> The same Motorola that has cozy relationships with law enforcement?

The original Motorola, Inc. was split in two.

Motorola Mobility (The Smartphone Company) is the consumer phone division that was spun off during the 2011 split. It was briefly bought by Google in 2012 and was subsequently sold to the Chinese technology giant Lenovo in 2014. Today, Motorola Mobility is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lenovo.

while

Motorola Solutions (The Law Enforcement Tech Company) is the direct legal successor to the original company. It is an American-owned, publicly traded corporation based in Chicago. It focuses exclusively on police radios, body cameras, surveillance systems, and government software. It does not make consumer smartphones.

Humm,

That's seems to be a part of it.

Countering the negative emotional impact caused by an increasing rise in levels of real world social and wealth disparity that started around the 80s and is still ongoing, shouldn't have been done by teaching children increased self-esteem without real achievement, as that tends to increase fragile confidence and poor handling of criticism, making many younger adults today even less capable of facing today's increasing real world challenges than they would have been if they hadn't been exposed to the self-esteem movement (?

------------------

"John Vasconcellos believed low self-esteem was the root cause of crime, teen pregnancy, and academic failure. In 1986, the California government created the Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility. New Age psychologists and self-help authors from institutions like the Esalen Institute laid the theoretical groundwork, claiming that children must love themselves unconditionally before they can succeed. The trend rapidly spread across the United States."

But I don't think low self esteem caused crime, teen pregnancy, and academic failure. Those issues were more likely (?) a by product of a less than healthy sense of belonging and emotional grounding, which both have low self-esteem as a symptom. In a way children do need to start out 'loving themselves', but the way to install that is not by "self-esteem without real achievement".

"Albert Ellis, an influential American psychologist, argued that the concept of self-esteem is actually harmful and unhelpful. Although acknowledging the human propensity and tendency to ego rating as innate, he has critiqued the philosophy of self-esteem as unrealistic, illogical and self- and socially destructive – often doing more harm than good. Questioning the foundations and usefulness of generalized ego strength, he has claimed that self-esteem is based on arbitrary definitional premises, and overgeneralized, perfectionistic and grandiose thinking." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

> Worse than that, they enter post college life mentally like 9th graders.

That's a lot. Causes?

New internet and mobile media, helicopter parents, various levels of deficient education and socializing during COVID years

What else?

> "While I am sure that there is some pressure on freshman students, one of the best ways of dealing with pressure is enduring it and overcoming it, not attempting to shield people from it," comments Ol Olsoc.

> > Sad part is while physically adults, they are emotionally children. I figure they are around the 9th grade level.

Do you mean that current "13th" grade first year university students are developmentally at the level where 9th grade first year high school students used to be?

> Doesn't seem to make sense unless they were putting in air in order to push out the landfill gas.

According to Gemini the main issue is "over pulling". Methane is extracted with a vacuum, and if it's not done right you can end up pulling oxygen into the landfill.

"Risks of Over-Extracting Landfill Gas: For Site Owners" - https://lumifyenergy.com/blog/...

So greed can be a contributing factor, along with incompetence, inadequate monitoring, and bad maintenance or mechanical failures.

Of course the problem isn't limited to California. Across the US and Canada about 25 fires were reported each month of the year, from 2016 to 2021. "Fires Continue On Historical Trend" - https://www.waste360.com/landf...

> I'm curious as to what the "pollution control" measure are that the article alludes to

I don't know but I'd guess it's a landfill methane capture system.

> Federal law already took care of this! Section 12 here - https://www.ecfr.gov/current/t...

Not sure what California wants to change but the following points from your link sure make it look like current commercial practices need to change:

  260.3 General principles.
(a) Qualifications and disclosures. To prevent deceptive claims, qualifications and disclosures should be clear, prominent, and understandable. To make disclosures clear and prominent, marketers should use plain language and sufficiently large type, should place disclosures in close proximity to the qualified claim, and should avoid making inconsistent statements or using distracting elements that could undercut or contradict the disclosure.

  260.13 Recycled content claims.
Example 8: A packaged food product is labeled with a three-chasing-arrows symbol (a Möbius loop) without explanation. By itself, the symbol likely conveys that the packaging is both recyclable and made entirely from recycled material. Unless the marketer has substantiation for both messages, the claim should be qualified. The claim may need to be further qualified, to the extent necessary, to disclose the limited availability of recycling programs and/or the percentage of recycled content used to make the package.

One difference is the reason for the incarceration.

> I am saying moving towards the environment Kennedy rightfully criticizes would not be a good move. And I’m not sure why we would want to other than envy or to persist in our of control spending. I’m not seeing the more rational reason for 640K and 1M needing different brackets.

I'm not saying increasing tax brackets is a good way to tackle the increasing disparity of compensation, productivity increases profiting less and less lower economic classes, and assets moving upwards.

But if lowering taxes for the past 50 years doesn't seem to have stopped the above, how is Kennedy's push for lowering taxation even more going to help.

Though I agree with some other of Kennedy's ideas and that government spending decisions are a problem.

> Our economy is checkreined today by a war-born tax system at a time when it is far more in need of the spur than the bit.

Are you saying income tax should come down even faster than it has been in the past 50 years?

If so, how could that reverse the increasing movement of assets upwards?

> You have yet to provide a rationale for greater taxation on the wealthier brackets.

I didn't make that claim.

I questioned why the income tax system wasn't more progressive considering the perspective of those in the lower economic classes.

But if you are asking, I guess an answer to the rational would be the same as it but adjusted to the current economic reality.

> Protesting "AI" and spinning wild narratives about how it will doom the world is just silly.

Is a good plan for AI to use democratic control and "first do no harm" ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

We're misunderstanding each other too much. So rather than respond to your points, I read some other stuff.

Some other suggestions instead of only looking at income tax rates:

"Most tax policy experts argue that if the goal is to fight income disparity, it is far more effective to close modern loopholes and adjust capital gains tax rules than it is to pass a massive headline income tax rate that looks tough on paper but forces money out of the country." -said some LLM

Those loop holes also seem to make income tax rates regressive for some at higher levels.

But back to my original qualm. Taxing disposable revenue is more of a real loss on lower income workers than on high revenu earners and the relative loss gets worse the higher income you compare it too.

For example, a low income worker family of 4 is left yearly with 800$ disposable income for their yearly vacation. Supposing 1000$ is the minimum needed for a reasonable vacation for 4. Their tax rate hurts the money available for their vacation more than those with higher bracket rates because those with more disposable income can more easily afford a 1000$ vacation.

If anything, I'm suggesting this might be felt as unfair at a gut level and that critiques of wage disparity can be unrelated to envy.

> At the low end the reduced tax rates are an accommodation for those "too close" to the poverty line.

Interesting, I've never seen progressive taxation portrayed downwards rather than upwards.

> So if we starting creating additional higher tax brackets above $50K we are no longer fulfilling the role of assisting those "too close" to the poverty line. We are no longer dealing with the bottom 30% of households.

Not sure your point, the bottom 30% top revenue is about 50 000 but there are additional tax brackets up to about 500 000.

> Also consider that tax brackets of a punitive nature ...

I don't think framing them as punitive is helpful or would you also consider calling today's lower economic class wages punitive?

> ... just incentivize the wealthier to pay accountants and lawyers rather than the taxman. And (1) these accountants and lawyers always seem to be smarter than those working for the government and (2) tax deductions, credits, etc are probably the #1 vehicle for political corruption and abuse in the USA.

I don't see this being true before the 1970s?

> And a history nerd moment ... Supporters of extremely high tax brackets like to point to the 1950s

Possibly some do. But that doesn't mean higher taxes, depending on how they are done, are not a good idea for everyone.

Interesting.

Thanks for your comments.