abrasivesaint

I’m all for lowering co2 emissions, however, this feels like the low hanging fruit. Transportation produces about 1/3 of emissions, it is still industry who produces the most. With the trend of electric vehicles, the emissions from transportation seem like it will eventually lessen it’s impact. With better public transit, if cities were more affordable, if we could agree that the need for in-office employment, or even 40 hours a week is unnecessary, we could also lessen these emissions from transportation. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions Fully back the incentives to buy local as opposed to cross-country transported goods, (sorry freights.) Again, this seems to hurt the commuters more than anyone. Many high paying jobs are in cities, yet cities are becoming increasingly impossible to afford for families. Thus, commuting is inevitable. Unless we want to create yet another privilege that only previously established upper classes can afford. Turning cities into elite playgrounds and sending the peasants into the woods. I do not like removing anything from the hands of the people. Privatization of roads leaves the people at the mercy of the proprietor of these roads. That road in Canada that @Kultsmentioned seems to have plenty of controversy involving costs to citizens. What are the road laws, how are the enforced and by whom, and who gets to decide the laws? Does the state or the people have any legal power over issues involving proprietor and persons using the roads, or is it simply “their property, their rules” ? Seems like a small step in a slippery slope to a world where we may not be at the whim of the government, but to industry and corporations, who are in turn, the government.

$20-30 every time you want to take a certain road? There’s no difference in paying taxes to a state funded road or a private road, where as now the private owner is the “state.” New Orleans property owners have responsibilities to maintain the sidewalks in front of their house. They are massively fucked up, and most you couldn’t ride a bicycle down without knocking your teeth out. Acting like a purely self-interested human being is any different than a self-interested government is just naive. Some people just don’t give a flying fuck about others. It is a problem with perspective. One that has brought us to this dim world mentioned. This idea that free markets create a utopia and a government creates a dystopia is bullshit. Any form of unchecked power results in the same thing. It doesn’t matter if it’s Capitalism or Communism. We’re practically already there anyway. Corporations control our government and do whatever they want. They are largely unchecked if the right pockets are lined. If there’s no government pockets to fill, they simply do what they want anyway. In the end the corporations become the state and we’re in the same boat we’re in now.

¿lolque?

Still going strong on the Amazon “boycott”. Fuck em.

Fuck em both.

Jesus christ.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/07/26/frit-j26.html “More than 100 PepsiCo drivers, merchandisers and delivery workers in Munster, Indiana, have been on strike for more than two weeks against the company’s demands for sharp increases in their out-of-pocket health care expenses, forced overtime and stagnant pay. While PepsiCo made over $70 billion in net revenue in 2020 (up from $39 billion in 2007), it is demanding a significant increase in out-of-pocket health care expenses from $14 a week to over $80 a week by 2025. Teamsters Local 142 had previously accepted a five-year pay freeze in exchange for no increases to workers’ health care costs. Many drivers also have variable costs on the road that eat into their income, such as the cost of gas and food, which have increased sharply this year.”

Title’s self explanatory.. all links related. https://news.yahoo.com/frito-lay-employee-speaks-against-182636701.html “Frito-Lay worker Brandon Ingram is speaking out about the pain, trauma, and harassment he suffered after allegedly being severely electrocuted on the job, leaving him disabled and denied medical care.” https://www.thepitchkc.com/frito-lay-strike-ends-after-nearly-a-month/ “The contract will guarantee all employees get one day off a week and bring an end to “suicide shifts”—two 12 hour shifts with only eight hours off in between—that employees had to work.”

Also, just for the record. Someone shared this recently and i hit them with the “Well…” and followrd it up with “Bezos didn’t kill bookstores. Consumers who purchase off of Amazon instead of in bookstores are killing bookstores.” So i guess i defended Capitalism. Who knows.

Was just coming to share that! Haha. @Mercer

Ya as far as what i saw, dude made up his mind he was smoking that dude the second he entered the room. He had that pistol to his head and as soon as the other cops arms/hands were clear he popped. The “you’re about to die, my friend” comment should be evidence enough, but ya know, Murica.

https://youtu.be/GV0oLU9E4zc

Someone feel free to start a thread with that stuff, sorry to clog up the memes.

How would working class people pay double the taxes? The Swedish model shows they’re paying less up front costs than the US, and they’re covered. Where in the US they’ll be more billing issues coming down the pike. I think the absolute basics should be covered, options should still be made available though. If someone wants to pony up the dough for that little extra or speedy care, then that’s an option. My current job has 3 tiers of health insurance. - Cheap, but you can’t decide your PCP (Primary Care Physician), and the PCP and hospital must refer you to any sort of specialty treatments or further care. All of which will remain in that particular hospitals cartel network. - There’s the middle tier, which costs a little more, but you get to decide on who your PCP is, and some degrees of extended care, and you can step outside of the healthcare network at a higher cost to you. - Then there’s the top tier. Top dollar to decide to go to whoever the fuck you want, wherever the fuck you want to go. Surgeons are getting paid regardless. Unless they make a colossal fuck up, they’re mostly good to go and their degree of care can vary. It takes a special type of person to handle most patient care positions in hospitals. It’s a constant shit show. Some of these people aren’t sticking around because the pay is great, they’re sticking around because they spent years in school learning about the field and this is essentially their only skill set at this point, and they’ve gone on to start families and such, and taking a risk on a completely new career simply isn’t worth the risk of not being able to feed their kids when they can go to work, collect a check they don’t think is adequate to the work conditions, but it’s juust good enough.. Yes, i’ve seen hospitals lose good staff members to other facilities because of lack of compensation, i was one of them. However, it takes years and years for these systems to POTENTIALLY correct themselves. Instead of offering incentives for staff to stay around, they eventually drive people (who can afford to leave) out, requiring them to hire more unqualified yet willing to work employees, while many good and qualified employees skate. If they can’t find employees, they bring in contracted travel technicians, which they pay exponentially more money for. When all they had to do was offer incentive and compensation for the good staff to stay. They handle business like any other shady organization that winds up in hot water. Pay the bottom dollar on everything until the shit is on fire and then act like you don’t know what the fuck happened. Place blame on lower tiered leadership roles, fire a few people, bring in consultants that bark orders from their desks, and those unfortunate enough to not be able to leave stick around and things get greased just enough that the cogs keep turning. Some of the 20% argument is under the assumption that simply because people who didn’t have healthcare, now do, that they’ll just be flocking to hospitals. Many people still avoid the hospital, regardless of whether they have insurance. Sometimes this is not wanting to pony up the deductibles and co-pays, sometimes it’s stubbornness. More people requiring healthcare would = more potential for jobs, would it not? 2 birds, one stone. I’d also argue that if schooling wasn’t so fucking expensive, you may see more medical staff furthering their careers and education, and there would be more doctors out there. There’s already shortages in staffing in hospitals everywhere. This isn’t for lack of applicants, but lack of hospitals wanting to pony up the money for the staff. Many doctor visits are simply to get referrals to go see other doctors, or for them to just write a simple prescription. This also leaves plenty of room for corruption and exploitation of the system by doctors and surgeons pushing treatments and surgeries that simply may not be needed. This isn’t a flaw that would be unique to universal government funded healthcare. The scam and the scheme is already happening. They’re already exploiting the system. If this system can use my taxes to fund more police, they can certainly find more nurses. Many citizens have no qualms with funding the police and military under the guise of communal safety, but the idea of funding communal healthcare is the attack on freedom. It’s nonsense. As if this is not already the case? People are working multiple jobs or longer hours simply to be able to afford the egregious bills that they have, and to have insurance that they can afford. If you’re not going to work, and not paying your taxes, we all know you don’t get too far. Unless you’re already in the protected classes of wealth, who dodge taxes, get laws written for them to dodge more taxes, and can already afford to set up business that’ll essentially run themselves so they don’t have to work. In many senses the worker has never not been a slave to the system. The cycle already exists. The few have always been the ones benefitting at the coat of the worker, the many. All under false pretenses that money trickles down and nonsense like that. That corporations who get to save more money, spend more money on their workers. It is not true in the vast majority of situations. What’s the difference with waiting in line for welfare and those same people waiting in line for healthcare? It’s the implementation of the same system. Except in this scenario, they actually have healthcare.

So reading this stuff got me interested. I did some googling and some math here on my lunch break. For the record, the 50%+ tax rates in Sweden are national + municipal taxes combined for anyone who makes over roughly $537,000 a year. Between $20,500-$537,000 is a tax rate of roughly 32%, or less. The average per capita income in Sweden as of 2020 is apparently $51,796. At a Municipal income tax of 32%, they tax $16,574 and change, leaving you with $35,221, and medical is covered. The average per capita income in the US as of 2020 is $35,672. Federal income tax in this bracket is roughly 12%, but, the average yearly medical premium is roughly $7,188. Tack on your deductible, say $1000, now you’re at $8,188. Some states have State income tax, they’re mostly about 5%. So you have 17% income taxes being taken out, plus the $7,188 (excluding the deductible) leaving you with roughly 37% being taken out in medical insurance, plus taxes. At the per capita income, this leaves you with roughly $21,420. Now factor in pre-existing conditions that aren’t covered, ect, ect.