but I know lots and lots of guys who's girlfriend somehow became pregnant while on a pill that's 99.9% effective.

As for fatherhood: 40 years of declining wages have made fatherhood a tough sell. I grew up around and still know a pretty rough crowd. If you don't make much money and probably never will fatherhood doesn't end well. It's why birth rates in Japan keep falling. Nobody's paying us enough to raise a family...

Like, you mean like for war?

What are we gonna do if there are no jobs for the rank & file? We aren't all geniuses ya know? I kept hearing biotech was gonna replace lost manufacturing jobs, but I never once heard anyone say what that meant. It always felt like what you tell the rubes to keep them from getting scared about losing their livelihoods...

that finds it odd that we allow companies to sell a substance who's sole purpose is to be addictive? Anyone ever read the Space Merchants? Popsi ring a bell? I can't say I'm in favor of prohibition, but we can just require them to lower nicotine requirements until it's no longer addictive. People don't smoke for the cool, cool flavor. They smoke because it's highly addictive. Last I heard the Amish were growing nicotine free tobacco...

We don't spend nearly as much on those programs as the right wing would have you believe. Also, any place with socialized medicine is likely to make up the cost of feeding/sheltering those people from the medical expenses. I suppose here in America where we're happy to let most of them die (as long as they're under 65) there's a cost. But in Australia you'll probably blow a few million per person on Chemo before they drop dead.

Will someone explain to me what this troll post means? I can usually figure it out, but it seems like it's just tailor made to piss both sides off at the expense of reason or purpose. Bravo sir! Your post is truly a thing of savage beauty!

You plead guilty because in America we do jury trials, and juries are highly unpredictable. They often rule based on emotions and how they feel. If you're rich you buy a lawyer that's a smooth talker and can confuse the jury. Everyone else just plea bargins. Otherwise you're gambling that the jury will like you. If you lose the gamble than years of mandatory sentencing guidelines will put you away for decades.

because it gives the working class a false sense of hope. It's a buffer. A fake safety net that keeps the poor from asking too many questions about things like wealth inequality and declining wages. We do similar things with racism and classes/casts. And before anyone asks, yes, I am comparing racism and the lottery. From the ruling classes standpoint they serve the same purpose. Distractions to keep plebs us from asking for things like stable incomes and health care. Maybe it's not like this in the rest of the world but here in the States luck is considered a skill. Something you worked at and honed. And if you didn't get lucky and win the lottery it means you did something wrong. You're a bad person. That's what the lottery does here. Sure, it's not the only thing. But it's another tool in the 1%'s belt to keep the other 99 in check.

in order to response to increased demand. Surely the many bartending engineers can devise a scheme.

While we're on the subject, I know Electrical Engineers doing entry level support ( the IT equivalent of waiting tables ) because offshoring has killed their jobs and they're not mobile (own houses/have kids/etc). The Cuban embargo and the global race to the bottom has probably done more to kill those engineer's careers than Castro ever did.

Sex offenders are expressive as hell to jail. Nonviolent drug offenders otoh are cheap. It's a side effect of our private prisons

Are you trying to imply he's doing anything other then rent seeking? If you are you're doing a terrible job at it. How much money is this guy putting up? If the answer isn't "enough to buy his share of partial ownership" then the only thing he brings are the domains he's squatting on. To wit: rent seeking.

that it could pay a lot of money. By the time it was offshoring and the H1-B visa program had eroded wages to the point where it wasn't true anymore (save a few math geniuses working for google/wallstreet). So once again it's something you do because you want to, which almost always pays like shit.

which is expense. The last 30 years hasn't been kind to people's disposable income, and that makes saving money on photos very attractive.

Here you go. Albeit not my pics.

Guns don't make a populace harder to control, and haven't for some time. A modern military full of trained soldiers can effortlessly contain even the best armed populace. A bunch of gun nuts and their toys don't have the resources to compete with a standing army...