Your post points to the answer.

If people’s absolute essentials could be guaranteed: housing, healthcare, education, and food, then all the “advantages” would only affect the bonus region above that where wealth and privilege reside.

The problem is that it’s very possible for those life essentials to be threatened because other people have wealth and privilege.

If there was just a floor on this damn thing we could stop talking about all this. But American culture dictates that that floor must be squarely below the point of dignity and depravation, so that people don’t get comfortable. Because we can’t have that. Ever. Because it’s a moral hazard to the soul. Unless you’re born rich. Then you can have comfort for free, and there’s magically no moral hazard to your soul somehow.

I bought my first home half with money I’d saved by working, and half with some money I inherited from my grandparents. I was also able to buy with only 10% down because it was 2005, leading up to the sub-prime mortgage scandal, and they were giving out mortgages very easily.

Fast forward some years.

I reluctantly rented my place out for a couple of years because I needed to move myself and the mortgage was underwater following the 2006 crash caused by all those sub prime mortgages. I rented to a nice couple and although I gave them a very attractive rent and treated them as well as possible, there was no question that their rent money got me through that housing crisis and eventually allowed me to sell at a significant profit instead of losing my ass.

When I sold, I offered my renters a deal to move out. They took it, and said that they were buying their own place as they had inherited a small amount recently.

For me this was a perfect example of how, just because my grandparents died a few years before theirs, I was their landlord and not the other way around. I got protection for my investment on their dollar. And once they too got the benefit of inheritance, they were able to graduate to the next level themselves.

Years later I’ve remained a homeowner and am sitting on multiple millions in equity from all the appreciation during that time. My remaining mortgage payments are about 1/3 of what it would cost to rent the same home. My wife’s younger siblings, by contrast, can’t even afford to buy under any circumstances because the market is so high. And of course lending standards are much more strict now.

For me this is a perfect example of generational advantage. Here I am sitting pretty just because I’m 10 years older than them, while they have to move out of state just to get a start.

Anyone who thinks this is a fair and equal opportunity economy is a damn fool. As long as you are competing against people who have advantages you don’t, it doesn’t matter whether your theoretical opportunities are equal. You’re going to lose and wind up in servitude of those who won.

It’s really, really needed badly in this situation /s

Interesting… the comment I read right before this one was amazed it’s possible to kill 35 and injure 43 with one vehicle attack. Killing hundreds… now that’s one determined rampage with a hell of a capable vehicle through a perfect scenario of multiple dense crowds of people standing still.

Totally agree on distrust of CCP but we can also apply reason.

Perhaps there are levels of crowding in China that are unlike anything I see on a daily basis. This could be part of it.

The knife attack killed 8 and injured 17 more. A physically capable person going nuts in a dense crowd… it’s conceivable.

But you’re right these are tragic figures.

Age of “unprosecutable rape” is more like it.

I wish some entrepreneur had instead created an amazing fucking Mastodon instance and put all that marketing and engineering dollar into the platform. But you can’t own Mastodon so you can’t ever sell Mastodon so those types of folks will never invest in Mastodon. We could just say “fuck ‘em” but they have done a serious job of monopolizing the time of all the talented people who know how to make something like this go.

Surely that could never happen again though! /s

Yes this truly is the weakest bullshit I’ve ever seen. Obviously, it’s just in-client blocking with zero support from the back end. Pathetic.

I guess it all depends on the physical layout but this seems like a very complicated way to get material downhill.

My dad is not Russian. It’s not a “hidden interest,” it’s a life experience that gives me compassion for this person.

Gee is there anything you are doing?

Calling me a Russian shill was an ad hominem, and an attack. The stupidity is getting quite thick here.

Zoom exists. You can’t argue.

LOL you’re absolutely correct. I cannot argue with someone who clearly has no real life experience of their own to provide an actual frame of reference, and will just pop off fast solutions to things like the deep human need for connection like “use zoom, duh.”

So I won’t try.

Your contention that Russian civilians should be punished for the acts of their government is ghoulish and evil, and your repeated attempts to clothe yourself in the righteousness of the Ukrainian cause is unconvincing and frankly an insult to Ukrainians, including children.

She did more against Russia by picking herself up and moving away from it than you will ever do with your “fuck Russia” comments online. Your derision for her is as impotent and pitiful as your hatred of her birth country. You’re never going to “fuck Russia” or anything else with this small dick energy.

I ain’t gonna be sad

Yeah man, I picked up on your total lack of compassion for this person whose life was just ruined by the Russia you so hate.

Shill for Russia much?

Wow, you are not only barking up the wrong tree, you dragged your entire bed up to the top of the wrong tree so you could shit it there.

No, fool, I don’t shill for Russia, ever, even a little. I have a nickel’s worth of compassion for someone who still has a life back in some corrupt old country, because that’s my father. He left that shitty country. It doesn’t mean he never visited again, because he has so much family there.

I’m just going to let your first massively downvoted comment stand. Your whole “dipshit got what she deserved” comment is stupid enough without me having to put on gloves to handle this one:

All Russians should suffer

Child, grow up.

How dare she visit family or anything else that might take her there. Really every Russian should leave forever one-way at their earliest opportunity or they get what they deserve?

Excuse me, presumptuous one. I did read the article and I know she has dual citizenship.

I was not talking solely about visas, though that is obviously the limit of your imagination.

There are also family, professional opportunities, and cultural ties to consider.

In the article it actually says she moved to the US in 2015. It’s unclear why she was there to be charged. Visiting family perhaps? Oh well then I guess she deserves it for having the audacious stupidity to visit her parents in a shitty country where shitty things happen?