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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • If you’re talking world wide you could give everyone on earth that is currently in poverty about $1200. That’s enough to help a great deal in poor countries, but it would be very temporary. If you’re talking just the USA, you’d be giving everyone in poverty $30k. That would certainly keep people out of poverty for a while. But under capitalism where people have to work many would be back in poverty in a year. Cash infusion would only work if it was permanent like a UBI.

    Even if you spent that money to build free housing all over the country, it wouldn’t be enough to end poverty, though that would probably be the best use of the money. Just flood the market with housing availability and living gets way cheaper.





  • Sort of a side tangent about definitions. I was always taught, by someone that was previously pro Israel, Zionism is simply the desire of return to the homeland. Which is a very watered down dishonest definition hiding the nationalism of a desire for an ethostate. If someone thinks it means just returning home, then their view of others calling it evil makes it feel like antisemitism, even if it’s not. People can’t communicate because the laymen’s words often get used in 100 different ways that don’t match. I think that’s often one source of miscommunication even among well meaning people. Another is that the anti Israel movement is peppered with actual anti-Semites poisoning the well. I’ve protested against Israel, but as a Jew it can be very uncomfortable, I’ve repeatedly met actual anti-Semites that way. I think these things make it very easy for people dug in to see antisemitism everywhere.

    I see that reaction from my father all the time. He’s a lefty, progressive, but talk about Israel and you have to tread very carefully. He hates the Likud and present day genocide, but is suspicious of the motives of a lot of the outside criticism.








  • Most places had some type of shelter in place orders for a period of time that was difficult for people to handle. I never thought your comment was anti-vax.

    Here’s the thing, it was a global pandemic, any decision a government made was only going to mitigate disaster, not prevent it entirely. Either a lot of people died or a lot of people had a really difficult time. I tend to think preventing deaths comes first. If your argument is NZ wasn’t flawless in their handling of the pandemic response, sure, no one was. But they did a better job than almost any other country. Zero countries had a satisfied populous after the pandemic. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. You’ll learn from it and hopefully do even better next time.

    Here’s some perspective, in the US we had more people die in the pandemic than any other single event in American history. More than WWII, more than the Spanish flu, more than the civil war, etc. The damage to our psyche from all that death, far exceeds 4 months in lockdowns and vaccine mandates. Over 1 million dead here, be grateful your country at least sought to keep you alive.