I don't even think this is a "MAGA" issue, as much as one for all Americans to seriously consider. The root problem is, back in the 1980's when America was doing really well overall? We collectively came to the conclusion that we were "too good" for factory work and manufacturing of hard goods. The future seemed to be leaving all of that physically demanding and environmentally damaging stuff to other nations, while we prospered other ways. Nobody fully thought out how that was going to work, it seems? Just a fuzzy notion that lots of formal education, intelligence and imagination would guarantee you success.

Of course it's not the 1950's anymore. But the real change came decades later. We pivoted to counting on intellectual property instead of physical goods. (Well, other than basic necessities like food/farming -- but that's always been heavily govt. subsidized anyway. Farming is hardly possible to make a profit on otherwise.)

It seems we put too many eggs in that basket, so to speak? And now people are trying to find ways to step that back a bit.

This sounds like the cookie cutter complaint I hear about Apple phones/tablets from every Android user I've run across....

Honestly? I've had my share of Android tablets and handsets, as well as owning pretty much every major iPhone revision from the very first release through a 16 Pro Max I use currently.

ALL the "high end" smartphones with larger screens and decent feature sets are really expensive these days, vs what people used to commonly pay for phones. That's because what you're buying now is a pocket computer with a high-res touchscreen. I'm ok with the cost, especially when I add up what a cellular plan actually costs me over the lifespan of a given phone. Doesn't make sense to me to pay that much out for a phone/data package, only to be limited in what can be done with it because of cheaping out on the handset itself.

But sure, Apple locks their ecosystem down more than Android. You use their App Store and not one of several random ones out there. You use only apps they vetted in some manner first. This has hardly ever been a concern for me. (If I wanted to get all bent out of shape over it? Then sure, I had one instance when I was playing with crypto-mining where I couldn't use an app I wanted because Apple wouldn't approve it. It ceased to matter after a short while though. I moved on and the phone worked great for 99.9% of what I use my cellphone for.)

I think you're correct. But I'd also just point out that society seems to be on a trajectory of making everyone's purchases 100% tracked and analyzed.
With recent legislation requiring services like PayPal, CashApp and Venmo to report income to the IRS? There's really nothing left anymore besides a cash transaction that flies under that radar. And we're seeing the push to reduce the use of cash. (Remember all the places that stopped accepting it during COVID, with claims they feared the virus getting transmitted on people' money? And after that, places refusing to take cash because of claims it was too high a crime risk, having to hold onto it....)

I feel like retaliation against "buy now - pay later" plans offered by private businesses amount to even more of this. The lenders want full knowledge of when, how much and what you borrow money for. (And by extension, that allows government to have that same visibility.)

Are there a few big corporate entities trying to invest in residential real-estate to rent back out to people? Yes, absolutely! And sometimes, that outcome isn't great, especially when they buy up too many properties in a given geographic area.

But the idea that 2,000 or so people vying to be the "first trillionaire" will happily cause the death of the elderly along the way, as part of a planned scheme to deprive them of medical care if they don't sell their homes to them? That's the stuff of make-believe superhero/villain stories.

For one thing? It's your older population who is most likely to own the home they live in; a home that typically went up in value greatly over the decades they lived in it. (I see this time and time again, in different cities I've lived in. You find a huge swath of $1 million plus residences and start asking how so many residents in the area can have that much money. Then, you find out that it's an area where homes used to be far cheaper because it was essentially undeveloped land or farmland, decades earlier. These people can't really afford to buy $1 million plus homes. They just bought a home for $200,000 or so and lived in it long enough.)

At a certain age, most want to downsize or maybe move into some form of assisted living. Selling their home is a big windfall for them, and something they WANT to do voluntarily. They're not getting forced to do so by the evil conglomerate trying to seize their home to rent it back out for big profits.

As a 50-something parent myself? I'm thinking:

1. You can't really expect to ask parents for "career advice" and then get upset they aren't giving you information you think is relevant to the current job market/hiring situation. All they really know is how it worked for them. If nothing else, that's useful information in and of itself, because it gives you a historical sense of how things were before they got to what you're dealing with today.

2. If you're trying to figure out how to get hired, you need to ask the people who do the hiring. Find some people who work in careers like HR or management in the field you're interested in and get their thoughts or advice.

3. AI or no AI? The most important part of getting a job has to do with interacting with as many other people as possible. (Sucks when you're an introvert, like me -- but it's just the facts.) Even the best resume and cover letter doesn't communicate your personality, enthusiasm, etc. I got over half of all the jobs I've held in my life because I knew someone already working for the company who could put in a good word for me, or had influence in the hiring process in some manner.

Irrelevant... I'm not even disagreeing with you in principle! I'm just saying, there are people who raise hell about every little thing they can find that isn't to the letter of some regulation or rule that was written down. And there are those who pick and choose their battles instead.

And like the boy in the "Boy Who Cried Wolf" story, the people you're constantly running to with your complaints (AND those around you observing it happening over and over) will eventually decide you're just a little too demanding for comfort. After all, if everyone else is ok with what's going on and you're always the one who isn't? At some point, they ask why you're still working there instead of someplace else.

The issue they're talking about here has to do with artists affiliated with multiple rights-holders, causing a big increase in costs to stay legal, trying to play their music in an establishment.

I'm no expert on this, but I did play in a local band once and got a taste of the music licensing "scene". Bars and other smaller venues NEVER liked paying these rights-holders, because the entire thing felt like little more than a money-grab. It's one thing if you set up a digital jukebox at your bar that makes the patrons pay for each song they want to hear. Then you can offload the costs on them. But most places just wanted to have music playing in the background, such as your corner bar where the bartenders act as the DJs, playing the CDs they think set the right mood for the establishment.

It's exponentially worse when you have these artists who might have signed deals so one of their songs' rights were sold to a movie studio to use in a movie, another is getting streamed from a site that paid for rights to do that with it, and maybe a whole album they released contains those tracks in a shared arrangement plus the rights-holder who released the album holding rights to the rest of it.

Now, the bar or restaurant plays the CD of music and suddenly, they owe ALL these people a cut as the tracks 1 - 13 play in sequence from it.

How many people can listen to your music you're playing at home before it constitutes commercial use of it you owe rights' holders for? I've sure been at house parties in the past that had more people there than my local corner bar did! It's all pretty arbitrary and they just go after commercial establishments because that's the easier money to milk.

Somewhere between 1 and 3.

Those are the kinds of moments where the population finds out if their nation is truly democratic or not. Any government that decides that turning off the ability to communicate is not doing so for the benefit of its people.

It's standard operating procedure in dictatorships to flip the "internet kill switch" as soon as something happens where the government needs to control the media.

That's an interesting take on it. I think most people taking a risk on starting their own business have a passion for it. Otherwise, it's probably not going to be successful, OR worth the long hours and effort.

As for your concerns though? I'd perhaps counter that someone needing the capital to expand their own business would be pretty motivated to do the job they're applying for. (Presumably, the work they're trying to do for you doesn't pay so well it would fund their own business venture's expansion without them being in it for the long-haul.)

I guess this is a bit like the employers who used to be super-paranoid to hire anyone who had a poor credit score or bankruptcy in the recent past. They'd argue that those things indicated the person had poor decision-making skills or was a higher risk of stealing from or defrauding the company. In reality? There's a strong argument those people can be your most loyal/reliable employees because they REALLY need the paycheck/work! They're trying to put their life back together, vs someone more complacent who can "take it or leave it".

I've been around this web site long enough to know that replying to any comment made more than a day ago means only a small chance it'll get read at all. That said? I'm still going to reply to a few of your points you made on Friday here.

1. The claim "If Trump hadn't run for office, you would have voted for someone just like him" is ridiculous. How do you know who I would have voted for? The entire point I was making is that our 2 party political system has become an utter joke. It pretends there are only 2 viable solutions/answer to problems and asks people to choose which party's philosophy they want to get behind. It wasn't always this way because we had much more of a universal acceptance of/belief in the idea that both sides would always sit down at the table and negotiate, to compromise. (You know, the old Abe Lincoln quote that "A house divided against itself, cannot stand." and all that.) Unfortunately, all that compromise really just led to mediocrity. You had the "tick tock" cycle of Democrat/Republican getting elected, back and forth, with government making only incremental changes that were often undone again by whoever got in power next. People got increasingly angry that things weren't really getting done, so you saw both parties pushing more and more extreme ideas.

2. Democrats are just as nearsighted as Republicans, really. They just can't see past the tunnel vision idea that more government assistance programs or institutions are the solution to the nation's woes. Republicans can't think outside the box enough to see that "Privatize it!" isn't an automatic solution to eliminating a government agency or set of rules. I'd like to see fresh thoughts to dismantle the behemoth we've got now that buries all of us in trillions of increasing debt while not doing most things as well as people can do them on their own, if they aren't just acting within some govt. agency guidelines. Trump isn't solving anything but he's at least a "bull in the china shop", breaking a bunch of stuff that needed to be cleared out of the shop anyway.

I think it's always been a situation where you have to spin things in the most positive light you can. If someone isn't currently employed, it doesn't necessarily mean they're not motivated to work. But HR will have fears. They're wondering why this person isn't out earning money doing *something*. Could be a completely legitimate reason. BUT, could also mean the person has personality flaws that cause them to struggle to retain employment (anger issues maybe, or an abrasive personality, or tendency to say inappropriate things)? Could also mean they're just picky and difficult to work with. (I know a lady like that who is employed right now, but only because it's a union shop and they do a lot to protect her from bosses who really, really want to get rid of her. She does show up on time, gets the work done, etc. So they just don't have a really valid reason to fire her. But she finds every little issue to nitpick or raise grievances over and makes their lives difficult. She's not wrong, so she gets her way with the complaints (so far). But I'm sure management wishes they had hired someone much more flexible/compliant instead.)

Job interviews are really like sales pitches, where you have to sell yourself as the best option for them to hire. You have to turn a period of unemployment into, say, a period of self-employment. Out of work? Why not start your own business/side gig building web sites for people or whatever you're good at? Even if it doesn't really earn anything, it'll make much more sense on resumes.

LOL.... They actually modded your rage post up to +4 as Informative. This is the Slashdot I know and love... I tell you what....

But this is too amusing not to have some more fun with it, so allow me to piss you off a bit further with some facts!

First? I didn't vote for Trump the first time around but I actually held my nose and voted for him this time. Why? Because the entire thing is such a shit-show regardless of which idiot is in office, it was essentially just a vote against the idea of a half-dead guy with senility getting re-elected. It's not like they gave me anyone else on my ballot I could choose from.

Second? Damn right I'm "one of the old people". I'm already past 50 and I've seen a lot of crazy stuff come and go during my life, so far. Anyone could wind up homeless for a number of reasons -- but I doubt I'll be one of them. That's because I happen to prioritize having a roof over my head and I'm fine with living in "less desirable" parts of the country so I can own one without paying the "I live someplace COOL!" tax slapped on the land and property. In fact,where I live right now -- it'd not difficult to find a house to purchase that's as cheap as maybe $50,000 or so, if you're willing to do the work to fix it back up to code and make it safe to live in again. I see people signing up to pay nearly twice that for a new truck or car that's going to depreciate by $20K the minute they drive it off the lot!

Medicaid funding? Look .... the whole system is irrevocably broken at this point, regardless of how they dole out the funding. I'm very close friends with people who haven't been able to make use of ANY government assistance for medical care for YEARS, because of their life situations playing out like they did. (EG. Mental illnesses they're able to manage pretty well, but which qualified them for disability only IF they stayed in the same state long enough to go through all the hoops needed to get it. Meanwhile, they have reasons to move to a new state, which starts that qualification process all over again from scratch AND now they can't afford to pay for the doctor visits needed to put a disability case back together again.) Whether Medicaid programs get cut to the bone or massively expanded -- this is still the reality. Some people are milking the system to get all kinds of free care that they really should be paying their far share for. Others aren't able to take advantage of any of it and have to resort to going to Emergency Rooms of hospitals, agreeing to self-pay, and then refusing to pay the bill. Medical care simply costs FAR too much in America at this point. People wanting it free because they manage to qualify for government to pay the bills for them is just a big band-aid. The REAL problem is only apparent if you want to pay your own bills for it. I can fly to another country and pay out of pocket for just about any medical procedure and save many thousands over what American doctors/dentists/hospitals charge! The inflated cost for care is the core issue -- and that really has zero to do with anything Trump enacted.

Don't buy the thing!

I'm pretty much done spending any money on consoles due to the corporate greed that comes with them. My g/f was a huge console nerd and owns pretty much every game system made after a certain year. (She didn't bother to collect the early systems like the Atari 2600.) In her defense, she also had 5 kids so the money spent on all of the games and systems and accessories was justified by all of them enjoying using them too.

But I lost all interest in it after buying a PS4 and seeing how expensive it got for the PSPlus annual subscriptions, required to keep the unit from being little more than a crippled console that can't play anything online. My g/f has a PS5 that we hooked up and it's arguably even worse about it. An X-Box 360 is just as bad.

Nintendo keeps locking their stuff down too. USB-C is intended to be a standard connector/port. Any hardware implementing it in a non-standard way is broken/defective as far as I'm concerned.

I'm far from your typical "Trump supporter" ... but I've always been for the idea of less government spending and reducing its size and scope.

What's deeply disappointing is how those goals seem to be nearly impossible to attain. Every single time someone in a political position of power promise to make these changes, there's either so much push-back by someone else that it gets cancelled or whittled down into something meaningless, OR it just turns into a way to repurpose the same spending in other places.

Is a "National Science Foundation" really necessary? I'm far from convinced it is. Will Americans just stop researching anything because this big, Federally funded agency goes away? Anything is possible, I suppose -- but that sure sounds like an extremist/exaggerated claim! How many public AND private schools of higher education do we have in America today? Most of them are doing scientific research in one form or another, since that's how the next generation learns science. On top of that, there's always going to be a business incentive to do R&D so companies can improve on products or make new ones. They'll surely keep funding scientific research that benefits them. And beyond all of that? Yes, the entire rest of the civilized world ALSO does scientific research and there's nothing I see wrong with learning from properly done research that comes from Germany or Japan or China or anyplace else? This patriotic "need" for America to always be the world leader is a hugely expensive undertaking that doesn't necessarily justify how heavily the citizens get taxed to fund it.