The entire idea of taxes is to take the money from all - including the wealthy - and use it for the common good.

Taxes in a just society are properly restricted to doing things only governments should do, keeping in mind that government has a legal monopoly on the use of force in most situations. Allowing the government more money is an invitation to corruption.

It's too easy to see that food is a common need, and conclude that therefor the government should provide everyone with food. Results from that include food shortages when the incentive to grow food vanishes, and people opposed to those in power finding it especially hard to get food. Look at the famine in the USSR 1930-1933.

To a large extent, longevity improvement is going to involve fixing each of the many, many things that can go wrong. Better mitochondria is one piece of the puzzle.

Harris is stupid and a drunkard. Walz is just plain nuts. That the Democratic Party couldn't find better candidates is pitiful.

The period known as the dark ages was largely due to Christianity not being interested in science or progress. When the highest calling is writing poems praising god instead of improving the condition of human living, civilization collapses. See the works of Richard Carrier.

I've heard some pretty sad excuses for AI slop (Shunned at a Funeral) but some very clever uses for it too (Amelia). "The best thing the government did...was invent me!"

As long as they're honest about it being AI I'll decide what I want to listen to. It's hard for it to show any creativity, but creativity is sorely lacking in all current music.

...laura

The name of the country is United States of America. It is not the People's Republic of America. Representatives of the States elect the President, because that's the Constitutional structure of the government, and those representatives are called the Electoral College.

Popular election of the President, as implied by a "people's republic", is an invitation to fraud.

How do you shut down an organization like the CIA? The mere hint of a serious attempt to tear it down would result in assassinations and the hiding of some data (critical of CIA personnel) and the backup of other data (in preparation for blackmail, etc.).

Perhaps a replacement agency could be set up, then the CIA slowly defunded with most current employees prohibited from future government employment.

Are ads the problem? My impression is that the danger of social media is the presence of people promoting violence, whether those people are loonies, nihilists, or agents of enemy governments.

Children need to be taught critical thinking, and also taught to recognize hucksters and hate-mongers.This should be a continuing part of education and does not need special funding.

Cars have become ludicrously expensive so that fewer and fewer kids actually have access to them.

Irrelevant. Most of grade school education occurs before students can legally drive.

In 1970, the bottom-of-the-line American Motors car was $2,000 (A VW Beetle $1,839.) Now, a Kia K4 LX is $23,535. In 1970, the median income was $8,900, now it's $84.000. Relatively speaking, a new car is now 25% more expensive than in 1970. That's a shame, but it's a better car and it's not "ludicrously expensive."

Troy, N.Y. is a city, not a town, both by the official standards of New York State and the common understanding of what population constitutes a city. What population is needed to qualify as a small town is fuzzy, but the upper limit might be 1,000 or 2,000.

I just checked a dictionary. Mathematically, most can either mean over half or more than anything else. (George got the most votes:2. The other ten candidates got 1 vote each.) Colloquially, most means "generally". In no sense does most require more than 90%.

It's difficult to separate the effects of COVID from the effects of BREXIT. Since 2019, it looks as if England has done slightly worse than the EU, but very slightly better than France. BREXIT has become less popular in England.

I suspect England's problems have more to do with poor quality British politicians than the other effects of BREXIT. I watched some videos of Parliament in session in 2022 and it was comical, one person speaking to mostly empty seats.

There's something off kilter here. These far-right people want to punish foreigners by keeping the foreigners far away where they can't be targeted?

For an incremental improvement, change conditions so that it's in a person's self interest to work a year or 2 longer. Raise the age for getting elderly benefits. Lower taxes for people over the normal retirement age (65?), as was recently done in the U.S.. People are living longer, and having a longer healthspan. It is neither unreasonable nor unfair to encourage them work a bit longer to make their lives better.

The United States workforce is 170 million out of a population of roughly 330 million, over 50%. As I illustrated above, the median household income of $84,000 is more than enough to meet your criterion for a good job. Thus more than 1 in 4, not 1 in 5, have good jobs.

It is not reasonable in this context to consider children, who are 26% of the population. The figures then become 170 million out of 244 million, or 70%, thus 35%, more than 1 in 3, have "good jobs." Then figure in retirees, who are also irrelevant to the job market...