I put this in the same box as I put marijuana legalization. Let people do it. Tobacco is harmful. Marijuana is harmful. Refined sugars are harmful. Alcohol is harmful.

Educate the pubic about the harms. Provide resources for folks who want to quit. Ban advertising targeted at kids.

And otherwise let people make their own choices.

Sin taxes are nice, too

SI

lol

�� SCOOP: Chris Christie is seriously considering running for president in 2024.

He's told friends he'd be the only person in the 2024 field with executive experience who has run a presidential race before — a clear shot at Gov. Ron DeSantis. https://t.co/CA9HdnP8KE

— Axios (@axios) April 21, 2021

Same. Label what is in the product and let people make their own choices.

I'm also not a huge fan of sin taxes unless that product is costing taxpayers money (for instance alcohol).

The difference is that the levels of nicotine have been manipulated over decades and that information hasn't generally been made clear to purchasers.

There's like a hundred other obviously horrible additives that could/should be legislated out of cigarettes before you even start talking about nicotine levels.

i don't want them making more commercials saying that all these things are bad. That's a waste of money. Everyone knows they are bad.

There's no choice but nicotine or nothing. given the manipulation of nicotine, I'm fine with lowering the levels.

I've gotten on these tobacco-free nicotine pouches. Zyn, Velo, there are a few brands out there.

What I can't seem to find the answer to is whether nicotine is inherently bad? If we can deliver nicotine in a way that doesn't destroy the body, isn't that a good thing? Yet I'm starting to see calls to ban these products. I just can't see why, though.

Im embarrassed Josh Hawley represents me. And there is no way to recall a US Senator.

I'm assuming that Biden is acknowledging the Armenian genocide because Turkey is more a frenemy right now than a true ally, and also for domestic support/votes.

Don't know all the ramifications other than Turkey getting PO'd and continue to move away. But that was going to happen anyway. This may leave the Kurds less protected in norther Iraq and Syria. I can see Turkey developing closer ties to Russia but won't ever be a proxy.

Apparently the US has some sort of embargo of raw materials that India needs to create more vaccine. For now, the US is resistant to removing the embargo.

CNN articles don't have a lot of details about what the raw materials are, would it really make that much of a difference etc. or is this India pushing blame away from their incompetence etc.

But from what I've read, we have more than enough vaccines right now (maybe not for next round in 4Q though) and I don't see why we don't (1) remove the embargo and/or (2) give some excess vaccines away ... under the assumption we've signed contracts for another 700 million doses to be delivered in 4Q.

But then the question is why release it to India. Why not to other developing countries? From what I've read, India had it "under control" until they started going lax and this current state is the result.

I don't know what the right answer is but lean towards giving India what she needs (as much as we can).

It seems like we could give away all of our Astra Zeneca stockpile. It isn't approved here, and it does not seem like it is likely to be approved soon. And even if it were approved, I don't see people here taking it with three other established options on the table.

It would help other countries at zero cost to us.

I just assumed he was a System of a Down fan.

There's an "opportunity" cost somewhere (e.g. why not send it to Mexico or Canada instead).

But probably the right decision.

COVID news: India corronavirus surge; US assistance; six-foot rule

Next up is the Family Recovery Plan. Cost wise is all over the place. I think I read it would cost at least $1T but this article estimates $1.5T, and a WaPo article said $1.8T.

(I'm losing track of what Trillion we are up to now. Something like $1.9T + Jobs/Infrastructure $2T + Family Recovery of $1.5T = $5.4T)

Lowering Medicare eligibility could potentially be part of this bill so that is one positive for me personally.

Biden’s ‘American Families Plan’ is coming. What’s in it? - MarketWatch

Some of these areas are good, others are not IMO, but the part that really grinds my gears is insulting my intelligence by calling these kinds of proposals 'infrastructure'.

I know, Biden that dick trying to improve regular Americans' lives, right?

But what has he done for the super rich?

I don't object to that part of it at all. People can have reasonable disagreements on the best way to do that, and as President it's absolutely appropriate for Biden to put forward whatever proposals he thinks best and advocate for them. At the same time, child care, family leave etc. are not infrastructure. They just aren't.

Wasn't the first bill officially called a jobs and infrastructure bill?

American Jobs Plan:

FACT SHEET: The American Jobs Plan | The White House

This its not infrastructure stuff seems a bit like gaslighting tbh

I would consider thinking about infrastructure as the framework of an organization/community/society, rather than physical objects or utilities (these things are also obviously the more classic ideas of infrastructure).

I think with the way the pandemic altered the way we work in the United States, it is pretty fair to say that childcare is infrastructure. If healthcare workers, engineers, educators, etc. are not able to work or their hours are limited to the point that they are not able to provide necessary services because there is not adequate childcare for their families, that impacts the basic framework of businesses and services like hospitals and utility companies. If those services are not functioning well, that impacts businesses and communities quite a bit.

My wife and I work in healthcare and we both reduced our hours/availability because our pre-COVID, dependable childcare was either too erratic to depend on or (for periods of time) eliminated altogether. We both provide service to people in need, but if we didn’t have local family, one of us would have needed to shelf years of education, training, and experience to be home 100% of the time and our patients would be searching for new providers to help keep them functioning well enough to continue with their careers and families. Lack of affordable, safe childcare options is something most of us don’t think about unless/until it directly affects us and it has for a lot of parents during COVID. It is regularly a huge problem that disproportionately affects single/young mothers and often prevents them from moving out of poverty.

Thinking of things like roads, bridges, and utilities as infrastructure is fine and accurate, but may be shortsighted and limited if we are thinking about the future. Things like childcare, IT, and high speed internet are also very important to maintain and improve upon going forward if we want a skilled labor force that creates opportunities for everyone.

I get your point, but under that way of defining it anything can be infrastructure. Anything at all. It has no deeper meaning than 'this thing has value to us'. Every part of society impacts other parts, but that doesn't make child care infrastructure any more than migrants at the border are an invasion.

I think redefining words that way is very dangerous. In order for words to mean things, they have to not mean other things, or we end up with a language that we just make up as we go along. To Issidiqui's point, it's not remotely gaslighting. The foundations of communication matter.

In this case, they don't matter as much as you think they do.

Do you mean to tell me that if you supported higher funding for childcare, universal prekindergarten, paid family leave, and free community college, that you would vote against it if it were called "The Human Infrastructure Bill"?

If so, you're the worst kind of pedant. I mean, THE WORST

I get where you are coming from with the strict definition. You have always been pretty considerate with thoughts and words on here, so I mean no harm, but it seems like a matter of semantics to define infrastructure as only tangible/physical infrastructure. Services and systems that are considered soft infrastructure are still infrastructure and, specifically, if they are being defined in the bill as such, I do not think it is misleading or insulting anyone's intelligence to call both hard and soft infrastructure proposal as 'infrastructure.'

I got your hard infrastructure bill right here.

Really, I got nothing.

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Of course not. Those are two completely different issues. I wouldn't vote for or against a bill based on its name unless the name itself was something way beyond the pale in terms of being highly offensive or whatever.

Citizens United

Fuck these two.

A secret video obtained by The New Yorker and @teamtrace shows the N.R.A. chief Wayne LaPierre and his wife hunting elephants. His wife, Susan, kills an elephant, cuts off its tail, and holds it in the air. “Victory!” she shouts. https://t.co/A6SLRA69wW

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) April 27, 2021

Trophy hunters are the most fucked up, low hanging, pieces of shit in the world in my book. Fuck all of them!

Joe Biden is, by pretty much any measure, pushing a much less centrist agenda than President Obama did.

But polls continue to show voters consider him more moderate than they considered Obama.

Basically, people who want their party to push an agenda should elect radicals who look moderate instead of moderates who look radical.

And white. They should definitely pick white candidates. Probably white men.

I think that's also shaped by perception and the amount of time that has elapsed since Obama. A black president is still a radical thing in and of itself for a lot of people. And 4 years of Trump feels more like 15-20 years since Obama was president. It's hard to believe he was president in 2016, really.

Politicians are often defined by an impression of them that sometimes bears little relationship to the reality. It's the same reason why our first impressions of people on meeting them is often not accurate.

With Obama, the healthcare thing is probably the overriding "radical" thing people remember. The GOP ran against Obamacare for a couple of election cycles. And then were more than fine when in 2020, Trump supporters somehow gave him credit for it. That still blows my mind.

I think there's a marketing and history component here. Biden's been around for a while now I think people have gotten used to him being a "moderate".

There's also the Democratic primaries. I mean, the radicals were the ones like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren right? Not Uncle Joe, he's the moderate choice.

Of course now that he's in office it seems there's a new trillion dollar piece of legislation being introduced every week.

He wouldn't have to if Congress was actually allowed to create a budget and spend money on anything besides entitlements and military.

It was really easy for trump and the r's to spend by subtraction. Don't bitch about the roads not being kept up and how incompetent the government is when you're actively sabotaging it to make money for your own private interests. That's so much easier to sell to the public, and does nothing to improve the situation. All it does is let someone else take credit for the easy shit, and ignore the ugly hard to do stuff.

Huh? Congress can make a budget anytime it wants. It has chosen not to for decades, but there's nothing stopping it from doing it anytime it chooses.

Brian you're the only guy who argues about shapes while nukes are falling.

That’s just kind of what being a professional politician is though. He’s spent decades positioning himself exactly where he is, and now is the payoff. I think it was on one of the recent 538 podcasts when someone said, “Biden’s political superpower is everyone just assumes whatever position he’s taking on an issue is the most centrist position.”

Yeah, that's the heart of it. It's like cross-sectional radicalism. Add a modifier if of color, if you have a funny name, if you're a woman, if you're not Christian. Biden doesn't get those modifiers (maybe the Catholic thing with some).

I have no idea what this means.

Of course it is. It's called the American Jobs Plan. It's always been a Jobs and Infrastructure plan. To quibble that things aren't infrastructure in the plan is just redefining what the plan is about.

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The point isn't that there are things in the bill that aren't infrastructure, as if everything in both of them has to be infrastructure or its a misnomer. The point is that very little of what is in either bill is actually infrastructure, so referring to them as infrastructure bills or infrastructure proposals or as constructions with more than a tenuous, tangential relationship to infrastructure is false.

Well according to some Democrats everything is infrastructure, and there has been no pushback within the party.

Paid leave is infrastructure.
Child care is infrastructure.
Caregiving is infrastructure.

— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) April 7, 2021

wow Tim Scott, African-American SC Republican says America is not a racist country in the Republican rebuttal

The American Jobs Plan Gets Serious about Infrastructure and Climate Change | Center for Strategic and International Studies

If you take out the "Electric Vehicle Incentives", Transportation and Utilities make up 33% of the bill.

Right, and I'm fully in favor of a lot of those elements. Roads and bridges, power-related utilities, public transit, etc. are all very important infrastructure projects that I'd be willing to pay more in taxes to see even more investment in. To be fair, I overstated the case with regards to the first bill. My reaction was more aimed at the items in Edward's link, and I was wrong to extend that criticism to the degree that I did.

What NobodyHere posted about is more to the point I was aiming at, but there are still a number of items in the first bill labeled as infrastructure which just aren't. I'm with Biden on a lot of matters, and I would like to see the first bill pass. I'm just not going to acquiesce to looking at a pile of burlap and calling it gold, which is what statements like Gillibrand's amount to.

Yeah, Democrats have been guilty of letting Republicans redefine the debate for ages and ages (you can see people complain about it all over this thread). I'm glad Biden doesn't seem to be falling into the same trap that Gillibrand did and is sticking to his guns that this is a Jobs and Infrastructure Bill as it has been since he proposed it (though Gillibrand may have course corrected after that tweet, who knows).

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someone should tell him...

This closing was well done. Not only was it written well, but it fits what Biden can deliver well.

Biden closes his #JointAddress by saying, "we've stared into the abyss of insurrection and autocracy, pandemic and pain, and we the people did not flinch ... we can do whatever we set our mind to, if we do it together. So let's begin to get together." pic.twitter.com/jo9ba4YwIB

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 29, 2021

Gotta love media coverage of politics:

Biden's first big speech to Congress bombs on all counts


Biden’s address to Congress proves we have an adult back in the presidency


I didn't watch the speech but I wish Biden would focus more on closing the current deficit rather than announcing new trillion dollar legislation.

Frankly I wouldn’t wipe a corpse’s ass with the NY Post.

Fuck that.

I'm tired of when the right is in power they spend unchecked, give tax cuts to the rich, and destroy our economy then all of a sudden become the party of fiscal responsibility when they lose power. I am sick of this cycle of a dem president cleaning up the messes left by their republican predecessor.

Trump kicked this door in with spending, I say Biden says fuck it. There is always going to be some pork but at least Biden is trying to spend on meaningful things while taking that money from the people and corporations that have skated far too long, and FWIW I am above the income threshold whose taxes would go up and I am totally fine with it if it means some mom in Tulsa could afford daycare (sorry if that sounds like a flex).

Agreed. The Dems need to do a better job of messaging with the deficit. For my entire adult life, it seems like no one has ever called out the Republicans when they are in power for cutting taxes without balancing the budget to reduce the deficit. But the second the Democrats are in power, the deficit and spending on programs immediately becomes the worst thing in the world.

The Republicans grow the deficit by giving tax breaks to the rich and spending on the military and the Democrats grow the deficit by spending on social and domestic programs. Ideally, I'd like to see one of them make smart spending cuts and maintain tax levels (or do targeted increases) until the deficit closes, but if neither party is serious about balancing the budget, I would rather see programs that help more folks rise out of poverty and into the middle class than ones that help millionaires become billionaires.

One of the main reasons I started voting Libertarian back in the early 2000s was my realization that the GOP wasn't for limited government/balanced budget, they just had different priorities for their spending sprees. I have never been totally comfortable with the Libertarian position because I find it to be impractical, but as shorthand for "fiscal responsibility/moderate social policies" I felt like it was the closest I could come to a political identity. Around here, though, the main Libertarian policy points are almost all about 2nd Amendment these days, so that and Trump basically forced me to consider Dems for the first time.

Biden actually did mention how the Trump tax cuts exploded the deficit and how they needed to be repealed on the $400k+ crowd because of that. Apparently he insisted to his speechwriters to keep that in there. It's past time to point the finger at the GOP for their explosion of the deficit.

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Spending money on IRS enforcement will collect more revenue than it costs.

Repairing infrastructure before it breaks instead of spending money to fix it when it does will cost less over the long term.

A lot of the spending being proposed is with an eye toward long term fiscal health.

We need to start thinking longer term.

Wealthy would dodge 90% of Biden's capital gains tax increase, study says

Biden may want to rethink his revenue plans

"Wharton's Ricco said he and his fellow researchers believe that raising capital gains taxes will almost entirely be paid by wealthy Americans. He also said it is a good policy for addressing the country's growing economic inequality."


Sounds horrible.

Yup. Sounds like it's gonna take more than increasing the rate. Gonna have to amend the laws that allow for these currently permissible loopholes.

I'll be with you on this a year from now, possibly even sooner, but right now I'm with Lathum. There's a mess to clean up and it's appropriate to do so by borrowing the money needed. The degree of need I disagree some with Biden on, but we're not back to the point yet where we can just return to economic normalcy and all of the considerations that would typically come with that.


Does it really surprise anyone that he thinks this? Really??

Both Harris and Biden have stated after that they do not believe America is a racist nation, but they do believe we have a racist past that effects are lingering.

He literally went on TV the next day saying people were being racist toward him. Just remarkably dumb people.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/tim-sc...eft-color-skin

I heard that interview. This is the part that left me dumbfounded


He is saying that about Biden who was VP under, wait for it.....a black president.

Not to mention there are 50 republican senators, one is black, right, nothing to see here.

I can't take any of the screaming about 'cancel culture' from modern R's. The party of "we were all over cancel culture in the 80's" between music, video's, games, the right had their grubby little paws in all the "satanism".

..and Monty Python's Life of Brian!

That's right there on the level of 'Biden was nice to Strom Thurmond, so he's disqualified from any credibility/leadership today'. Only worse actually, because a lot of the people you're talking about from the 80s aren't even the same people anymore. Leaving aside the clear distinctions between what is referred to as cancel culture and what happened then, it's been 30-40 years. People and societies aren't trapped in time. There are a great many things that all of us do which people will think insane 40 years from now.

Interesting read on Biden's plan and how it impacts the 1%. Lots of good stuff in there.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-tax-increase-rich/

I think it's going to be interesting to see what happens with the economy over the rest of this year or so. Retail, food service, etc. jobs at least statewide where I'm at have a fraction of the typical applicants, and many of those who are applying are phantom ones. That is, they don't really want a job, but are applying to satisfy unemployment requirements.

Something is going to crack soon one way or another. I'm wondering how much of this will be required to convince businesses to raise wages (and prices), and what the fallout from all of that will be.

There are more and more articles on the fear of inflation so I believe the fear is real. But the Fed is saying a temporary/transitionary bump is expected and then it'll go back down. The saying is don't bet against the Fed so I have my chips (and hopes) the Fed is right.

To your point about cracking. I dunno. Like everything else, the economy & market will stabilize again over time (e.g. bend vs cracking). And as always, there will be winner and losers. The winners will lean towards the more wealthy, more educated, the more driven, and the more adaptable.

Bottom line, still optimistic about the US but don't like how deficit is equal/greater than

Not convinced this is real yet but good job Biden. Keep up the pressure. Trump was right in being more antagonistic towards China but going at it alone was stupid. Glad you took a page out of the playbook but added allies. Hope this continues.

China Tensions Spill Over as Europe Moves Toward Biden’s Side

Maybe offer better wages and people will be interested in the job?

Agreed. If the success of a business is dependent on paying folks wages that are below the standard of living AND keeping them part-time so the business does not have to provide good benefits, the business should shoulder the majority of the blame for not being viable.

The suggestion that we/you know why folks are turning down jobs is fundamentally wrong in the first place.

I for one am confused because I have been told the Mexicans are stealing all our jobs...

Pretty sure it's the saucer people and the reverse vampires.

I saw a big sign near me (Decatur/ N Dekalb Mall) on a McDonalds talking about how they are paying "up to" $10/hr for new employees. At $400/week (assuming you work 40 hours) you could be looking at a little less than $20k per year before taxes. Not sure that is a living wage in that area, or even the south side, but not sure why that should motivate people.

As a McDonalds share holder, I fully approve their shitty wages.

When they come right out and tell you why they are turning them down, I think it's pretty clear. When you have roughly a third to a quarter of the applicants of a typical year across the board and you look and see what's different in the current environment, again it's pretty clear.


A lot of the jobs I'm referring to are full-time. I do agree with you that a lot of it is on the business, but even if they all raised their wages tomorrow there would still be downstream implications that would be painful. I.e., higher prices on food for poor people isn't a good thing either. It's not a 'just business' issue, it's a 'the whole environment issue'. I.e., this kind of reality is not-often-enough considered consequence of increasing unemployment. Most of the long-term, full-time employees of these businesses would make more money immediately if they were fired and went on unemployment. And in a competitive business environment, a lot of businesses are going to find it more profitable to accept running short on staff because if they increase prices and wages, more customers will go where they can buy what they need cheaper. The 'just raise wages' aspect is an important part of it, but it's only one part. The whole picture matters.

It would be interesting to see data on what percentage of fast food workers are part-time vs full-time. I tried to find some data, but came up empty. I did find this article from 2018 that gives some insight on fast food workers: Things You Don't Know About Fast Food Employees

It does say 87% of fast food employees receive no benefits and over $7-billion per year in gov't welfare goes to fast food workers (2018 numbers). So, for a lot of these franchises, they are pretty clearly propped up by government assistance.

According to my local Facebook groups, a lot of people aren't willing to take a job where they have to wear a mask all day.

How/why are you privy to the interview results for the retail & food service industries "statewide"? I am getting the impression you are trying to sell me personal anecdotes from two people you know as something much more.

I'm not. Re-reading what I wrote, I can see where you'd think that's what I meant though.

The only thing I can claim statewide is that applications are down. I think the data on distinctions between this year and previous years in terms of policy changes, economic circumstances, etc. points to a pretty clear conclusion there. I.e., wages and benefits aren't what has changed. I don't have knowledge of interviews or callbacks data with anywhere near that wide of a net. I don't think that's necessary to draw reasonable conclusions in this case either.

Molson, I can totally buy that. I can't even imagine working in a hot kitchen with a mask on all day.

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You are still paying for it downstream. As Swaggs say, a good chunk of your tax dollars are going to pay the benefits that Walmart and McDonalds won't. The Waltons collect the money on the backs of their workers, and then everyone else pays portions of their taxes for the same workers' health care and food. Point is, you pay it either way. This whole, "if we pay workers a living wage your burgers will go up" is just a strawman to keep their pockets lined.

Maybe the government should tax the Walmarts a portion of the benefits their employees receive from the government.

It's also false. Plenty of states and cities have high minimum wages and don't see astronomical price increases that we are told will happen.

This is all bullshit propaganda from big businesses that are upset people don't want to work in a fast food kitchen getting talked down to by customers for $8/hour. All these jobs could be filled by increasing wages. McDonalds would have no problem hiring if they were paying $20/hour.

And like you said, if people make more, they rely less on the government and tax dollars. They also have more buying power in the economy. Our current system subsidizes McDonalds and Walmart.

Yeah, the conclusion is that wages and benefits are the same like you said, but you're asking people to work in a global pandemic under shittier conditions than before. So the job is now shittier but pays the same. Not rocket science why applications are down.

The unemployment argument has no basis in reality and goes against what we see everyday.

To the contrary, it fits quite well with what we see everyday.


Nobody in this thread said they would be astronomical. But they do happen. At one establishment where I used to work, price increases on the order of 2-3% resulted in hundreds of lost customers per month. That's simply the competitive reality of the situation. The only way you can pull it off is if you find a way for your quality to be so much higher than the competition than customers don't care. Some businesses are in a quality market. Others are in a price market.

I was talking to someone today about this issue (applications for retail and food service jobs being down) and something that we thought of that may also be affecting it is the number of folks who would rather drive Uber/Lyft etc. or deliver for Grubhub/etc. since you can make pretty similar or better money, have complete control over your schedule, and do not have to deal with any workplace drama.

Anecdotally, a fair amount of college aged to 20-something people that I know have left their part time jobs and ended up driving due to the schedule flexibility.

I would guess that doing these types of jobs and doing online jobs or content creation are pulling some of these folks from the workforce.

It sounds like that establishment was poorly run. There are plenty of other ways to pull it off. Executives can take a pay cut, dividends can be cut, etc. It's odd that the only solution people like you have is to require unlimited amounts of cheap labor to stay in business.

A different establishment that likely would give you the same answer started at the beginning of the pandemic by cutting executive salaries and offering employees free meals. This sort of simplistic 'it's always business's fault' approach makes no sense to me. There's no balance or nuance that I can discern in it.

The point isn't that you need unlimited amounts of cheap labor. It's that businesses and industries are different. There are some parts of the economy where price doesn't matter that much. There are others where, both for employees and customers, price is everything because their margins are so small. . If your answer is to cut the compensation for executives, and you can't find enough qualified management and executives in your company as it is, then one would imagine you'd have to logically fall back on your previous argument that if you can't get enough good labor it means you should *increase* wages. Or does that only apply to labor below a certain threshold/wage rate? That just gets you back to where you started.

There are a lot of badly run businesses to be sure. There is also an inherent limit to the amount of cost-cutting measures that you can effectively take without doing more harm than good. That limit is much different in various sectors of the economy. This sort of 'blame big business, they're an easy target' mantra just doesn't survive some aspects of contact with practical reality.

Don't rule out the fact that some of these businesses prop themselves up with teenage labor because of the low wages they offer. I suspect that I'm probably not the only parent that would not let my child work in the public during this pandemic. We don't even have a mask mandate in my state anymore. I need the number of places my kids are going right now kept to a minimum until people figure out how to wear masks and/or take a vaccine. If my child comes down with COVID and is asymptomatic that is still 14 unpaid days off for both parents.

Tipped employment can be really shitty right now because of the limits on capacity in many states and/or the general reluctance still to eat out.

Top executive salaries have skyrocketed over the past few decades. Shareholders are still making a mint despite a global pandemic. Pretty sure there is some fat that can be trimmed if a company is really struggling to offer an extra dollar or two an hour.

And yes, if a company can't afford to hire qualified people to turn a profit, they have failed. It's fine. Many businesses aren't cut out for it. That's the fault of their business model, not those who don't want to work a shit job for $8/hour.

What's your solution to this? Force people to work for $8/hour? Because my solution of cutting the dividend payouts to shareholders a tad and dropping ridiculous executive compensation packages seem a much better solution. And that's assuming that a bump in wages actually hurts the company financially which isn't always the case.

I really only take umbrage with the suggestion that there's a whole class of unemployed people are sitting around collecting unemployment, turning down jobs and living high-on-the-hog, doing nothing & 'wasting' those benefits and our tax dollars by extension.


Much like Swaggs point above, I imagine lots of people areusing those expanded & extended benefits to look for better opportunities outside of the minimum wage pool, and I don't consider that a wasted cost, even if it keeps plenty of folks out of the job pool for longer than the usual and/or doesn't actually result in any improvement for some/most at the end. I'm sure plenty of people are abusing the system in earnest as well, but perfect shouldn't be the enemy of good, especially in the case of US income equality.

Mitch McConnell dodges questions about Rep. Liz Cheney, 2020 election

"One-hundred percent of my focus is on stopping this new administration," McConnell said."

Not, you know, accomplishing anything or helping the country in any way. Just getting in the way of anything the administration wants to do.

Not a surprise at all, but should be repeated.

He's the Obstructor in Chief. Again.

My goodness, those people live in a fantasy world. Must be nice to be away from any of the hardships and stupidity regular americans face every day.

That's so 2009.