You know before the ACA a lot of us had really good healthcare coverage that pretty much paid for everything when we went to see a provider.

Now every provider interaction results in piles of unexpected, undisclosed bills that arrive months sometimes full years later.

I am way way more hesitant to seek any kind of medical professional post ACA as a result. This is true for a huge portion of US white collar workers btw.

First of all I don't agree the Kirk demonized anyone; but also that is not power any human possesses, I can't turn you into a demon, but if you shoot someone for expressing their opinion you do it to yourself.

So yes the person who did it and the people cheering are demons you stupid fuck!

it is our business if he expects bring it up in a political debate use it as a motivating anecdote. If he can't say why than its not a real argument.

Almost everything else he said was total lies as well in terms of the authorization for domestic spying and military powers. Democrats had plenty of political opportunities to role back surveillance powers in the Obama era and they did the opposite.

Oh but that was just 'representing us', funny whenever lefists win elections it is always 'elections have consequences this is what EVERYONE WANTED' but someone in the center like Trump wins and then it is 'he's facist!'

Just STFU moron.

Yeah, it is almost like State actors have powers we don't legally afford individuals or some crazy reason like that..

Perhaps but that is a great argument for why the scope of domestic clandestine services and the lengths of times they are allowed to keep secrets away from public discovery is wildly excessive and wholly incompatible with democratic society as implemented on both sides of the pond.

If an action was just (provided society can agree on that thru some kind of republican process) but illegal, then answer is the law should be changed to enable the activity.

Keeping this stuff hush hush for a decade and longer is just a recipe for abuse and excess by agents and at the same time an impediment to implementing the actual procedure and legal framework in place so they have proper tools to do what is required.

Some people are being fired from private employment. Some public employees have been dismissed, but probably only a handful at most. I'll even agree that I find that improper UNLESS they did it while actually on the job, if a teacher tweets something while he/she isn't in the classroom that should not be disciplinary offense.

Exactly nobody is being arrested over anything said about Kirk. Now lets take a look at what happens to you in the UK or most of the EU if you say something obvious like there are only two sexes.

But you are right there are good protections in some parts of Europe. Viktor Orban for example is doing a great job.

RFLOL - An Internet archive in the land of criminalizing speech because it hurts feels and the right to be forgotten.

On the flip side financial reporting should be a far less of burden today in the era of fully electronic accounting and enterprise resource planning, then it was in the 70s.

Considering the distribution of reports is also mostly digital where are these savings coming from?

I am hardly the last person to defend Trump or his administration around here but 'savings' does not seem to be the story here. I don't really have an opinion on this call as if it is right or wrong. I can see some arguments being made a long the lines of it would give corporate leaders more time to show a strategy works before they have to 'face the shareholders' and that might enable more strategic thinking or even lower market volatility; but cost savings hard to see it.

Without commenting on if moving a to a semiannual cycle is good or bad you're telling me corporate boards, and the C-suites are not going to take the calls of funds managers at big institutional investors but are going to pick up the phone because Zuck/Besos/Gates/Musk is on the line...

I don't buy it.

GDP is probably not the right measure to look AI's economic impact. There might not be a better one but if you make the same amount of things without workers, very often one of the highest input cost, the market is certain to re-value those things. Fewer dollars will but more of them. Productivity increases without accompanying outlets for increased consumption is deflationary.

Economics is hard because nothing happens in total isolation. A lot of companies have yet to pass on tariff costs. Is AI productivity funding their continued reliance on foreign sourced inputs rather than driving them to stand up domestic alternatives and/or raise consumer prices? Could be part of it.

Or maybe the AI boom just isn't real. ML isn't new, it is already doing the QA on your sandwhich cookies and has been for couple decades almost. Maybe all the "hotness" that is LLMs by the time capital investments are made, the energy to run them is paid for just, and what other associated costs are not being properly accounted for just are not as competitive with human workers as believed.

I am sorry that is *worst* option.

Force users to look for tiny little icons next to otherwise identical ports to know what its actual capabilities are, and worse create situations where incorrectly selected ports silently just deliver performance orders of magnitude slower but cause no error to be reported to a user who might not know what to expect from a given device and even realize they are not getting the performance they could be.

The 'universal' part of USB is important the whole black/red/blue 1.x,2.x,3.x except when it isn't situation on USB-A ports is plenty bad enough.

They don't really teach the history of Marxist failures either. "Communism has never been tried" yes it was, they actually really did try to do away with money, the Communists abandoned "real Communism" right away because it was not working.

You are not going to "to each according to his needs" your way out of this latest technical revolution anymore than you could past industrial revolutions. It won't work. People still need actual things like food, shelter, transportation and nobody is going to provide this stuff just for the pure joy of drywall well hung, or a cattle stall well mucked, similarly generative AI isnt going to do these things either. Don't say robots, that is also not going to be economical viable in this revolutionary cycle.

So no there are not 'two classes' there are at least three, capital owners, white-collar professionals, and everyone else. Everyone else will be just fine and carry on pretty much business as usual, its only group #2 that we are going to see decimated. You've grown up in a world where desk jobs/knowledge work was/is seen as aspirational career direction, you're so stuck in this view you're concocting wild tales of social unrest because you simply can't imagine where the high school guidance councilors are talking kids into becoming auto mechanics and handy-men/women.

It isn't just politics though or its why everything has to be shoved into one of two political platforms in the use (a few more in others) no matter how inconsistent or unrelated to the other planks assigned to that platform, take your pick.

People are wired to seek validation. What social media fundamentally does is connect a like-minded bunch of people however small a minority they might be, which lets them feel their wildest most disordered, anti-social thoughts actually enjoy some wide acceptance. They get their dopamine hit from someone agreeing with them, their brains cement their thinking along these lines because of that reward.

People used to try out their crank ideas on all their family, friends, colleagues, fellow congregants etc, and if they were unable to find any validation of them eventually let go and trained their brains on something 'acceptable'.

So society and many individuals can't discard any idea anymore no matter how stupid, disordered, dangerous, counter factual, etc it may be. Maybe this wider exchange of ideas means something notions, interests, theories, etc that are harmless or even good survive when in days past they would have either been extinguished or stayed in the domain of handfuls of cranks exchanging chain letters but it sure looks like the net effect is a lot of bad ideas and individual ideations get more oxygen because of social media than real innovative positives ones.

LOL - dude I'd say you are trolling but you prove over and over again you are just a dope.

tax cuts don't really sunset. That is just one of the many political acts of theater that Washington engages in. They put in a sunset date, than everyone says see look the CBO score says it isnt to bad.

Shortly before whatever the sunset date is, there is a 'crisis' were "millions of americans will see their taxes jump way up, if congress does not act!"

Next the tax cuts are renewed, in some big giant budget bill nobody reads. Anyone watching/reading the news in the last 30 years with fourth grade comprehension level KNOWS this.

I agree with you entirely except the 'only people' part.

They macro trends work or at least will ultimately work as you describe but in any economic reorganization you are going have some groups that make gains and others that fall behind. There is a segment of the population that I suspect isn't really trying to exploit the wage gap so to speak but also isn't sure their corner of the labor market is as impacted by foreign participants or trade as others. They rightly wonder if they are going to experience inflation on the expense side they don't see on the income and asset portions of their personal balance sheets.

There is large part of the population who are not really clear on precisely how their particular household situation really maps on macro trade decoupling trends, and that understandable. Anyone who really thinks they know is either in an politically hot-topic industry where there are clear an immediate consequences or is probably over confident. A lot of folks especially your middle class suburbanite, thinks "I am pretty comfortable, my family has the things we need maybe I don't want to upset the apple cart at least not right now even if what the America first people are saying makes sense."

That is the thing here, and Conservatives need to be very careful in articulating this tariff argument. Democrats are doing a good job making people think it is all about today or next year. Conservatives need to start clarifying this isnt about being able to afford personal iPads for both little Timmy and Sally today, its about Timmy and Sally have real opportunities 20 years from now, and not being served up some BS like 'learn to code' while they fill out paper work for SNAP.

If people think this is going to be entirely pain free, they are wrong. We have to do this out of place of patriotism and nationalistic interest, not greed.