With the debut of remarkably effective weight-loss drugs, America’s high obesity rate and its uniquely astronomical prescription drug pricing appear to be set on a catastrophic collision course—one that threatens to “bankrupt our entire health care system,” according to a new Senate report that modeled the economic...
Effective systemic change requires changing the systems, not individual people or companies. If we want less virgin plastic or gasoline burning, it needs to be less profitable to extract oil, process it, and sell it to people who want it, otherwise somebody is going to do that.
The report describes living comfortably as spending no more than 30% of one’s income on rent.
This is abusing a crude, outdated rule of thumb that never worked in HCOL areas [1]. Put simply, if your rent goes up by $10K annually and all other costs remain the same, you only need $10K more per year to be just as “comfortable”, not $33.33K.
Granted, $35.1K is a lot (that would be 100% of minimum wage in Los Angeles). The median rent for a **1BR ** is $2.2K [2], so 26K per year (i.e. still too much).
In short, minimum wage isn’t enough to afford rent in L.A., but you certainly don’t need to be making $100K.
Yep, even people living side-by-side may have very different transportation needs; the goal is to encourage bike use where possible, as it benefits everyone. Bikes don’t have to replace every trip either. An e-bike can do 20mph (i.e. 3 mins per mile) with minimal effort, so the times for some of your trips are quite reasonable:
Grocery: 9 minutes
Fast food: 6 minutes
Gym: 18 minutes (this is a bit high, but it’s also exercise, so it kind of works out)
Cargo e-bikes can handle a 100lb load, so your grocery and gym bags are no problem.
All this is not to say that a bike would be a good fit for you, just that they can handle a lot more than you give them credit for.
Every presidential election is important, and it never makes sense to make a “protest vote”. That’s just not how voting works.
I’m sure somebody has cried wolf at every election, but McCain and Romney never aimed to become dictators. Republicans currently have a published plan to institute fascism. It’s pretty obvious that these elections actually are exceptional.
So my wife and I have been trying to work through the practicality of me coming out. She’s been having trouble perceiving me as female, which, like, I still have a beard, so I get it. She’s bi, but also believes that homosexuality is a sin, so she’s been trying to work though what we would look like. I’ve been trying to...
I don’t think it’s accurate to say that זָכָר (zakar) is usually translated as “boy”. It is generally translated as “male” and often clearly includes adult males.
Funny enough, all prohibitions are specific to men, even in the NT (arsenokoites).
Hello there, I’m Emi from the Godot Foundation. Someone from this community made a PR long time ago about adding the lemmy community card. I’m wondering if there is someone willing to take over the PR so we can add you as a community supported community: github.com/godotengine/godot-website/pull/662...
Godot is a popular Free and Open Source game development engine and toolset.
They are the 3rd most popular engine behind (commerical) engines Unity and Unreal, and seeing a major surge of interest after Unity altered the deal so bluntly that Vader would blush.
For me the first thing that comes to mind is Tales from Earthsea. I don’t think it’s excellent or anything and has plenty of problems but people act like it killed their dog. While it has its problems that have been covered extensively, I think it has a beautiful atmosphere and art....
Ah, that’s one of my favorites. It’s just so sincere and fun. It’s definitely unrefined, like a student film that somehow got a massive budget, but that is part of its charm.
Public services (e.g. libraries) are so far the most effective at getting people’s buy-in. Many countries even provide healthcare this way. Food is a bit trickier, but is done in schools, and something like a public cafeteria seems tenable. Housing would be extremely difficult due to security concerns; the current housing shortage would also prevent this.
In general Universal Basic Income (UBI) still has the advantage that everyone gets it, so it doesn’t feel “unfair” (and people generally support getting money for themselves). It far more flexible than public services, but suffers from people stressing about the rich getting it.
Carbon Tax & Dividend has that advantage and even further justification. Tax polluters, and then give that money back to everyone equally (after all, everyone is hurt equally by pollution).
A similar argument could be made for nonrenewable resources and Land Value Tax (LVT) - the land belongs to everyone, and everyone deserves to benefit from its use.
Yes, you can always count on the right-wing to oppose all progress, with help from everyone’s favorite propogandist petrostate. What’s wild though is over half of Canadians don’t even realize they are getting a rebate! [0] Clearly whatever people’s opinions on the policy are, they aren’t driven by reality.
This article is an abuse of the source data. “Working class” here is closer to manual laborer and excludes teachers, farm workers, military, emergency services, nurses, law enforcement, and others. The data is also fairly noisy, with typos and 2% of values being empty affecting the calculation.
To conclude that anyone not “working class” by this definition is “upper-class” is absurd. I guess for some it is hard to imagine the lofty former assistant manager at Burger King (D-AR) understanding the struggles of the common man.
There are certainly interesting discussions to be had about the disruptive influence of wealth on elections and about balancing representation with competence – and folks are having that discussion – but this article contributes less than nothing to those conversations.
This seems entirely opposite to my observation. I’d say Biden and his administration are unusually focused on unfair or annoying business practices. In just the past two weeks the Biden administration:
Set clear rules requiring cash refunds for flight delays
Banned non-compete clauses
Set new rules on “junk fees” for credit cards
Increased the minimum salary for overtime exemption
Expanded fiduciary duty to retirement "advisors"
Announced a lawsuit against Live Nation (TicketMaster)
That’s from October, so some of it overlaps, but among other stuff there’s still a “Click to Cancel” rule working its way through the FTC.
Sadly Biden has been spending a bunch of time on lame crap like climate change, human rights, health care, infrastructure, election integrity, etc., so it might take a bit longer for him to single-handedly usher in consumer utopia.
It’s a long-standing observation of economists that government spending leads to inflation. Probably the simplest model is that the government is increasing demand without increasing supply.
Note that in this model, taxes have a deflationary impact because they reduce demand from individuals.
This is not an opinion on how much government spending is affecting current inflation (nor how much inflation is to blame for any particular category of goods).
The United States federal government allocates a staggering $38 billion annually to prop up the meat and dairy industries. These subsidies significantly reduce the price of meat products, including hamburgers. Research from 2015 reveals that these subsidies slash the price of a pound of hamburger meat from $30 to the $5 we see...
I oppose beef subsidies, but the unsubsidized price seems entirely fabricated. How can $38 billion across 80 billion pounds of meat and 25 billion gallons of milk make hamburger $25 cheaper per pound?
The carbon dividend makes the policy overall progressive, like a mini-UBI. It seems we agree that helping the poorest people is a good thing, and they will benefit the most.
The carbon tax should not be an exclusive policy. Canada estimates its tax will account for 1/3rd of its emissions reductions by 2030. That’s a nice big chunk for one policy, but plainly insufficient on its own. Absolutely fund renewable infrastructure (including subsidies), public transport, walkable/bikeable housing, etc. Set hard limits / bans where appropriate (banning all emissions is not remotely feasible). A carbon tax is highly complementary to these.
Politics is messy. In Canada the Conservative Party (remind me – are they for or against fighting climate change?) opposes the carbon tax, and associates it with Labor, so they have a ton of propaganda against it. Half of Canadians don’t even realize they are getting a huge rebate back, let alone that it’s more than they are paying in taxes (Abacus Data). That’s why it’s important to get people to understand how a carbon tax actually works.
Reserve your home now! (lemmy.world)
"Outrageously" priced weight-loss drugs could bankrupt US health care (arstechnica.com)
With the debut of remarkably effective weight-loss drugs, America’s high obesity rate and its uniquely astronomical prescription drug pricing appear to be set on a catastrophic collision course—one that threatens to “bankrupt our entire health care system,” according to a new Senate report that modeled the economic...
deleted_by_moderator
Indiana judge rules tacos, burritos are sandwiches (www.wishtv.com)
Los Angeles renters now need $117K a year to live comfortably, study says (www.ktla.com)
The way things are. (lemmy.world)
'Pretty remarkable': UBC study finds e-bike rebates led to decreased car use (bc.ctvnews.ca)
CNN's Burnett asks Biden how he is going to turn the economy around. He said he already has. (www.cnn.com)
She
So my wife and I have been trying to work through the practicality of me coming out. She’s been having trouble perceiving me as female, which, like, I still have a beard, so I get it. She’s bi, but also believes that homosexuality is a sin, so she’s been trying to work though what we would look like. I’ve been trying to...
Hello from the Godot Foundation 👋
Hello there, I’m Emi from the Godot Foundation. Someone from this community made a PR long time ago about adding the lemmy community card. I’m wondering if there is someone willing to take over the PR so we can add you as a community supported community: github.com/godotengine/godot-website/pull/662...
What animated film or tv show is this? (i.imgur.com)
For me the first thing that comes to mind is Tales from Earthsea. I don’t think it’s excellent or anything and has plenty of problems but people act like it killed their dog. While it has its problems that have been covered extensively, I think it has a beautiful atmosphere and art....
Homelessness is a choice. A policy choice made by our representatives. (lemmy.world)
The Price We Pay for Having Upper-Class Legislators (www.nytimes.com)
Roku OS home screen is getting video ads for the first time (arstechnica.com)
High Wire Act (lemmy.world)
In retaliation to the Pit bull haters, (lemmy.world)
Teddy (left), and Sampson (right)
All the data so far is showing inflation isn't going away, and is making things tough on the Fed (www.cnbc.com)
Key Points...
Explain yourselves, comp sci. (mander.xyz)
A Pound of Hamburger Meat Would Cost $30 Without Tax Payer Subsidies (medium.com)
The United States federal government allocates a staggering $38 billion annually to prop up the meat and dairy industries. These subsidies significantly reduce the price of meat products, including hamburgers. Research from 2015 reveals that these subsidies slash the price of a pound of hamburger meat from $30 to the $5 we see...
Airlines will now be required to give automatic cash refunds for canceled and delayed flights (apnews.com)
How to talk to a climate doomer (even if that doomer is you) | It’s not too late to tackle climate change, but sometimes it sure feels that way. (yaleclimateconnections.org)