Changetheview @ Changetheview @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Setting aside anything related to Musk, Tesla really doesn’t seem to be staying competitive.

Cybertruck (and the “indestructible” window press conference) is probably the easiest example. Years of attempted hype that haven’t paid off in a meaningful manner, while rivals have been releasing in-class competition. Anyone can see that’s a problem.

Tesla cars used to be pretty revolutionary, now they’re in an entirely different era that’s filling with exciting EV alternatives around every corner. Yet Tesla style still looks the same. The shoddy construction is still around and becoming more widespread knowledge. They’re failing to attract their target audience due to a long series of missteps. More problems.

Not to mention that Tesla was downright overpriced at its height. It’s a fraction of the volume yet made other automaker valuations look minuscule. The logic for that was never there.

I hear you. Much bigger steps are needed and hopefully the younger generations who have been priced out of housing, hit with insanely low wage growth, and took out student loans to cover much higher education costs will start to obtain benefits sooner rather than later. They deserve it.

You’re not wrong that private consolidation is great for those who can afford it, and I can see you acknowledge this doesn’t work for everyone. You seem quite reasonable about it.

But one of the biggest pain points for the entire student loan crisis is specifically those who truly can’t afford to get out of their debt.

For these struggling Americans, IBR plans aren’t being used as a savvy financial decision. It’s a lifeline. If that’s stripped from them, you’d see another wave of people who can’t afford basic necessities like housing. It’s sad that it even needs to be an option. And worse that for many, there’s no easy way out.

You’re absolutely not alone. Not by a long shot.

Many PPP loans were forgiven without being considered taxable income, so there is precedent and there are many excellent arguments in favor of applying this for students who successfully paid income-based payments for literally decades.

Hopefully progress against this incredibly dysfunctional system will keep happening. Would be nice to give the non-wealthy Americans a better chance at home ownership, retirement savings, and other crucial financial progress. Rather than just saddling them with federal debt while taxes are slashed for the wealthy.

This doesn’t fix everything, but perfection is the enemy of progress. This is worth celebrating if you care about non-wealthy Americans.

In the face of overzealous judicial rulings and zero help from Congress, this policy helps over 800,000 struggling, older Americans resolve long standing debt that they made payments on for 20 or 25 years.

These aren’t free loaders or wealthy individuals. Nor are they committing fraud to accept disaster loans aimed at keeping paychecks afloat.

They are former students. That’s it. Something that the US covers for K-12th grade as one of its earliest ground-breaking policies. The rest of the developed world took that through college, the US decided to create a bloated system of indentured servitude instead.

No, this doesn’t stop new borrowers from taking on loans. And it doesn’t stop education providers from overcharging. These are real problems that deserve attention.

But it is still a step showing that at least some federal officials care to try to resolve the issues plaguing some of those who did nothing more than try to improve their situation and gain valuable training with far reaching benefits.

At the current minimum wage ($7.25), it’s takes 2.757.6 hours or nearly 70 40-hour weeks to reach $20,000.

That is over 1.3 years of full time work to equal the one “cheap” car option. And it completely ignores any other costs, like taxes and interest, let alone god-damn housing, food, medical bills, etc.

This economic system is fucked. If you’re not fighting for income and wealth equality, you’re sociopathic.

It might seem low, but when looking at statistics about fatalities, it’s a good idea to keep in mind the many injured and potentially permanently disabled that aren’t included.

Medical professionals can work magic, and that is great. But non-fatal car crash, overdose, cancer, and gun injuries can also be tragic, both short and long term. Diminished mental capacity, loss of limbs or physical abilities, lifelong pain, the list goes on…

The FTC home page has a list of options, including “file antitrust complaint.” I’m guessing that’s probably the most useful: https://www.ftc.gov/ I’ve also seen others say to email antitrust@ftc.com.

But here is the FTC contact page: https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/contact. And here is more generic agency information: https://www.usa.gov/agencies/federal-trade-commission

Contacting most government institutions is usually surprisingly easy and you typically don’t need to be overly concerned about using the right template or anything.

Just quickly and clearly communicate what topic it’s about, what your specific issue is, a small bit of reasoning showing why it’s a problem, and a brief conclusion that usually asks for a specific action.

You can always call the general phone number and very briefly explain in laymen’s terms what you need (maybe something g like “I’d like to submit comment about a specific technology” or something similar). The operators are usually willing to help get you in touch with the right person, as long as you can explain what you need in a succinct manner (unlike this ridiculously long comment).

Calling out lies as lies, not mere differences of opinions, is justified and this author does a good job of pointing out two direct lies. I’ve always respected the “you can have your own opinion, but you can’t have your own facts” mentality. That’s basically all he’s saying.

First, he points out that some coverage indicates the laws used to prosecute Trump are ONLY for Civil War era crimes. Which is just complete bullshit and deserves to be called out. That would be like saying the financial regulatory overhauls that came from 2008 are ONLY applicable to the 2008 crisis. Laws may be enacted for a specific purposes, but they can and should be applied to future wrongs.

Second, he points out that some coverage indicates there is a legal requirement for specific monetary connections. But that just isn’t true under the statutes used for the charges, and the report he’s pointing to literally cites an entirely unrelated statute and precedent. Once again, this is not a difference of interpretation. It is an intentional misleading of their audience and refusal to acknowledge the truth. It deserves to be called out for what it is.

Critical thinking is being lost. Pieces like this that call out bold-faced lies are valuable and I wish more journalists (and debate moderators) would be willing to do so with the same brutality as this piece.

Without a doubt, money is the answer. I think for many policy makers, it’s as simple as taking in campaign contributions (money or more creative help. See 2016 Trump campaign DNC hacking for a well-known example). A simple little $10k investment is probably enough to payoff most of these schmucks, but Russian oligarchs are willing to drop big dough because the return is worth it.

And for others, it’s access to Russian projects AND access to Russian capital.

These fucking sellouts would rather hop in bed with the enemy than lose out on a potentially lucrative deal. And these are often people with so much wealth already, they will quite literally never be able to spend it. Greedy, selfish assholes that are addicted to watching their personal charts and numbers rise - even as their country and geopolitical stability crumbles due to their actions. They’re mentally ill and have zero regard for the life of others.

Propaganda generator

Along this same train: critical thinking.

“Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.”

https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766

Learn how to think critically and you can do damn near anything from diagnosing car problems to understanding complex economic issues. You’ll improve your communication, your understanding, and your ability to handle the world around you. It’s where open minded meets level headed.

Did someone say people should work for free? No where am I saying that. Massive profits are not necessary to cover overhead - expenses like overheard and salaries are paid for by revenue - what’s leftover is profit.

This thread is about whether the current US healthcare insurance industry is a scam or not. Scam means “a dishonest scheme” and insurance saying it’s going to provide healthcare coverage but actually just takes your money, doesn’t provide coverage, and only pays investors/executives could be considered a dishonest scheme by many.

Insurance companies have a natural tendency to become worse and worse over time. This is called the race to the bottom and is an incredibly well-known phenomena in insurance. Like monopolies, insurance is one of the rare situations where experts are in damn-near universal agreement that heavy regulation is necessary.

Right now, insurance companies are objectively very bad to the people they provide coverage for. This isn’t an opinion, this is a fact that’s easily verified and well understood. They are not being effectively regulated and as such, are racing to the bottom by providing absolutely terrible coverage while taking in massive premiums. This is not good for anyone and is not fixed by a free market in any way. You cannot effectively shop for insurance and their behavior is not rectified, unless prohibited by law (regulation).

Many people lock in interest rates for the life of the loan. Most often 30 years for mortgage loans. You don’t have to renew a mortgage’s interest rate unless you get an adjustable rate one.

This is the main reason why mortgage applications are down significantly right now. People with super low interest rates don’t want to move because they’d have to get a new loan to do so, and interest rates are much higher now. If they stay and they have a fixed-rate loan, nothing changes.

It’s true insurance companies need to take in adequate premiums in order to have the money the money to pay claims. And when done in balance, insurance is a great thing. Not all insurance in a scam, no doubting that.

But the current state of insurance, especially health insurance in the US, shows that these companies are making massive profits. How does this happen? Literally one way: They take in more premiums than they pay out in coverage. How? By either knowingly overcharging people or skirting out of paying covered claims through other means (such as baseless rejections).

That’s the problem with the entire insurance industry and why it must be properly regulated in any industry: It is a race to the bottom. The worse the insurer treats the people that buy insurance from them, the better the company does financially (charge a lot, pay out a little). Mix in the fact that (1) you cannot shop around at the time you need a claim and (2) the contracts are so intensive only a sophisticated legal team can interpret them, and it’s a recipe for disaster.

So you’re right that all insurance isn’t necessarily a scam. But if you can’t see that the US health insurance industry raking in profits shows serious dysfunction that could be considered a scam, it’s worth taking a second look.

This next election is going to be wild. Stacked full of unpopular candidates.

Biden’s approval rating is abysmal, and his age is actively working against him. Sure, he’s likely to get most D votes, but unlikely he’ll get extra voters to come out from any fringe group or independents.

If Trump is selected as the R candidate, his supporters will come out in droves to vote. But independents aren’t looking like they’ll give him support. Then again, a lot of people said they wouldn’t vote for Trump in 2016, but did anyway.

If Trump isn’t on the R ticket, another person could grab hold of independents and a good chunk of the R party voters. But impassioned Trump supporters are a wild card. Will they just write in Trump? Vote third party out of vengeance? I guess they’ll probably do whatever Trump says, which seems like it has a good chance of splintering the R vote.

Honestly, this is all just wild. And the only certain thing is that there is no certainty.

I really hope young voters show up.

$1k per month is also a downright excessive price for something with zero intrinsic value. I honestly do not believe many wealthy people would pay it (or let their kids waste their money like that - which is usually pretty closely scrutinized).

I have a good amount of experience with the finances of the ultra wealthy and the vast majority do not waste money. In fact, they can be surprisingly frugal. It’s actually a big reason why trickle down economics is total bullshit. The more money you have, the more likely you are to save it or put it toward investments. It does not result in increased “regular” spending.

Sure, they’ll drop big cash on homes, planes, and other valuable assets with resale value. A small handful have obscene restaurant and/or travel expenses. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like a cash drain of $1k/month for a silly subscription. That would be a major red flag, and as a financial advisor we’d probably make sure they’re aware of it.

Some historical perspective as it relates to greed:

During some of the United States’ most prosperous times, the marginal income tax rates were higher (topping out around 90%!) and executive compensation was no more than ~20x the average worker pay.

Now, marginal tax rates and capital gains rates are so low, the wealthy often pay the lowest effective rates (sometimes less than 10%). And executive pay is simply off the charts at 300x, 500x, even 700x median pay.

https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/

The problem is greed and its manifestation as tax and corporate policy. Basic tax reform and implementing new corporate regulations can and would fix many issues plaguing this country.

Those in poverty would be lifted out by higher wages and adequate social safety nets. The growth of a thriving middle class creates a premier labor force, allows people to innovate and start new businesses, and creates additional private support networks that reduces stress on government programs.

It even helps the elite by letting them live in a prosperous country where they don’t have to step over people dying in the streets to go to their entertainment spots. Theft and crimes of desperation decrease as stability increases. Labor is more educated and healthy. They don’t have to drive on roads with defunct bridges. On and on.

We are all in this together. It’s time to act like it. We’ve done it before and we can do it again.

My thoughts are more centered on true purity and safety, but it’s usually a good sign if it at least tastes better! As we learn more about water contamination, it seems like a well-designed and well-maintained RO system is a good idea for people who want to help protect their health.

Single-use plastic water bottles are basically a crime against humanity, especially when used frivolously (drinking bottles filled with tap water of the same quality that comes out of the faucet). But the reusable 5-gallon jugs are a different category, in my opinion. In many places, these large plastic containers are by far the most popular lifeline to safe drinking water. Of course I’d prefer metal or glass, but the logistical challenges and availability make them a problem.

I agree. ”It depends” seems like the right answer to me.

Having access to clean, tested spring water seems ideal. You’re a lucky one!

But for areas dealing with contaminated water (whether it’s PFAS, lead pipes like Flint Michigan, or literal shit and commercial chemical dumping from areas with lackluster water treatment, mostly outside the US) then “it depends” seems the right answer.

What’s the RO membrane rating? Does the system have UV? Charcoal? Remineralization? And do they perform the necessary maintenance? Seems like these are the critical factors about the system and might be found in someone’s home, might be at the stores, but it depends!