They can try and recline, but my knees are already there. But most of the time I'll just pay for exit row, if I have the choice.

Seeming to oppose any favoured piece of legislation automatically makes you a troll to that party's supporters. And that is the state of political discourse today.

"Life" can mean a lot of different things. Ask JFK.

Yeah I only added white because many in the US obviously wouldn't care, if they were black or hispanic ...

Imagine this scenario ...

China, and a bunch of their allies in South America who have formed a political/economic union, get together and oust the democratically elected president and parliament of Mexico and get appointed a group who immediately pull Mexico out of NAFTA and force them to consider joining a Chinese-controlled defence bloc.

Further imagine that the northernmost Mexican states are primarily populated by ethnic white Americans, and that the new Mexican state is openly hostile to Americans and is threatening to exterminate them.

Oh, and imagine that your only warm-water naval port was located in a part of Mexico that used to be part of the US, and also that a large part of your foreign trade depends on pipelines that go through Mexico to reach your customers.

Then imagine that those northern states rebel and demand to join the United States.

What would you do?

Mat leave is prioritized in western countries because our economy prioritizes constant growth over all other considerations, and because we aren't having enough children to satisfy that growth over the coming decades. So mat leave laws exist to try to encourage people to have more children.

And yes, I know constant growth in a finite world is stupid. But so is a debt-based money system.

Yeah, when even winning results in 4% or more of your total population dying, the appetite for war can diminish.

Not that normal people ever want war. Certainly not war in their own country or anywhere close to them personally.

Well, maybe it would give them a reason not to go $100k into student debt learning a skill that will be useless.

I suspect that if done right, it may have a marginal affect. But since there's no chance of increased spending actually being spent in that mannger, I'll have to not hold my breath.

OK, so even though education spending is at an all-time per-student high, you can't find a single jurisdiction that has solved any of the problems you advocate spending more money on education for?

Can you point to a jurisdiction that has spent money in the ways you're now advocating and has solved the economic problems you listed previously?

Can you point to a jurisdiction that has solved any of those problems through increased education spending?

Yeah if it looks like I won't have room over my seat I'll dump my bag 5+ rows forward; I can grab that on the way out, but not if it's behind.

Actually, with the prison population being as high as it is in the US, it's possibly the only country in the world where more men than women get raped nowadays.

I think it's safer to say that most human beings will eventually abuse any power given to them. Since governments are run by human beings, it's also safe to say that all governments abuse their power. That's why the US Constitution tried so hard to limit government scope and power. Unfortunately, since governments abuse their power, and sheeple want "someone" to take care of them and protect them, those protections have been whittled away, anyway, but it was a good effort.

Banning prostitution and gambling is just as stupid as banning drugs.