This is my thread

Pittsey · Jun 9, 2022

All of this stuff in the media is designed to divide and upset people. I take it with a pinch of salt and move on

Idiots tend to get upset about it. If that's not clear, look a few posts above. This is very common in the USA and is becoming increasingly more common in the rest of the world thanks to social media. It seems that stupidity is actually contagious... Whilst everyone is getting upset about pointless shit the debt burden increases, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and it becomes more difficult to access fundamental services.

Tha Massive Bell · Jun 9, 2022

Word. Go Woke Go Broke is a phrase. When companies try to sell gay black cinderellas etc. and it backfires because nobody asked for it. Of course even just talking about it gets people labeled stupid and hateful by the pretentious.

The thing is, some parents don't want this stuff taught in schools. You know, sometimes in America you get tasered and arrested for trying to save your kids life. :rolleyes:

Next.

Pittsey · Jun 9, 2022

Tha Massive Bell said:

How to take one or two examples and generalise them more broadly

Tha Massive Bell · Jun 9, 2022

I think we should have a homeschooling revolution.

Pittsey · Jun 9, 2022

Tha Massive Bell said:

You're free to homeschool your children. I wish them luck

Tha Massive Bell · Jun 9, 2022

So you're fine with clear separation of ideologies, then.

Maybe degrading educational system is not a concern in the UK but it is in the US. I know you like to go with the flow but if education is a publicly funded venture then I think we all have a say in the matter.

It would save A LOT. I think with some adjustments to the tech, it can be done without raising emotionless zombies.

For some reasons that are not yet proven, people thought online schooling ruined childhood. There was a huge push to get kids back into those buildings. I kept thinking - just teach them the BS at home but there was a clear divide with schooling - For one, teachers didn't want to get the flu but I think many parents need to work and can't afford supervision. Of course I'm not allowed to criticize this obvious separation of the family unit without being accused of this and that.

I think it's accurate to say that American moms get the least amount of paid maternity leave in the West - an embarrassment.

Too many hammers trying to jam a round peg into a square hole.

Preach · Jun 9, 2022

Tha Massive Bell said:

I couldn't grasp whether you're advocating for home schooling but I wanted to comment on the part about not yet proven reasons. I dunno if I'm on the right page here but we're talking about covid and how students have been taking classes on zoom right?

So maybe there are no studies on the specific 2021-2022 covid situation that suggest it's detrimental for children to be home schooled, but there's quite a lot of general literature about children's need for socialization through developing years, and the negative effects of lack thereof. There are some milestones throughout childhood and youth that "must be met" to avoid a greatly exaggerated risk of falling off the social train and becoming an outlier statistic. So criminal, drug user, personality disorders and etc. There is also strong correlations between socialization, IQ and objective life success.

I do think it's an interesting idea though. I've been thinking lately that the way we send old people to old people's homes isn't really sustainable. It's an out-of-sight, out-of-mind strategy. I certainly never want to end up in a home, neither does anyone else, and that's probably because you can't trust that they'll actually take good care of you, even if they want to in their most idealistic moments. It's convenient for everyone else but the old person. And at least over here, there's a huge employee deficit in the taking-care-of-the-old-business. I don't have a good grasp on the correct terminology for this, but at the demented home my grandmother lives in, there can be 2 people on call for like eight old people, and that's common. They basically have to move from one to the other. So when it comes time to put the old folks to bed, someone has to be first, and you could argue they're being put to bed artifically early (so the employees can get through everything before they finish their shift). The last old person that's put to bed may be a little late and may be super tired, so the whole thing becomes a way bigger drain on their energy than it otherwise would have been if they were better catered to. Maybe staff rotate who goes first and who goes last from one day to the next but the whole thing just seems... I dunno. I'm thankful there's no history of male dementia on neither my mother or my father's side, but I get really sad thinking about it.

It's a way to deal with the problem but my heart aches for them. If it were me, well... I can only imagine based on how picky I am about everything from the water temperature when I'm showering, to exactly how much spread I put on my bread, and exactly what kind. They might think "oh he's gonna eat a hot dog, let me put ketchup and mustard on (cause everyone eats ketchup and mustard)", but I hate mustard. So on and so on. Then, before every summer they would be training subs, and then during vacation time it would be like new employees and subs looking after me. So there I'm sitting, demented as fuck, swinging in and out of a dream world and in my clearest moments feeling frustrated. No one that understands me, people showing shit in my mouth that I don't normally eat. Tragic microwave dinners in plastic boxes. It's such a depressing idea that my life would go from a life of freedom and choice, to having all my personal preferences negliently ignored because staff have seven other people to look after. Is there a better (not as in financially but as in humanely) way?

But then, if we all decided that "yeah, let's go back to generational housing," the differences from one household to the next would be huge, probably. Some old people would definitely go neglected. I think like 20% of our population is on welfare, so if people can't take care of themselves, they would take even worse care of their old mother that's been sitting in a chair saying shit that doesn't make sense for the past 13 years. "Just leave her be, she doesn't even know where she is" and those kinda write-offs. I haven't decided on an opinion about anything but I do think we made a mistake as human beings when we started outsourcing the care for our own. More efficient, more streamlined, more convenient. But less ethical and less humane. Same thing with schools. It's easier for parents to send kids to school, but knowing how many kids fall through the cracks in school, we could say there might be a better system to be had.

But this is another thing that's so embedded in western culture that we couldn't just reverse it without drastic changes to the whole way our societies are engineered. And most people probably wouldn't want to go back. But maybe it would be better for the elderly. Or maybe not. Difficult stuff, politics.

Tha Massive Bell · Jun 9, 2022

Agree A LOT with "nursing home" part. They call it "senior living" here now.

The example reverberates with other social problems.

There are lots of nasty shit that goes on in those places and I would never ever put my family in one.

It's going to change but I'm afraid the change is forced and for the benefit of a few. We can't rely on these people leaders in the West with this. They'll fuck it up like everything else. That much is clear to me.

I'm a technological conservative (? lol). Instagram is fine, but it can be used in better ways. Teaching to utilize a tool in proper efficient way is not a problem. I think the problem with children and digital socialization has been around even before covid and during the pandemic while American teachers and parents were arguing I just kept thinking - if "lower IQ" is a concern, why not engage with the child? I mean, does it really take a room full of talking kids to raise a child's IQ?

At one point, I had to pause and imagine being a child going to classes for a year without ever seeing other children's facial expression - it would have been a trouble for me - I agree the impact is there. Those things we can overcome easily in my mind but I'm afraid the problem is that they're not going to let the people improve that easily....

Preach · Jun 9, 2022

Tha Massive Bell said:

And then, another issue to be taken into account is how this all fits in with western economic growth. I'm not super into economics, never traded stocks, even for a bit of fun. I'm more the kinda guy that wish I could afford an organic farm. If I could grow everything I need and maybe even sell a little bit of it, and otherwise be self-serving, maybe I could get away with not having a regular day job. I 100% will never do it, but I like to daydream about it.

But if we look at world poverty, we're definitely doing something right in the west. I have this stereotypical (and probably discriminating) idea that poor people in poor countries still have generational housing where great grandparents, grandparents, parents and children live in the same house. I'm basically talking out of my ass at this point, but I can't shake the gut feeling that there's a correlation between the way we've divided up the logistics of taking care of everyone, and the way our economies are ever growing. Crudely put, when mommy and daddy can both go to work, they can both supply the family with an income. And when they don't have to spend their evenings catching up with everything they would have had to do throughout the day in a more "primitive" scenario, they maybe have more "oomph" the next day. Maybe the best of us wouldn't be so remarkable if they were burdened with these innate-to-human-life chores that we've dealt away with in the west. I just know from sensing my own feelings that I have more to give when less is demanded of me. And then, in periods where the demands are really high, I'm really just trying to keep my head above water. I can't tell if that's a product of the life I've lived, or something more primal and typically human. Maybe I'm bullshitting myself here, but I honestly believe the relief of burden is a cornerstorne of western life, and thusly, that western life would tip over if we removed it.

But with the environment and the food crisis, and population that will (definitely) increase before it (speculatively) zeroes out at, what was it, 11 billion? I forget but I saw a TED talk from the guy that presented the idea and compelling points were made for why that's feasible. These current issues may inform us that we need to adjust our expected life quality down a few notches and accept something less sweet than what we have now (but still 10x better than where we came from). Maybe chasing the utopian society is the mistake, and the right course of action is accepting compromises to a greater degree than we do today. Maybe we need to redefine the idea of rights into something that doesn't make us feel so entitled in all these ways that's different from one person to the next, and therefore, making it increasingly more difficult for our systems to remain stable. Wow, that's the tyrant in me seeping through. Anyway lol, I think it's a cool and very meta idea that I like to think about.

I actually work as a care-taker. Not in a nursing home, but with disabled children. This all spurred out of me thinking about how many sets of nitrile gloves I use on one shift. Then thinking about how many people are on shift right now in my little shitty town. I came up with a rough estimate, then scaled that up to our population size. I forget what numbers I landed on, but when you consider the whole world, and care-takers using nitrile gloves every time they wipe someone's ass, and all those gloves being sent in plastic bags along with diapers and other shit to be burned or whatever the fuck happens to it... then no matter if we all reduce our glove usage by 75%, which is unthinkably good, the numbers are still so crazy. Just for gloves. Then there's like 3000 more categories. What about plastic syringes that come packed in plastic to be sterile? I don't see any viable alternatives, nor any ways to reduce the usage without also incurring worse public health on everyone. And then thinking about the microplastics issue and how we're never gonna hit any meaningful milestones in our attempt to save the environment as long as things like this is allowed to continue. But without gloves, a lot of those asses would go unwiped. So what do we do, accept a worldwide sore butthole problem? I don't even wanna think about how much zinc balm we would have to produce to relieve all those sore assholes. The problem is that shit's too good right now. We should have stopped the development when we had linen diapers. We didn't need to advance from that, but we did, and now we're used to something way better and easier, and no one's gonna wanna be the first to take two steps backwards. Or something. Not very eloquently put but I think this is a side of... some issue, that's worth taking into consideration.

What can we take home from this? As far as the issues go, nothing. As far as what we as humans should do? Don't judge environmentalists. But don't judge people that don't give a fuck, either. It's hard to tell rights from wrongs in the final equation, with all things considered. We're between lots of rocks and lots of hard places. Truth is subjective. Final grade: so-so. The fence is starting to dig it's way into my ass cheeks and my balls hurt.

Pittsey · Jun 10, 2022

The whole world has an adult social care problem. That we are agreed on.... What will happen, as we live for longer is that we will work our whole lives to build our asset base and then have to draw down on these to pay for our elder care

The UK education system isn't great. But then I don't expect the state to take care of my children's education. They go to school to learn the fundamentals of maths, grammar etc. They learn critical thinking etc at home. It doesn't have to be one or the other. We don't live within extremes, there are areas in-between...

If we want to look at how education should be managed, then Finland is a good example. Where the most qualified become teachers, rather than those who were unable to survive in business, finance or tech

Tha Massive Bell · Jun 13, 2022

Not this part of the west. The Nordics seems to do things better.

Cops stopping patrols here now due to high gas prices. I actually haven't seen a local squad car in a long time.

As Baltimore school bureaucrats get rich, their students fail

"One student was a high school senior with a 0.13 GPA, graduated, and ranked 62 out of 120 in his class. The student had failed all but three classes during his first three years of high school. "

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a...crats-get-rich-their-students-fail/ar-AANzuCZ

Tha Massive Bell · Jun 13, 2022

Schooling, sez me, should be adapted to the needs and capacities of those being schooled. For unintelligent children, the study of anything beyond minimal reading is a waste of time, since they will learn little or nothing more. For the intelligent, a public schooling is equivalent to tying an anchor to a student swimmer. The schools are an impediment to learning, a torture of the bright, and a form of negligent homicide against a country that needs trained minds in a competitive world.

Let us start with the truly stupid. Millions of children graduate – ‘graduate’ – from high school – ‘high school’ – unable to read. Why inflict twelve years of misery on them? It is not reasonable to blame them for being witless, but neither does it make sense to pretend that they are not. For them school is custodial, nothing more. Since there is little they can do in a technological society, they will remain in custody all their lives. This happens, and must happen, however we disguise it.

For those of reasonably average acuity, it little profits to go beyond learning to read, which they can do quite well, and to use a calculator. Upon their leaving high school, question them and you find that they know almost nothing. They could learn more, average not being stupid, but modest intelligence implies no interest in study. This is true only of academic subjects such as history, literature, and physics. They will study things that seem practical to them. Far better to teach the modestly acute such things as will allow them to earn a living, be they typing, carpentry, or diesel repair. Society depends on such people. But why inflict upon them the geography of Southeast Asia, the plays of Shakespeare, or the history of the nineteenth century? Demonstrably they remember none of it.

Some who favor the public schools assert that an informed public is necessary to a functioning democracy. True, and beyond doubt. But we do not have an informed public, never have had one, and never will. Nor, really, do we have a functioning democracy.

Any survey will reveal that most people have no grasp of geography, history, law, government, finance, international relations, or politics. And most people have neither the intelligence nor the interest to learn these things. If schools were not the disasters they are, they still couldn’t produce a public able to govern a nation.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/06/lew-rockwell/get-rid-of-public-schools-now/

Da_Funk · Jun 13, 2022

Tha Massive Bell said:

Only in the USA would you find someone warped enough to buy into this.

Public schooling is one of America's greatest achievements. But no lets blame someone else and get rid of them, not fix the broken society. Its like you morons who vote republican and love tax cuts, not realising those tax cuts are a wealth transfer mechanism for the rich and then hate everything Biden does.

Preach · Jun 13, 2022

Tha Massive Bell said:

That depends on level of analysis.

Say what you want about Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, I know he's a love him or hate him kinda guy, but he's made some points that stuck with me, and one is that of how poverty isn't just a question of having money. This maybe isn't "his" point originally, but he's the one I first heard it from. Basically, something like, there's a lot of people that if you give them money, they'll just spend it unwisely. So there's a line for what's considered intellectual disability, and it's an IQ score. So for children that don't hit the right developmental milestones, you would at some point do some tests to figure out what their intellectual capability is, and if they score less than 70-75, that means they're considered to be intellectually disabled as per the ICD-10 standards. So what about people that score 76? Or 79 for that matter? And is every child in every part of America screened?

I would say for America specifically, poverty problems has to do with social and health policy. The point is that some people just don't manage money well due to intellectual or emotional (or other) reasons. Lack of success can lead to depression which can lead to substance abuse which can lead to addiction, which can lead to making poor money choices.

However, compare the US to like.. Afghanistan, or Myanmar, or Venezuela. You, along with the rest of the west, are in a league of your/our own when it comes to worker rights, minimum wage, and stuff like that. Not perfect, but certainly not bottom of the barrel either. In fact, considering the size and "unrulyness" of the north american continent, and the fact that you're less like a typical country and more like a union of many countries with different cultures and historical backgrounds, you're doing better than poor, or dare I say pretty well. Compare yourself to Russia. You're so much better off. You haven't defeated poverty, but neither have we. Maybe we're ahead of you policy wise, but we're tiny countries with tiny populations. I think the state of New York alone has about as many citizen as all five Nordic countries, so yeah. Cut yourself some slack (when it comes to poverty and social issues) and preach that social policy (and gun control

). A lot of people need help to live good lives within the modern structure of what a life is.

Preach · Jun 13, 2022

Okay, so we're about 25 million in the nordic countries, a little higher than the state of new york, but i stick to my guns. you got 300 million people. 25 sheep are easier to shepherd than 300.

Tha Massive Bell · Jun 14, 2022

It's estimated that around 1 out of 10; or more than 30 million Americans are taking antidepressants.

Tax

Federal Reserve data indicates that as of Q4 2021, the top 1% of households in the United States held 32.3% of the country's wealth, while the bottom 50% held 2.6%. From 1989 to 2019, wealth became increasingly concentrated in the top 1% and top 10% due in large part to corporate stock ownership concentration in those segments of the population; the bottom 50% own little if any corporate stock.

Revenue from income tax in the United States amounted to about 2.04 trillion U.S. dollars in 2021. The forecast predicts an increase in income tax revenues up to 3.58 trillion U.S. dollars in 2032.

Nearly 107 million households — or 61% of U.S. households — owed no federal income taxes in 2020, according to estimates by The Tax Policy Center, marking a 40% increase from 2019 when 43.6% of households didn’t pay taxes.

If we feel like we're not getting our returns, it's only natural to want to pull our money out of it.

Edit:

The federal government collected a record $3,374,629,000,000 in total taxes in the first eight months of fiscal 2022 (October through May), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.

?? smoke and mirrors

Da_Funk · Jun 14, 2022

Tha Massive Bell said:

Why are Americans so sad? They live in the almighty USA. I think this must be fake news.

Preach · Jun 14, 2022

Da_Funk said:

Lel. Big pharma is definitely a US-specific problem. I mean, it affects the rest of the west too, but we have free health care up here. My brothers firstborn was born with a serious condition called SMA which is a common cause of premature death. But she was given (given!!!!!) a gene therapy that costs 3 million USD. No fee, no charge, no insurance needed, just citizenship and eligibility for the treatment. You will be happy to hear that so far, the therapy has taken to, and she looks like she'll develop like a normal child, which is... the specialist doctor couldn't even explain it. What I'm saying is, our health care system isn't designed to be carnivorous, and therefore it's not full of piranhas pushing drugs on us, otherwise we'd be depressed to hell too - for sure!

Tha Massive Bell · Jun 14, 2022

Da_Funk said:

That's American Exceptionalism, popular sentiment amongst racist bots on "White Nationalist" websites!

Some real niggaz will say American's never been great. If MAGA has such a reputation of racism, one would assert that America is already great!!!!

A drunk Red Pilled "veteran" boomer losing his wits

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1434974712153534465

"I. Think. Of. America as. not a. Disgrace! I. Think. Of. America as. not a. Disgrace!"

Really? We got the front row ticket here!

Da_Funk · Jun 14, 2022

Preach said:

Lel. Big pharma is definitely a US-specific problem. I mean, it affects the rest of the west too, but we have free health care up here. My brothers firstborn was born with a serious condition called SMA which is a common cause of premature death. But she was given (given!!!!!) a gene therapy that costs 3 million USD. No fee, no charge, no insurance needed, just citizenship and eligibility for the treatment. You will be happy to hear that so far, the therapy has taken to, and she looks like she'll develop like a normal child, which is... the specialist doctor couldn't even explain it. What I'm saying is, our health care system isn't designed to be carnivorous, and therefore it's not full of piranhas pushing drugs on us, otherwise we'd be depressed to hell too - for sure!

Get money, fuck bitches.

The American way.

This is my thread

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