Then Amex is a poor choice, since it's already not accepted anywhere near as many places as Visa/MC or even Discover.
Amex is likely to be the primary card choice for me if merely checking for its logo is still all I have do, but the VISA/MC logos suddenly lose this important, decades-old trait.
I find your classification of Sweden somewhat misleading.
For example, you truthfully note that it has no minimum wage.
But that's because it doesn't need one. 70% of its work force belongs to a union, and over 90% of its working population covered under some collective aggrement. Those who do not have a comprehensive and generous safety net.
The intent isn't to mislead, I'm aware of this and in fact I think this is vastly preferable. There are many problems with minimum wage, but probably the biggest one is the idea of a country-wide minimum wage. Effectively the argument is that every job, no matter what industry or in what city, is worth at least X per Y hours. No room for negotiation, no room for market realities, no room for variations in local conditions. While not socialist, it heavily borrows from the totally bullshit labor theory of value.
movement within the current liberal bloc.
I still refuse to call these guys liberal. Liberal, in my mind, means erring on the side of liberty. These guys effectively hold the view that if the majority just doesn't like your industry, whatever the reason, then the government has some kind of duty to take it over, shut it down, etc. I don't know what separates that from fascism. Case in point, rsilvergun (and many others) who suggested recently that the government should nationalize all of the banks.
You're about as uneducated as they come.
How do you know that's the change they made to the crop? It's all self reported. Have you done the generic analysis yourself? How do you know the studies showing the pesticide is safe were not tampered with?
This is the conspiracy theory version of "I live in fear of what I don't know, and so should you." You're guilty until proven innocent.
Actually the simplistic thinking (rather, downright incorrect) is calling the Nordic countries socialist, or even calling them a "blended" economy. They're really not. At all. I went into this a bit earlier to somebody else who made a similar claim to yours.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
You guys keep advocating for socialism even though you know next to nothing about it. If we take you guys at your word for what you desire in an economy, it aligns much more closely with another term entirely:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
They hate capitalism just as much as you do, and for the exact same reasons.
Ford: we can't make money selling an EV Truck so we will use the old supply-chain excuse to make it look like we still want to keep making them but can't for reasons outside our control.
That may not be far from the truth. The last round of UAW strikes resulted in them having significant veto power against EVs at the big three manufacturers, namely in hampering the ability of them to grow the supply chain. Few democrats will acknowledge it, but UAW members by and large really hate EVs, even though the official stance of the union might say otherwise.
Where are you getting that number from? I paid $6,500 after the tax credits for a 4.1KW system. That included permitting, installation, panels...everything.
I don't really think that's a concern so much as the case of Lia Thomas, who has, or at least had, woman's swimming world records that went pretty well beyond what any real woman has ever achieved, and probably ever will. The only one who probably ever could would likely be another transwoman, probably shutting out any women from ever obtaining such a title again. At least, had the WAC not rescinded those titles.
Except they're not socialist. They're very much market driven, arguably more so than the united states is. It's kind of funny because people like Bernie keep talking about them as if they are, and wants us to be more like what he thinks they are.
You brought up Sweden, so let's go with that. You know Sweden relies largely upon the free market for it's education system? They already have a school voucher system, and it seems to work pretty well. I think it's a great idea. What do you think?
Or is this one of those things where you're thinking about welfare when the word "socialism" comes out of your mouth. If so don't worry, you're not alone, most progressives use the two interchangeably even though they have very different meanings. Probably also worth mentioning that people who actually understand socialism generally don't look favorably upon welfare spending, particularly Marx and Engels.
But Sweden actually has the high ground there as well. You see, the US spends a lot more of its GDP on welfare programs than Sweden does.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Probably also worth mentioning that they don't have a concept of a minimum wage. So yeah, I agree, it wouldn't hurt for us to be a bit more like Sweden.
In a topic that has nothing to do with culture wars, you're bringing up the subject of culture wars, while also complaining about culture wars being a distraction...
I mean, I agree that it is a distraction from bigger issues, but you obviously don't. You could have just said that we're being distracted by culture wars, but then you went right into engaging in one of them for no particular reason. It's not as if somebody shot you in the neck over it or anything like that.
And what authoritarian government established itself based on the principles of a free market economy? Do tell.
Because I can name countless ones who established themselves based on the idea that an economy under their exclusive control will make your life so much better. In case you haven't noticed, rsilvergun believes strongly in that idea, despite the fact that historically, every single person, with the exception of the politburo, has been made much worse off. Every last one of them never recovered until that control was relinquished.
You guys are literally taking life advice from a guy who, despite posting to the internet for years, has never taken the time to learn to touch-type, and is hopelessly dependent upon the very same technologies that he tells other people that society somehow isn't ready for. Technology for he, but not for thee, just like the Soviet politburo who used to import luxury goods from capitalist countries that literally nobody else in their own countries could ever afford, and never had until they returned to being free market economies.
I've been working in cybersecurity for seven years now, across three companies, and I've yet to see any kind of purposeful leak that we've simply tolerated.
No, it isn't any of that. You guys keep changing your argument like you change underwear, and the reason for that is quite simple: You fear what you don't understand.
Some modifications causes the plant to produce its own pesticide, which clearly has a potential for harm if it ends up in the edible parts
That's called Bt, which is a protein toxic to invertebrates. Bt crop has an abundance of it, and you've probably eaten plenty of it already, even if you've never been within 1,000 miles of any GMO food. With the exception of rsilvergun, most people aren't invertebrates. Humans in fact gain nourishment from it, much like any other protein. I already know where your head is going, "OMGWTFBBQ pesticide bad! It's not safe until at least 1,000,000 years has past since it's discovery to evaluate safety!" That's more "I don't understand, therefore bad!" thinking. Just because chocolate is highly toxic to dogs doesn't mean it's going to kill you, and you're way more related to dogs than you are any invertebrate. This has been studied to death. Bt has been known about since the 1910s.
Greenpeace keeps changing their argument against Bt crop. First they said it contains too much Bt. After they handily lost that argument, now they say it doesn't produce enough. There's no good reason to engage with them on this or any other topic really. Greenpeace should be treated the same as any other religion.
Moreover, our understanding of genetics is pretty limited at this time so it's not possible to predict all of the side effects of any particular change.
I'm going to be pretty blunt: This is a very dumb, incredibly uneducated take. This is so false that almost the exact opposite is true. Proteomics has advanced a lot in the last 5 years alone, nevermind the last 25 when this whole debate began. Moreover, if you make a single, specific, known change to a nucleotide sequence and observe exactly what protein it yields, how is that unknown? It's just total nonsense.
But you know what yields an incredible amount of unknown mutations... Every. Single. Time? Natural reproduction. It's honestly mind bogglingly stupid that you guys even make this talking point.
What is "green"? During all of its effort to shutdown nuclear plants, Germany tried to replace them with Russian gas. Not only an incredibly stupid (and easily foreseen) strategic blunder, but if the goal is to reduce carbon output, it seems to be exactly the wrong direction.
Though you guys always want to kill off anything that you don't understand, which not only includes nuclear energy, but also GMO crop, which increases crop yields, thus reducing the landmass and carbon required to produce the same amount of food.
Greenpeace seems to be the opposite of what it claims to be, as do you.
"To take a significant step forward, you must make a series of finite improvements." -- Donald J. Atwood, General Motors
