loved working with the staff and kids.
I tore my rotator cuff one summer and just had to grin and bear it for a year because I had no coverage and was worried about the bills. Thanks Uncle Sam!
I was working floating hours (unpredictable shifts, can't work second job easily) for a chain store, I did this for the promised health care plan after six months employment.
I was fired one week before my insurance was to start; I was accused of stealing by a manager (who was doing the stealing himself).
I have had the exact same thing coincidentally happen at two other shit jobs, all three times it was actually the night manager. So they all had insurance and much higher pay, and they still stole from the business and screwed over their poor coworkers who had to be available for three different shifts every day of the week (unlike them, they worked the same shift every day).
Things are much worse now, sorry kids.
Class traitors suck. People that lean into the crab in the bucket mentality is part of the reason we’re in this mess. Sorry you dealt with that.
businesses with over 50 full time employees are required under obamacare to offer minimum health insurance. it doesn't have to be affordable. most full time workers can't afford their company's family insurance, and don't qualify for any subsidies because their employer offers insurance.
some places it is cheaper to hire only part timers. other places they just get the option with the lowest employer cost share.
health insurance in the US is a byzantine maze of combinations that change radically from state to state, town to town, and business to business.
edit: so, aflac offers a supplemental insurance, so your employer can buy a high deductible plan, and aflac steps in to pay enough of the remainder to make it a low deductible plan. you have two insurance cards, and a third party insurance management firm who takes a cut just to manage it all.
Don't blame the ACA, those companies always had people working part time and just lowered the hours further.
Those companies would be screwing you regardless, you can't get a company to do anything but acquire profit without government to restrain them, otherwise they run the show and would own you as a slave. Only government limits their power, which would be absolute otherwise.
Unfortunately, our government is now under the control of corporations and has been for some time (since at least "money is free speech" and "corporations are people" court victories), defeating it's purpose. We used to break up monopolies and remove business licenses for unlawful practices! The good old days.
Hmmm, if corporations are people, and they make and employ AI, that means AI is people or something. So that's kinda neat.
Clearly government has failed in limiting their power.
I will not consider a corporation or AI a 'person' until Texas publicly executes one.
The killer is volatility—irregular hours + fixed bills = constant crisis mode.
Besides fighting the system, a good solution in cases like this is to find roommates. You can easily drop your rent and utilities cost to a third of what you'd normally pay.
"Easily" seems like a stretch.
Most roommate situations are 2 or 3 people. So that's either half or a third of the cost. I'd call that "easily" yes.
A half or third of the cost... that has been doubled or tripled due to enough space that you're not sleeping together. I lived in a flyover town in a situation similar to the poster. A studio apartment sucks. Trying to shove another person in there is a nightmare, and getting a slightly bigger apartment balloons your rent in a cartoonishly exaggerated manner.
The more rooms an apartment or house has, the less you pay for each one separately. I paid less than €300/month living with 2 other roommates.
Maybe you're talking about the US.
LMAO
Getting roommates is the part I wouldn't call easy.
If you have absolutely no standards, it’s easy. If you’re trying to filter out the assholes who will make your life hell, then you’re right, it’s not easy.
Roommates that one gets along with.
The 4channer should just get another part time job so they can work 50 hours a week and not have any time to themselves, that's the new American Dream
My husband and I are moving from California to Yucatán in April. Hopefully the cost of living there gives us a better quality of life.
you're gonna feel real stupid when that meteor comes for round 2
We'll wear helmets.
Isn't it weird how half the paycheck goes to rent? It's not like housing is a new invention, why's it so expensive?
IMO, it's some combination of ideologically-driven failures of town planning (the distance from buildings on one side of the street to the other is legally mandated to be ~20m wide, when it could be ), financial fuckery (investors drive housing prices through the roof by buying housing as speculative vehicles, and investors do so because investors are driving housing prices through the roof by buying housing as speculative vehicles - an ouroboros of shitfuckery) and lobbyist-driven partisanship on public transport (car companies hate trains, so they wage propaganda war against them and in support of overly-large roads with mandatory lanes for vehicle storage).
I agree with you in general, but 2m isn't wide enough for fire truck access. Some regulations are based on the prevalence and nature of natural disasters in a given area.
I'm also not sure about your 20 meters figure because I can't find that there is a federal minimum. 20 feet is the minimum for fire trucks though.
2m isn't wide enough for fire truck access, sure. Why do you need to drive a giant fire truck down the alley? The standard response (besides "we need to carry water and I don't know what a fire hydrant is") is "we have a ladder on the top of the fire truck", which might be relevant in some contexts but the picture is of 2-storey buildings which could be easily handled with man-portable ladders.
My main concern here is that people demand wide roads for fire access to the tall buildings (that can only be fire-fought with trucks), then demand tall buildings because "it's the only way to build densely", ignoring the fact that narrow roads with shorter buildings are just as dense, cheaper to build, and have lower firefighting requirements. It's an idiotic catch-22 that people keep painting us into.
My 20 metres figure isn't a hard number, it's my eyeballing the 2 lanes + 2
parkingvehicle storage lanes, plus a footpath plus a nature strip plus the required building setback/front yard.Fire hydrants provide water, but you need to run the water through a pump to increase the pressure, and a fire truck acts as that pump. It also allows for the attachment of multiple hoses so that water can be sprayed in multiple locations.
And if all the roads are very narrow, how are you going to get a moving truck or other delivery vehicle in? What about a plumber's van? What about a small personal vehicle? Two meters isn't wide enough for any of those, especially not with outdoor seating. Six meters gives space for service vehicles to coexist with pedestrians, cyclists, and seating.
I don't agree with not having tall buildings either though. If the majority of housing is dense apartments above ground-floor businesses then there's much more open space left for nature preserves, parks, and gardens. I mean, they don't need to be skyscrapers, just 3-10 stories maybe. You can also save a lot of space with row houses.
Finally, someone with something approaching an answer!
I'm looking for hard info one way or another, but it looks like some fire hydrants provide much more pressure than others. It seems weird that there would need to be a mobile pump attached to the stationary fire hydrant, when it could be built in. I imagine the reason it's not, is a combination of 1) if the street is wide and the fire engine has a pump built into its water tank anyway, why spend extra on a redundant stationary pump on the fire hydrant? and 2) the pump needs to be powered somehow, and the electrics might be knocked out in an emergency relating to a fire anyway, so it's neater to simply not rely on mains electricity for the pump.
Which begs the question: what do genuinely narrow (<2m) streets do about fire? Well, sometimes they just run a big hose from a hydrant on a wider street. And sometimes...
...they use a fire engine built as a kei truck!
(Kei trucks are <1.5m wide! They easily fit down a 2m street!)
The moving truck isn't important for apartments - everything needs to fit through the front door/corridor/stairwell anyway, so having a 6m-wide street is just about efficiency.
Again though, a kei truck is max 1.48m, so just use a flatbed kei truck and these problems magically disappear. I really don't know why you want to run your small personal vehicle down an obviously for-pedestrians street, but it is possible (if not legal).
More broadly, if the street is tiny then you bring a tiny vehicle. It's like being mad that KFC doesn't have a vegan option. If you really need to use a truck, then drive it to the entrance of the alley and either carry it the rest of the way to the door, or use a trolley.
There's also another precedent here, from delivery vehicles: take a look at the various cargo ebikes used by delivery services, like Amazon's "cargo ebike" that fits in a bike lane. Two of them should be able to pass by eachother in a 2m-wide street.
So I should clarify: 2m should generally be for the less-used streets. Not all streets should be 2m, if a street is frequently used it could obviously benefit from more space. But conversely, if a street is rarely used then it really shouldn't be overbuilt just to accommodate 'efficiency' of extremely rare events (like a moving truck).
Service vehicles don't need to coexist with that seating/etc. You limit deliveries to a specific hour of the day (say, 8AM-9AM) and pack up the seating during that hour, and if a kei truck is coming down the alley then you squidge over into the remaining 50cm of the street, or duck into a doorway or something, for the ~5 seconds it takes for the truck to go from right behind you to right in front of you. Obviously, a 2m street requires the truck to give way to pedestrians, so they'll want to slow to a crawl as they drive past you.
And FWIW, I'm not opposed to taller buildings. I am opposed to the mindset that automatically assumes they're the only option, though. Short buildings are very cheap-per-sqm and mesh well with incremental development, and short buildings with narrow streets (particularly rowhouses!) are IMO just a straight upgrade from the plenty of places with height restrictions and a requirement for wide streets. It's not like you need to commit to one or the other for the whole city - you can have a 6m street parallel to a 2m street, easy.
US-Americans have an abundance of space. There is no need to build very densely. Atleast not in a midsized town that Anon describes.
There is so much wrong with the logic of that sentence. I'm going to start with basic economic/town planning theory:
The core function of a city is that everything is close to everywhere else - you live in a city because it's close to your job/a hospital/a nice lasertag place/whatever, which are located there because 1) you and lots of other people are located in the area, and 2) because other businesses they rely on are located closely. The other businesses are located closely for the exact same reasons 1 and 2 (if the Obscure Thingy repair shop is 2 minutes away instead of 3 days away, then you reduce downtime and save money, etc). The more densely you build, the more these virtuous cycles are amplified. Incidentally, this is why cities are roughly circular (which maximizes the number of places close to other places), and not a 170KMx200mx500m line in empty desert.
"A midsized town" is vague as heck but the logic of the previous paragraph applies just as well to small towns - if you keep stuff compact then you make it easy to walk to places, instead of needing to constantly drive everywhere (and waste even more space on roads and redundant parking at every single destination). In fact, if you have a town of, say, 30 000 people, and you maintain a density of 30 000 people per sqkm, then guess what: literally everything is within a km, which means everything is within a 10minute walk (and statistically, 5mins or less, since 10mins is the distance from one edge of town to the opposite edge, and a naive-average trip would be half of that).
You're technically correct that there's plenty of room on the edge of town to build low-density housing. In practice though, people want to live close to the centre of the city, rather than on the outskirts with a 3-hour commute. The USA having "an abundance of space" on the outskirts means jack shit. Cheap rent on the outskirts just means high mechanic/fuel costs and lots of unpaid hours spent driving to/from work (or literally anywhere else in the city that you want to go - I hope you don't have friends in the city centre that you want to see regularly).
I can't remember the video about it all that well, but wasn't 'the line' supposed to be using the concept of the 15 minute city? So, while, yes... there are very good reasons circles are city standards, if everything magically worked out and they built the thing it wouldn't matter whether it was a line or a circle.
So much fuck this. I have a friend who decided to go that exact route, because it put him 'halfway' between multiple family members and friends... and now he sees none of them because they're all ~an hour away. Suburbs fucking suck, and the car brained society we have is so fucking foolish.
Never going to happen in america :( I lived in a small city (2,500), and it was spread out enough that walking anywhere sucked, not even counting the horrible roads (it was a crossroads of two semi-important highways). I want to say it was 4km x 4km. The medium sized city (for the area, it's medium sized, we'd consider 30,000 to be large [and in fact, the closest large city was ~30,000, and that's where you had a real hospital, and all the services you would imagine a city having]) of ~9,000 was more like 10km x 10km.
Those are rural cities. Suburbs get so fucky so quickly... I think the town of 70,000 I lived in for a while was something like 9km x 18km, and that was a factory town. The not factory town suburb of 90,000 was around 15km x 20km. Just mind bogglingly spread out. The developers of an area are trying to maximize profit, and the car culture allows them to buy the cheapest land that's far away, sell the idiot housebuyers the idea of driving down a (currently, lol, not once everyone moves in) idyllic little road with no traffic to the center of the city and have everything they could want in a 15 minute drive.
The problem with 'The Line' is that travelling 170KM in 15 minutes requires an average speed of 680KM/h (I wrote out why that's insane lunacy from an engineering perspective, but I shoved it in a footnote), but you can achieve a 15-minute city of the same volume just by having an, IIRC, 13KM square with 100m-high buildings (and building 100m-high buildings is waaaay cheaper than building 500m-high buildings), built on a simple grid of normal 100KM/h trains - the Manhattan Distance of the maximum distance in a 13KM square is 26KM, which to be fair is still 36 seconds over the 15min mark even if your average speed is 100KM, but 1) it almost achieves the exact same thing as the trillion-dollar sci-fi tech, and 2) if you really care about the sharp 15-minute city premise then you can bump your trains up to run at 150KM/h (which is perfectly doable and only a little more expensive).
Anyway, point is that the only way The Line can fulfil its promises is by casually dropping a trillion dollars on a problem that may or may not be solvable, and will almost certainly be an order of magnitude or three more expensive than the bog-standard existing solution. A 680KM/h train is fucking expensive and while yes, it might be physically possible, most people want the cost of their commute to be lower than their daily wage earned from the job they commute to.
If The Line was ever built (and was cheap without subsidies somehow and became populated), then the first thing to happen after its populated would be a ton of building sideways, mostly around the midpoint/centre of The Line. Why? Because that's the prime land that's empty and therefore cheapest to build on, that's closest to everything (the midpoint of The Line should be ~7.5mins away from everything at most, and would also be the most accessible spot in the city and therefore have the most desirable business locations). And new buildings would be built around there, not at the ends of The Line. They'd add extensions to the train line that turn 90 degrees out, so that people further away from The Line could access the train system. This all would continue until The Line became The Circle.
The only way The Line stays a line is with economic antigravity. Metaphorical antigravity, to be clear. Not the sci-fi tech.,
...why? I'm not saying it'll be easy, but half the time I see that line it's used as a justification for why people shouldn't demand it happen. And frankly, "never" is too strong of a word.
680KM/h isn't even possible with a normal maglev, you'd need to either shove the maglev in a vacuum tube or build a rocket train or something equally insane just to have a maximum speed of 680KM/h. But you actually need a higher speed than 680KM/h since you start out at 0KM/h and 680KM/h is just the average - and since your acceleration is limited to speeds that won't kill the passenger, you really do have to factor it in, one way or another. See, your train has to either permit passengers to stand (which sharply limits safe acceleration without someone being knocked over and bashing their head open on a rail) or it has to give everyone time to board and then seat (all of which takes time for boarding), and you also need a way to ensure that random dickheads won't ignore the rules and stay standing. A boarding delay will kill your average speed just as much as low acceleration.
I think... you may need to look up the definition of a 15 minute city before expanding on this comment.
Which definition? Some people just made up their own. The definition I used in the above comment was "a city where you can travel everywhere within 15 minutes", no more, no less. Also, I kind of ignored walking times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15-minute_city
This really puts to heart one of the issues with our current perception of minimum wage.
People will look at that and say... Yeah but they can afford to live and not realize that we have made a slave out of the worker who can neber better themselves or get more.
They have barely enough to have the barest essentials and tell them unironically to just better themselves or figure out how to be more productive and they can be rewarded while the reward just being a nicer endenturement.
The american experiment was to get people to be able to grow and develop more because of the new efficiency giving more spare money amd resources to create more. When you have more spare money you can buy more things at the end of the day.
Now its ablut how long can we keep it chugging along with nothing changing so the same people and same groups can keep everything as it is.
This is no longer a wage that makes us all equal but gives us the right to fail of our own accord but makes it so that you must struggle to keep going at all.
The rich have optimized too much "slack" out of the system. Every optimization is more profit to the rich and less flexability and benefits to the working class.
You could achieve high levels and acquire epic loot in your favorite MMORPG. That's something, right?
They should not be paying much taxes at such a low salary.
Only good capitalist is a dead capitalist.
Tightly regulated ones are ok...
Yea if the regulation is the rope is tightly around their neck so if they step out of line we pull the lever.
Something tells me if they gave him 40 hours he'd be posting about how he has no free time to enjoy his life.
Which would be a valid complaint. Your life should not be an endless grind for the privilege of having the most basic necessities to survive.
Mkay but why shouldn't someone be able to live a dignified life working 25 hours a week? Why does it have to be 40?
He's got a roof over his head, food to eat, and a ton of leisure time. That is dignified.
His comment about one accident away is something he'd still be facing with 40 hours a week. We could all do with improvements to the social safety net.
I don't know how leisurely that leisure time is gonna be, considering he's only got a hundred bucks to play with, coupled with the stress and anxiety of being one car repair or injury away from financial ruin.
You're absolutely right that the social safety net needs improvements, but that net should be there for everyone, not just those that work some arbitrary number of hours.
No. That's not full time work. Full time is 35-40 minimum, often closer to 50.
That's the type of job you have while you are in college or pursuing education for a better job.
I worked 10-20 hours a week in college. Work 25 hours a week and having nothing else to do is working 3 days a week. If OP worked 5 days a week they'd up theri income substantially, but they refuse to do so.
Big "just pull yourself up by your bootstraps" energy with this comment.
It's insane that you think people have to hit a minimum bar of "productivity" to justify living above a barely-scraping-by level, and that you set that bar at over half a person's waking hours.
what should people do then? work 10 hours a week and then sit around watching TV for 120?
Yes, why the fuck not? Social safety nets and access to basic human necessities like food, shelter, and healthcare should not be gated by some arbitrary number of "working hours".
because society would collapse. social programs only work by having more people putting into them than are taking out. they are a form of insurance.
resources are not infinite. the insurance company can't operate if it's pay outs exceed it's pay ins.
So your argument is that if everyone has access to basic necessities, society would collapse? What in the slipperiest of slopes are you talking about?
If your "society" is dependent on people voluntarily going into wage slavery, maybe it should collapse.
Compared to Now: I would LOVE to have $100 a month all to myself.
I graduated in 1984 when unemployment was 10% and minimum wage was $3.35/hr. My friends and I all left the burbs for the inner city and we would live 5-7 of us in a house. Nonskilled jobs were more plentiful and there was public transportation. Sometimes we had a land line phone, never had cable. Plenty of parties and beer though. Don't know if this helps anybody but it's how we got by
you're coming a long way, anon. start studying socialist theory. actually, how do i study socialist theory in a way that makes it easy and fun?
Wouldn't the fix just be to patch the obamacare workaround?
There are a number of potential fixes.
Universal healthcare is one. Completely separate employment from healthcare.
Restore the tax structure we had in our most prosperous decade: 91% top-tier rate. Nobody ever paid that rate; nobody will ever pay that rate. That rate compels businesses to spend $10,000 on "business expenses" rather than keep $900 and pay Uncle Sam $9100. They get to keep $10,000 worth of tangible goods and services, purchased on the market. Or, $900 cash, that they can convert into financial instruments.
We could assign all healthcare bills to the richest person in the country. When we take enough from Musk that Bezos catches up, they can split the bill between them. When they get down to Zuck, they split it three ways. Nobody gets to be the richest. The competition switches from dollars to number of lives saved.
Or, we could roll out the guillotines again. Behead the most problematic tranche of capitalists (as evidenced by their degree of wealth). Repeat as necessary.
I live on a similar (slightly more modest) budget. The idea of maintaining a car on that is ABSURD.
That situation sucks but something that could get you a bit more money is donating plasma. It's a couple hundred bucks a month if you do it twice a week. It can be done in less than an hour if they aren't busy and you can be on your phone while it's happening.
I do think it says something about the American dream that if you want to make ends meet, selling your blood is one of the best options.
Wait, is this true? Should we do daily bloodletting into the toilet to lose weight? Or are we counting the blood as calories.. since it technically is?
The only problem is, that it takes your body 1-2 months to rebuild the lost blood cells. So, daily bloodletting will definitely cause weight loss, but probably more permanently than you're intending. ☠️
General blood donations do use that delay, but just plasma replenishes much faster. I don't think either is good at making you lose weight. It's basically dehydrating yourself.
Yes, it was a joke, please don't take health advice from memes and don't try to loose weight by donating blood. While it allegedly has some health benefits, your main motivation should be to help people who need the blood.
Why do we pay taxes before we pay for rent? If the government won't provide housing at least they could be nice and not ask for their cut before we get that done.
Seems like it works just as intended
I mean, I don't want to say that the american system is perfect - or even good. But anon is really missing out on some significant and obvious financial options, and really this is due to the defeatist, doomer attitude they express in their last few sentences. They are effectively resigning themselves to the life of poverty they envision because they don't want to consider that there might be things within their control to inprove their situation.
Are you going to share the knowledge with the class or keep it to yourself?
Anon needs to find full time employment and get a roommate.
And vote blue
i know people making 150K a year, who complain they are broke.
and they often actively refuse any suggestion of cutting their spending, getting a roommate, etc. if you suggest maybe their trade in their 50K car they are spending $1000/mo that that they never drive... they tell you to f yourself.
it's hilarious. and they go on and go on just like OP about how it's the government's fault. Nothing, including their own personal choices, is their own responsibility. They are just a hapless victim and the world is a big mean place oppressing them for choosing to waste $100 a day on uber eats rather than cook and spend $10 a day for food.
Op just needs to stop being so lazy and entitled. And grab those bootstraps.
/s
I don't see what stops them from having a second shitty job? At 25 hours a week they've definitely got free time.
Dont quote me on this but having a 2nd job would disqualify them from Medicare, which appears to be their only form of health insurance.
That makes sense - for a given value of sense. American health care is just evil.
I'll second stray's opinion, but also add on that you're typically fighting for a job in those shitty areas. Anon is likely incredibly lucky to have gotten the above average wage job, and will still be in a big competition with others for the average wage jobs.
I get that. I do feel that with 15 extra hours per week, I could figure out some kind of side hustle. Even if all I did was sell random crappy art for cheap, it'd keep me saner than if I spent that time on 4chan
Working two jobs can be difficult to impossible. The schedules usually aren't fixed and cause frequent conflicts. A lot of places aren't even willing to hire you if already work elsewhere because they don't want the hassle.
The problem with saying obvious things to people with doomer attitudes is that they dismiss them out of hand as soon as they hear them. Literally any suggestion that is made is "dumb" or "impossible" or ends up being more evidence that the system is out to hurt and oppress them specifically.
And of course, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right - or at least the latter part is true.
Overcoming any doomer mindset and beginning to work on your problems starts with admitting that maybe things aren't quite as bleak as you think they are, and allowing yourself to believe that a better life is possible. Without that, no advice -regardless of content - will help
Go away, Ayn Rand.
This is why no therapist will ever say "okay, so here's what you need to do to solve your fucked up problems." Their patients need to come to the answers themselves to accept and take action on them.
This is not controversial. It is literally standard practice among mental health professionals.
Like I said: go away, chud.
Why?
You're not even talking to the 4chan OP directly (probably), this is a comment thread on a different site.
Right, but the reason it was posted here is to garner sympathy for this sort of doomer attitude, and I see this sort of attitude on Lemmy quite frequently. It's the attitude of all the people downvoting me. So I figured I'd address the issue directly
Nah, im downvoting youcause you are not providing a lot of value to the conversation and keep dancing around with statements meant to look down on others.
Basically im downvoting you cause i dont really care to watch you metaphorically masturbate to your own intelligence as a conversation style.
People are downvoting you because you claim that they could do better relatively easily but refuse to explain how. It's hard to not take it as insensitive bullshit when you don't substantiate your claim, and why wouldn't people downvote insensitive bullshit in a thread like this?
You still have not disclosed the quote "serious financial options", and as an autistic person who is not able to deduce conclusions based on breadcrumbs all you're doing to me is withholding information. So, congratulations I guess. You made your point while filtering the disabled.
Don't be too hard on yourself, I'm not autistic and I also don't get the point he's trying to make. Probably something like "get a better job", "leave to somewhere where things are better", "go live with your friends/parents/whatever".
Usually these people take it as an article of faith that there's something you could do to unfuck your situation, without necessarily having any idea what that something is. I think he's just fundamentally speaking abstractly.
They are literally in the other response saying they dont really have any real suggestiins but are sure that if they were in that situation that they woukd come up with something cause they are soooo clever. Like it purposely lacks empathetic insight or any awareness of luck and situational start points.
Its really just fluff to boost their ego and keep a negative view on others. It just isnt conversational, its the same as chest pumping but with fancy sounds.
I, of course, have my own ideas about what I would do in OP's shoes. But I don't claim that these are the "right" answers, and I don't think these are the answers you "should" give. Literally all I'm saying is that OOP has options, and his biggest problem is that he refuses to believe they exist. So if you are in a similar situation to OOP, or empathize with him and want to know what advice would improve his situation, what I am saying is that you should start by opening up to the possibility that OP improving his life is under his control, and then just start thinking of ways that he could. And sure, some of these ideas you come up with will be dumb, or wrong. Some will seem like great ideas but will fall apart during implementation. And that's all fine. There are no bad ideas, even if they don't work, because the process of creating these ideas in the first place is the most important part of the process.
Ah yes, poverty is the individuals fault and if impoverished people were just better with money they'd be fine
lol "financial options" in a dying town in a flyover state
Yeah. So how do you think OOP could improve their financial situation?