Wages need to be increased and the best way to do that is to stop businesses undercutting wages by hiring cheap foreign labour.

Urban density increases the efficiency of public services. Wage rates do not.

Trying to keep populations small and fragmented does nothing to improve domestic quality of life. And rising domestic populations don’t hurt overall household incomes. Cartelized labor markets are what do that.

Inflation is largely a global issue.

Prices vary enormously by local regions. And price gouging is increasingly difficult over large distances.

Inflation is most commonly a consequence of local commodity monopolization, not global price trends.

Am I denying the existence of a branch of international foreign intelligence dedicated specifically to Lemmy.world?

Yes. 100%. Absolutely.

It’s pure paranoia.

tax cuts on the poorest people in society

Are functionally no different than higher wages. But without public infrastructure - housing, education, health care, etc - what does an extra couple grand actually buy?

We’ve seen this in the US for decades. A pittance of tax cuts pitched as a percentage of income is presented as this enormous boon. But then wages stagnate, prices skyrocket, and debts soar in the face of new privatization.

And then we’re worse of than when we started.

The tax cut doesn’t buy anything in an inflationary economy

I think helping everyday working class people is a good thing

Just cut taxes bro. Just one more time dawg. I promise it’ll work this time, dude. Just one more tax cut. One more time bro I promise. It’s going to stimulate the economy homey. This time we swear.

It’s called a Maginot Line and you build it on the German border

It’s foxes all the way down. Just a question whether Russians or Americans get their slice.

Removed by mod

I was planning to blame Russian Internet robots

“Accused” by whom?

The British, by the look of it

MR PRESIDENT GET DOWN!

Surely there’s one better young person in the USA ?

None of them ran. Biden’s admin and his fund raising base held enormous sway over the party at-large. As soon as he corralled the support of this tiny monied elite, everyone else had to either get in line or get marked as party pariahs and ousted for their disloyalty.

The pastiche of democracy is predicated on a primary system that can produce and sustain rival candidates. But when leadership in the party are terrified of “Russian bots” and “Leftist Antifa Agitators” undermining the general election, they circle the wagons around their incumbents and bow down to their mega-donors out of cowardice.

No rival candidates means no real primary means no one actually challenges Biden on his merits.

The fanaticism and fatalism produce some interesting parallels

Patreon alone is not enough for most creators to make a living

I’ve seen a number of content creators argue otherwise. From the “Hello from the Magic Tavern” sketch comedy group to the “Scenes from the Multiverse” Cartoonist to the various musicians cranking out indie tunes on Bandcamp, the refrain I consistently here is that direct patronage offers significantly better returns than ad-supported payments on bigger media platforms.

Indie creators generally have an easier time of securing monthly subscriptions because they’re more boutique and have closer connections to the audience. And you don’t need an enormous audience to bring in a reliable income. While YouTubers need to get into the hundreds of thousands of subscribers to see any kind of productive ROI, Patreon artists can justify the expense of their work on an audience in the hundreds. They can go entirely indie with an audience in the thousands.

Most creators can’t afford to go fully indie, but the margins are so much better relative to the audience size with direct payments. Even just $2/viewer/episode pays vastly more than what a streaming service offers.

As a Texas resident with a few friends in who are professional teachers… oof. I’m so sorry to hear this story has a sad ending.

I’m a big fan of Patreon.

Like that was the time to wake up and hate every single one of these content creators for selling out

And then what? Stop consuming their content?

Ah yes, the comparable states of Hawaii, Quebec and Crimea which famously issue their own passports, have their own heads of state, pass their own laws and are not subject to the laws of parent states.

Each of these regions has its own governor and its own municipal laws.

Taiwanese residents who regularly travel to China carry a distinct Chinese passport precisely because the Taiwanese passport isn’t recognized. In fact the Taiwanese passport is notorious for how many problems it causes with international travel.

And thanks to the US defense pact, Taiwan is heavily beholden to US sanctions, trade restrictions, and travel embargoes. Taiwan isn’t independent, it is occupied territory. Much the same way as Crimea is occupied by Russia.

you’ve wandered much to far from your safe space

Its always fun to see people encounter some facts they haven’t seen before and conclude “These facts have simply been misplaced! I’m not supposed to be hearing them. They belong in somewhere else.”

someone could come up with a meaningful definition of a country that would exclude Taiwan, but include all other countries

The classical definition of sovereignty doesn’t apply to Taiwan, no matter how you slice it. They’re not a country in the same way that Palestine and Hawaii and Quebec and Crimea aren’t countries.

its historic debt to Jewish people

One would assume this debt would be repaid with German lands and monies, rather than land and money looted from Arabs a continent away.

Honestly, when it comes to Israel/Palestine, the German state should just do what their other genocide victim, Namibia, told them to do and Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

Yeah, crazy how the Germans are full throated supporters of Israel, but you never see them waving big Nambia flags and asserting the rights of African state sovereignty. I’m forced to wonder why, as I flip through my history book of “German Prime Ministers After 1949”.

Granting Israelis the right to Lebensraum.