ST. LOUIS — Five states have banned ranked choice voting in the last two months, bringing the total number of Republican-leaning states now prohibiting the voting method to 10....
We believe in the one person, one vote system of elections that our country was founded upon,” Missouri state Sen. Ben Brown, the ballot measure’s sponsor, said in an interview
Ranked choice is one person one vote. One person enters the voting booth and votes once. It’s not as though ranked choice voting gives some people the opportunity to vote multiple times, every voter is allowed to rank the candidates one time.
I certainly don’t expect things to turn around in my lifetime. The future I want would require radical, systemic changes, but most Americans don’t want anything to radically change. That doesn’t mean a majority of Americans are happy with things the way they are, not at all, but they don’t want to radically change anything, despite their unhappiness. The majority of Americans want things to get better without anything fundamentally changing. I believe that’s one of the definitions of insanity.
This makes it seem like a single, central government is responsible for the restrictive, local zoning laws. Does the federal government force cities, counties, and municipalities to adopt certain, specific zoning laws?
Jobs suck. That’s not news, everyone has known that for a very long time. Sure, some jobs suck less than others, and some people genuinely enjoy their job, but generally jobs just suck. That’s why they have to pay you to do them. But it takes more than a paycheck to make a job worth it. There was a time in America where the average person could work a job (albeit, often a sucky one) making a decent wage working only 40 hours a week, take a vacation every year, own a home, have a family and a community, all the things that make working a sucky job worth it. Over the last fifty years or so, many or all of the things that make working a sucky job worth it have slowly become less and less accessible to many people.
I am one of those people. I worked full time. It sucked, as many jobs do, but after putting in a full day’s work I didn’t go home to a wife and kids or a life that made me feel happy and fulfilled. I would drive my hour commute, which I hated, pick up take out or fast food, come home and watch TV, play video games, smoke pot, and drink. I’d go to sleep, wake up the next day and do exactly the same thing. I did that for years. I was absolutely miserable. People can’t live like that.
If you’ll notice, I used past tense. I have made a number of changes to my life over the past several years. One of the first things I did was quit my job. My life now isn’t perfect, but it is improved. I drink less and I don’t smoke pot any more. I also don’t eat out hardly at all. I learned to cook and now I prepare nearly all of my own meals. I don’t know that I’d say I’m happy, but I’m certainly less miserable.
Consumer spending fuels economic growth…Job and wage growth helped counter the hit to consumers wallets from rising inflation, but a continued slowdown or reversal there could tip the scales…“While these indicators do not necessarily predict a recession, especially with a robust labor market, a weakening in employment conditions could exacerbate household financial instability,” said Gregory Daco, EY chief economist. “The combination of subdued job growth, sluggish income progression, and diminished savings could lead to increased delinquencies and a potential retrenchment in consumer spending.”…retail spending unexpectedly stalled in April in a sign of consumer fatigue and worry. Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, has said its customers are spending more on necessities and less on discretionary goods like home furnishings and electronics.
Why does no one talk about the cost of housing? Housing is astronomically expensive, and the more people have to spend for housing, the less they will have to spend on everything else.
I live in a very rural area and I have very fast fiberoptic broadband, provided by a local, not-for-profit cooperative. Absolutely the best Internet service I’ve ever had.
More than half of Americans — 56% — mistakenly believe the U.S. is currently in a recession…That’s not the case…The U.S. economy, as measured by GDP, is growing.
I think it shows that GDP is not necessarily a very good measure of how an economy, or society, is doing. GDP can go up for reasons that don’t really have anything to do with the lives of average people improving in any meaningful way. Plus, the rate of growth in Q1 was, what, like 1.5%? That’s very modest growth. The economy is not exactly roaring.
So GDP is growing and we’re not in a recession, but that doesn’t mean the economy is “good” or “strong,” necessarily. It takes much more to determine the strength of the economy than just looking at GDP figures.
“It is imperative that the Senate, in a bipartisan way, comes up with crippling sanctions against the ICC — not only to support Israel but to deter any future action against American personnel,” Graham said.
In this time of political division, it’s good to see there is still at least one thing liberals and conservatives agree on, and that is that the US and Israel must be allowed to commit war crimes without consequences.
I give the Democrats a really hard time (mainly because I have much higher expectations for them, and so I hold them to a much higher standard than the Republicans), but I can’t deny that Democrats, generally, listen to experts and follow their guidance much more than Republicans. I would even say the Democratic party is somewhat of a technocratic party, for better or worse. It is in this light that the apparent “flip flop” regarding unions should be seen. Both parties became anti-union during the neoliberal era because economists were largely anti-union. Their models or formulas were telling them that unions were bad, so that became the orthodox position of mainstream economics, and Democrats trusted in their expertise. Now, many mainstream economists have decided that unions are good, actually, and so Democrats have once again followed the experts. I’m not sure what changed in the economists’ models or formulas that made them rethink their position on unions, but then economics has always been a bit of a mess.
But until we come up with a better system, cheering for the collapse of the stock market hurts pretty much everyone
We’d better come up with a better system fast because regardless of who is or is not cheering for what, no asset market goes up in value forever. Market corrections are a natural part of any market cycle and many people believe the stock markets are generally overvalued at present. Some people would even say that the current market “bubble” is being propped up by people who don’t want a correction to occur because it would mean a decrease in their retirement savings, but all that does is all but guarantee that when the inevitable correction does occur, it will be more severe than it needed to be.
i’m not about to liquidate my accounts just to stick it to the man.
I didn’t say you should. I am saying that under the current model, investors, including individuals whose retirement accounts are tied to the stock market, need to accept and allow for periodic market corrections, otherwise asset bubbles will form, making much more severe crashes inevitable. The problem is, investors don’t plan for or are willing to accept periodic corrections, they will only accept their accounts going up, at an increasing rate, forever. Needless to say, that is impossible.
This is America. We’re all in a zero sum, winner take all contest for wealth, status, and power. It’s every man for himself. It’s not just that people don’t want to pay for other kids to get a good education, it’s that they want their kids to have every advantage possible. They will openly admit as much. They don’t just want their kids to get a good education, they want their kids to get a better education than everyone else. Inequality is the goal. Inequality doesn’t happen by accident, it’s completely intentional. When life is a competition, everyone is an opponent. You don’t help your opponent, you try to gain every advantage possible.
Everyone always forgets the “it just works,” easy, normie distributions like Fedora. I guess people figure if you’re looking for an OS like that, you might as well just use Windows, but I’d rather not.
Over the past two decades, Gee’s Bend quilts have captured the public’s imagination with their kaleidoscopic colors and their daring geometric patterns. The groundbreaking art practice was cultivated by direct descendants of slaves in rural Alabama who have faced oppression, geographic isolation and intense material...
It certainly seems that in the vast majority of cases, shareholders feel their trust is best honored when profits are maximized, and that their trust is violated when profits are insufficient.
Missouri joins other red states in trying to stamp out ranked choice voting (www.npr.org)
ST. LOUIS — Five states have banned ranked choice voting in the last two months, bringing the total number of Republican-leaning states now prohibiting the voting method to 10....
Poll: More than 60% of middle class say they’re ‘struggling financially’ and are not expecting things to turn around for the rest of their lives (www.thehill.com)
[meme] Part of my ongoing efforts to rebrand urbanist ideas as patriotic and pro-freedom (which they unironically are) (lemmy.world)
Hillary Clinton celebrates Donald Trump verdict with 'She was right' merch (www.irishstar.com)
U.S. workers are less satisfied with nearly every aspect of their jobs than they were a year ago, survey finds (www.cnbc.com)
Deadly Israeli strike on Rafah was a "tragic mistake," Netanyahu says (edition.cnn.com)
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Sunday’s deadly Israeli airstrike on a Rafah camp had gone tragically wrong....
Borrowers, especially the young, struggle with credit card debt in potentially bad sign for economy (apnews.com)
Another US state repeals law that protected ISPs from municipal competition (arstechnica.com)
More than half of Americans think the U.S. is in a recession. It's not. (www.axios.com)
Zap and Troy: The Legendary Journeys (sh.itjust.works)
Biden administration signals it will support push to sanction ICC (www.ft.com)
Key sections from the article:...
Americans are down on the economy (again), with inflation topping election concerns (www.washingtonpost.com)
Paywall removed: archive.is/oFXIl
'People got betrayed': Cardi B says she's not voting in the presidential election (www.msnbc.com)
Biden’s labor report card: Historian gives ‘Union Joe’ a higher grade than any president since FDR (theconversation.com)
Dow hits 40,000 for the first time as bull market accelerates (www.cbsnews.com)
Why school segregation is getting worse (www.vox.com)
US home prices have soared 47% so far this decade, outpacing all of the growth seen in the 1990s and 2010s (www.businessinsider.com)
US home prices have soared 47% so far this decade....
Biden announces 100% tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles (www.theguardian.com)
White House levy to protect US makers from cheap imports likely to inflame trade tensions...
Operating Systems for Different Life Stages (lemmy.zip)
Source
They made one-of-a-kind quilts that captured the public's imagination. Then Target came along (apnews.com)
Over the past two decades, Gee’s Bend quilts have captured the public’s imagination with their kaleidoscopic colors and their daring geometric patterns. The groundbreaking art practice was cultivated by direct descendants of slaves in rural Alabama who have faced oppression, geographic isolation and intense material...