With less than 1% taking it, I wouldn't consider it that much of a viable option.
How many people take it has nothing to do with whether it is "viable" for you to take it. SAG-AFTRA fair share fee payers were allowed to work non-union productions during the strike and thus had a much better time of things than union members who could not do that.
Even if you're not "required" to strike, unlike them, if a strike does happen and you can't work, you're not going to be paid by the union for not working
My best research indicates you do get strike pay if you're a fair share fee payer, although I'd like better than a district court decision from 1982:
And the union technically has no obligations to them either, despite them having to pay the fees.
The union has an obligation to negotiate contracts which cover all fee payers.
You might not be required to strike when they do, but given the violence that unions in the USA are willing to do during strikes to people, union or not, who still go to work, plus what's it like when a huge portion of the other workers are gone...
The vast majority of strikes are entirely nonviolent, even in the US.
If you're paying 90-100% of the dues to the union already, why NOT be a member? Even if you're not "required" to strike, unlike them, if a strike does happen and you can't work, you're not going to be paid by the union for not working, you don't get a vote in whether to strike or not, etc... At that point, you might as well be part of the union. The difference is a lot like me being allowed to drop "under god" in the pledge of allegiance.
"Can't work?" I imagine your employer will be very happy to have you continue working while many of your coworkers are standing outside with picket signs like petulant children.
Do you happen to have a citation on this? That being a "fair share fee payer" and thus working union positions is even an option?
Citations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.sagaftra.org/finan...
In the minority of states which are not right to work states, you have to pay "fair share" or agency fees, but those fees are never more than union dues, and they are sometimes less if the union is using part of its dues for anything other than supporting its collective bargaining ability.
It is inaccurate to paint fair share fee obligations and closed shops as equivalent. A fair share fee payer has no obligations to the union whatsoever. If you are a union member and refuse to strike when the union does, you can be fined by your union. As a fair share fee payer, you have no obligation to strike. As a member of the Screen Actors Guild, you are not allowed to work nonunion productions. As a fair share fee payer, you can work both union and nonunion productions.
Closed shops have been illegal in the US since 1947: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Unless you switched away very recently, I strongly suggest giving it another try. Version 32.2.0, released May 16, 2023, is the release that fixed almost all the previously broken websites, and subsequent releases have improved web compatibility even further.
There's GNOME Web on Linux, which is WebKit-based and therefore very similar to Safari. Some web devs use it on Linux specifically to reproduce rendering bugs reported on Safari. So, you do have all three major rendering engines on Linux.
First: Pale Moon is awesome. I'm using it right now. It had some serious web compatibility problems for about a year, but those problems were fixed a few months ago.
Like Firefox, Pale Moon is a cross-platform but Windows-first browser. However, unlike the article's author, I don't think that's a problem, for Firefox or Pale Moon. The Linux version of Firefox is very usable, and the larger Windows user base means more dev effort goes into the browser as a whole. Linux is not hurt because a piece of software is cross-platform rather than Linux-exclusive.
Regarding the video acceleration issue the article author is whining about, you can enable hardware video acceleration on any GPU in Firefox if you want to by going into about:config and have been able to do that for a long time. The reason Firefox is taking so long to enable it by default is because Linux GPU drivers were and still are buggy in ways that Firefox was triggering. Contrary to the author's assertion, the hardware video acceleration thing wasn't and isn't a Firefox problem.
People volunteer at libraries, dumbass. Also, only a predatory scammer would charge more than a few hundred bucks to set up DansGuardian on a Raspberry Pi sittting between the wifi router and the external connection.
(very few take standard deductions if they have a home, pay charities, or have business expenses)
90% of filers take the standard deduction, so obviously a majority of filers who own their homes or give to charity also take the standard deduction. Itemizing is very rarely profitable after the TCJA.
Business expenses are not going to be on Schedule A, so itemizing has nothing to do with those. Business expenses will be deducted on Schedule C, or possibly Schedule E if you consider the passive ownership of rental real estate a business, which the IRS does not.
You wrote:
None of the securities they own have can be used for collateral.
That is not true and actually doesn't even make sense to say since the banks whose securities are used as collateral are the lenders to and not borrowers from the applicable line of credit:
Pursuant to the LOC Agreement, securities issued by an affiliate of any Lender (âoeLender Family Issued Securitiesâ or âoeLender FISâ) are excluded as eligible collateral for securing a draw on the facility.
Banks lending money to a pool didn't want their own equity securities used as collateral by borrowers from that pool, so the lending banks set the collateral value of their own stock to zero. This isn't some indication that the banks lending money to the pool are not creditworthy; it's just how the lending banks are implementing a consequence of some federal regulations.
You also wrote:
Pick a bank today and look at where its stock went. Up or down? Give you hint, its down. Even the ones not on the list the DTCC put out Monday.
Since all three major indices were down today, it does not surprise me if some individual bank stocks were also down.
The fact that a trade settlement company is not allowing borrowing banks to use a lending bank's equity as a collateral for a loan from the lending bank does not mean the banks "lost nearly all their collateral." In fact, the banks did not lose anything at all. Please do not spread misinformation.
What are you, a hallucinating AI? Paralegalism is one of the fastest growing occupations in the country.
Hmm, yes, believing that an entity which can raise US dollar revenue from the largest economy on Earth through taxation and which can also create new US dollars at will is not going to default on its US dollar-denominated debt is akin to believing in Santa Claus. You're so wise.
It's not a problem even then. If the DIF runs out of money, the federal government eats the loss, not the insured depositors. "FDIC deposit insurance is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. This means that the resources of the United States government stand behind FDIC-insured depositors."
https://www.fdic.gov/consumers...
The DIF is there because the government thinks it's fairer for banks to pay insurance premiums to cover the risk of them failing than for taxpayers to be on the hook every time a bank fails. But, in the 80s, when a bunch of S&Ls failed and the FSLIC became insolvent, taxpayers did indeed have to bail out depositors, because those claims are ultimately liabilities of the federal government, and the federal government doesn't default on its debt. Taxpayers would likewise be on the hook if the FDIC became insolvent.
Truly simple systems... require infinite testing. -- Norman Augustine
