I worked as a teaching intern at a private school. I talked to lots of teachers there. I have friends who are public school teachers. They’ve all worked in both. What you say is simply not true.

Pay for private sector teachers is affected by all the public sector teachers. It’s the same job market.

Not private sector.

No, of course not. Competition needs to be preserved through strong antitrust laws. The US used to have a very active FTC which sued to prevent mergers and attempted to break up monopolies in order to preserve competition. Then it went through a long period of inactivity due to monopoly-friendly governments.

Now, the Biden administration and their appointee, Lina Khan, have resumed this important work. Of course, this could all be jeopardized if Trump wins the election, but so could a lot of other important things.

As for Canada, we favour oligopolies under a misguided theory that large Canadian businesses will protect Canadians from foreign competitors to the south. We’re paying the price for having no trustbuster with teeth, like Lina Khan.

You said you had to buy a cheaper home to make money from the equity in your home. That is not true, and the examples I have showed how.

As for “free”, what is free is the increase in value of your home over time. That’s the investment part. There are people who bought homes in San Francisco back in the 1970’s who are now multi-millionaires simply due to the many-fold increase in the value of their home. With a HELOC or a reverse mortgage they can gain access to some or all of that money without needing to move to a cheaper house.

Capitalism didn’t invent greed. Humans have been killing each other and stealing each other’s resources for tens of thousands of years. Greed isn’t even exclusive to humans. If you’ve ever seen what foxes or weasels can do to a henhouse, or what giant Asian hornets can do to a beehive, then you’ll see what I mean.

Capitalism is just the idea that competition leads to better outcomes for everyone and that the best competitors are people who put their own resources on the line (rather than someone else’s). What we’re seeing today is consolidation and centralization of wealth and power, the exact opposite of competition. Anyone celebrating this is not a capitalist, they’re a (wannabe) oligarch.

As for empathy, I think the only way to build that is to work directly with people and try to make a difference in their lives. Economic planning and policy making does not achieve empathy, you have to already have empathy going into it.

That’s not true at all. If you own your home outright (paid off your mortgage) or even if you’ve only paid off part of it, you can use it as leverage to borrow money you otherwise would not have access to. A common loan of this type is called a home equity line of credit.

Another thing you can do is what is called a reverse mortgage. This is where you effectively sell your house back to the bank but continue to live there rent-free. In exchange, the bank gives you a monthly payment based on the value of the home. You can often see TV ads for this sort of financial instrument. They’re very popular with retired folks who would like some extra money to travel or take up new hobbies.

Indoctrination is a weird word to use here. It’s limited supply meeting increasing demand. When people see which way the wind is blowing, they see an opportunity.

I am a fan of classic video games from my childhood (NES, SNES, etc). A lot of people are fans of the games from this era. So some people saw this as an opportunity and began buying up a lot of the limited supply of these old games. Now many of these games go for thousands of dollars.

Do I like that my favourite childhood games are now unaffordable? No. Was I indoctrinated to see these games as an investment? Also no. I wish they weren’t so expensive but that’s the reality of it. At least ROMs are freely available, however, whereas with housing there is no way to bypass that issue.

I’m not describing any state solution!

Right but this is a separate issue. My original comment was about Israelis whose families have been living in that region of the world for millennia. They have a right to be there. They are not equivalent to colonists from Europe arriving in the Americas.

The Israeli government uses antisemitism as a weapon to attack their critics. They conflate criticism of the Israeli government with attacks on Jews. It’s bullshit, duplicitous rhetoric.

But here we are conflating Israelis who can trace their ancestry to that region for millennia with (a minority of) European Jews who moved there during/after WW2, and calling all of them colonists. Now we are being duplicitous!

The situation isn’t comparable. The majority of Jews in Israel are not European (or from anywhere else), they’re native Israeli and they trace their roots to Israel back for millennia.

The problem is not that Israelis want to live there. They have a right to live there. The problem is that they’re depriving Palestinians of their right to live there instead of seeking peaceful coexistence.

Representation by population vs representation by area. The same kind of arguments made in favour of switching the U.S. to a fully proportional system (getting rid of all forms of representation by area) could equally be made in favour of having one world government with proportional representation.

When we think about it that way (world elections would be dominated by Asia), it’s easy to see why we might not want such a system. Then, returning to the U.S. system alone it’s easier to see why many people want representation by area preserved. Although the cultural differences between states are much smaller than the differences between continents, they’re still very much present and the issues often dominate American politics.

It was a casual remark, not a hill to die on. That’s entirely your read!

Floor to ceiling stalls are much harder to clean. The gaps underneath allow for water to drain out when washing everything.

Or maybe they could convince Trump that supporting Ukraine is good for them; good for a lot of American weapons factory workers.

As a Canadian and former campaign volunteer (and poll observer) this is really weird to me. Federal elections in Canada are always hand-counted. Results at each polling station are counted in front of volunteer observers from each party (as well as neutral observers) and then delivered to Elections Canada where they’re tallied (in front of lawyers from each party) and results are reported to the media.

It’s not a big deal and there’s no chaos.

Not sure why people are so up in arms about this. I love seeing super long field goal attempts. Instead of thinking of FGs as a consolation prize, teams with strong kickers should be looking at them as a threat.

Now the new landing zone for kickoffs seems to have mostly failed to generate more returns. Perhaps we should look at moving up the touchback starting field position even further, say to the 35 yard line. Combine that a long range kicker and we could see a potent offence generate scoring threats on very few total yards. This makes every single play carry more significance in a drive.

Classic Russian planning. Build a village right next to a gigantic ammo dump.

Yes, I have a whole basket full of towels. I use them all once and hang them up. After the basket is empty I wash them all

It’s even worse than that. The Republican side is full of all the gun enthusiasts. In a civil war I don’t like the “north’s” chances this time around.

Not to mention all the fighter jets, bombers, tanks, and drones the military has.