$$$, one of the classic bad faith motives. Most of tech nowadays is subsidized by advertising and profiling to some degree, often quite a large degree.

It's not just about ads. The same data and tech is also about locking you up and identifying you for deportation you if this admin thinks you are in the USA without permission.

And laundering responsibility. If the government uses a contractor to identify deportation candidates using this data, and they get it wrong, the government can at least try to shrug it off and blame the contractor, whose job is in part to absorb public outrage for these sorts of things. Whereas if the FBI wiretaps you and still gets it wrong, it's a lot harder to deflect blame.

Congratulations, you were exercising your literacy and art skills.

>The attempt to restrict screentime is based on today's parents wanting their children to have the same experiences they did, i.e. screens were the exception not the rule in the 90s through the early 2000s. This impulse is understandable, but it's not really about improving learning.

Allegations without evidence.

When Aaron Swartz does it, it is the threat of life in prison leading to suicide. When a multibillion dollar company does it, it is just capitalism.

HOLD EXECS LEGALLY ACCOUNTABLE, CRIMINALLY AND CIVILLY, FOR THE CRIMES OF THER CORPORATIONS.

It's not 4d chess.

"We" did not vote for him. Some of y'all did.

>Are we as small savers just idiots feeding this idiot machine?

Yes. 401k should never have been the main retirement plan.

I assume you mean low cost broad market index funds when you write 401k, but what other mechanism has offered financial security to so many other than having lots of productive and well networked kids that believe in helping you when you are old?

There is, of course, taxpayer funded retirement benefits, but that is just taking from others’ kids.

Unions + Pensions

The pensions that are so underfunded (either due to corruption or bad math) they need repeated bailouts from federal taxpayers? Hope you’re in a sufficiently politically influential union.

https://apnews.com/article/biden-business-united-states-gove...

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-relief-bill-gives-86-b...

If federal taxpayers are going to bail out old people, might as well be the whole stock market so it’s not just a few politically influential unions that get bailed out.

Union members not in an insufficiently influential union can have their benefits cut:

https://www.pbgc.gov/employers-practitioners/multiemployer/i...

Bail out individuals, not the wealthy. Certainly not corporations.

The stock market is rigged in favor of corporations and wealth.

What do you think pension funds invest in if not the same things as my 401K?

Pensions are useful to individuals, because they support you until you die (while your 401K will either run out before you die, or will 'waste' money in the bank if you die before it runs out). But they aren't a magic money tree. They are the exact same formula. Money in, money out, it just gets distributed a little better.

Worst President Ever.

Depending on how you measure, not as bad as the one we had a few terms ago. There was a pandemic, which should have been a unifying event the president just had to straightforwardly lead us through while letting the domain experts at agencies handle the details. But instead he must have thought he was still campaigning or something, and staked out some edgelord position that we should just ignore the public health emergency. Predictably, this caused a lot of societal chaos from people who weren't good at thinking for themselves following nonsensical direction from an authority figure. I'm sure glad that guy was only around for one term. I remember him being a pretty sore loser too.

Idk. That loser still had guardrails on for 80% or his term. He might have even been re-elected if he didn't use his election year to pretend millions weren't dying.

A morbid part of me wonders if hisnl "advice" literally killed off enough of his voters to swing the election.

I personally think he would have had a shoe-in second term if he had simply led through Covid. Got on TV, told people things were hard but we'd get through it, then spend the rest of the day playing golf or hanging out at whatever the new spot is after the island got shut down.

But this rings quite true: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47586508

Did you mean to post this comment in 2021?

It didn't land well; and GPs quip was astute on how the tone and narrative of your comment is 5 years outdated, regardless.

You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. And talking about what happened in the past is called historic, not outdated.

They're not mutually exclusive.

I don't see how talking about abject failures of leadership and policy response in the first term is "outdated" when the second term is essentially a doubling down on these derelictions of duty.

Are we just supposed to forget those past failures in favor of focusing on the current catastrophe? What tariff tantrum? What Greenland treachery? Don't you know we've always been at war with Iran?

Your wit is escaping the downvoters.

I salute you, nonetheless.

Conversely, arresting people going paddleboarding and filling skate parks with sand was a totally sane reaction. Good thing we didn't overreact to Covid and completely fuck up the economy and the education progress of millions of children.

Your "domain experts" are often chronically incorrect sociopaths.

Let's not even get into the categorical and coordinated censorship campaign.

Shocking that people even support the covid response that happened. Much less make light through smarmy sarcastic shitposting.

I'm a libertarian, but you've got to be honest with yourself about how much nuance you can actually expect from bureaucrats. If we didn't have a large contingent of social-media fueled rebellion against the idea of any sort of restrictions, there would have been more regulatory bandwidth to spend making exceptions for privately-owned outdoor establishments like skateparks and paddleboarding (which included the need to figure out things like equipment rental/cleaning protocols).

Note that only half of US states had any kind of "lockdown" (ie stay at home order with the force of law), and they were predominantly red states. I'd say that bigger crowd control problems caused larger overreactions. The state I was in merely had a firmly worded suggestion to stay home. I'd call that the sweet spot.

It's incredibly dumb to judge, with hindsight, the calls that were being made with the best data and intent at the time.

Next pandemic, come back from 5 years later with your time machine, and let us know what to do, mmmkay?

The US is dead; it is now a Trumpian shithole.

Or, just pay your taxes. We collectively benefit from them.

Is there really any correlation between tax revenue and spending at the federal level anymore? It seems the U.S. government is willing to spend at huge deficit levels. If everyone stopped paying federal taxes I suspect nothing would change.

What would change is the government would need to greatly increase their debt. In 2025 the government got about $5.23 trillion in tax revenue and spent about $7 trillion. So most of the government spending is financed by taxes. Remove that and the rate of debt quadruples (and by extension inflation).

When do we finally hit the cliff? Deficit has been going up for decades.

> When do we finally hit the cliff?

When you can't pay the interest anymore?

Just add it to the deficit.

Fact is US is able to run up 39 trillion and counting in debt because it prints the god damn monopoly money. No one would offer a loan to someone with that financial history. Shit really went off the rails after Bretton-Woods, huh?

Magical thinking! You may as well recommend the government prints more money and give it to everybody...

In FY2025, the U.S. federal deficit was $1.78 trillion, with total revenue at $5.23 trillion, so clearly it's a majority of revenue.

Up to now, I would have agreed with you. However, many residents of cities victimized by ICE see paying federal taxes as money that goes directly toward an enemy that is destroying their communities. I will happily pay my city and state taxes, but I no longer feel that my my federal tax dollars are helping much.

I live in Minneapolis, MN. The Federal government has cut public health grants, Medicaid, laid off a large portion of he Department of Health, cut Department of Human services, cut school funding, cut University of Minnesota funding, cut heating assistance, cut flood mitigation, cut USDA programs, and cut SNAP. This is just the things I can remember! Our city hosts Hennepin County Medical Center, which provides emergency care to the entire state, and it is risking closing due to federal cuts.

Minnesota has historically paid more in federal taxes than other states, and contributes more than it gets back. I think it's time for a change.

>The Federal government has cut public health grants, Medicaid, laid off a large portion of he Department of Health, cut Department of Human services, cut school funding, cut University of Minnesota funding, cut heating assistance, cut flood mitigation, cut USDA programs, and cut SNAP.

Not paying taxes isn't going to re-fund these things. In fact, it will ensure they don't get funded.

There are always people who don't agree with a particular government's funding priorities; if we didn't pay when we don't agree, government would happen when we do support its priorities.

Paying federal taxes isn't going to re-fund those things. Executive Branch is now spending without Congressional approval.

Why pay taxation without getting representation?

We collectively benefit if you give me $1000 and I give you $1. That doesn't mean it's a good deal.

Your example is zero sum; there is no collective benefit. Investment in roads enable commerce. Investments in education enable future technology.

What if you were keeping the $1000 in a bank account and I will invest $900 into a scholarship to pay for someone's education. You can invest $0.90 into roads. Now the example has a collective benefit for both of us.

You keep making these silly examples that are not how taxes work. Try again with everyone investing $0.90 into roads, and everyone investing $900 into education.

And does our government do that? It seems we have one party that wants to pay for theatrical law enforcement and another party that wants to pay for performative DEI nonsense