Tianeptine is not included in the federal Controlled Substances Act, which bans or restricts drugs that have no medical use or have a high potential for abuse, such as heroin, LSD and PCP
Where I live they have not hit any hotels, but they have taken people that were riding the buses on long commutes. On average the hotels where I live are mostly staffed by people who live 1.5-2 hours away by a few buses.
Transportation is probably where they will go next. If they hit that hard then no one will feel safe taking transportation, which would have the same effect on the economy as hitting actual workplaces themselves
SmartAsset’s calculations for cost of living in 2025 are based on a healthy financial breakdown of 50/30/20 for expenses, discretionary, and savings/debt payment percentages. Which is a level of fiscal security everyone should be entitled to IMO
Their cost of living calculations are not based on “what is the bare minimum one can survive on” where your percentages look more like 66/33/0 or 90/10/0
Really the larger thing these maps show is how all of the money has been drained away from working people over the past 70+ years. The cost of everything has accelerated, for example $35 an hour is about the amount one must make to afford the median rent or median mortgage prices in 2025, but we get screwed out of the value that our labor creates as it gets siphoned upwards. Most Americans survive on credit, which they wouldnt have to do if wages had kept up with inflation the same way that rent did since an era before neoliberal economic policy wrecked everything. If they had, then people would be making about $35 an hour. Considering we produce such massive value with our labor, it makes perfect sense. But allowing wages to stagnate is obviously beneficial to those with concentrated wealth, be it companies or individuals
If in 1958, a salary of $6,514 a year could cover the cost for a family of four then that should show you how ridiculously expensive everything has become. Modern families have two income earners and still cannot afford comfortable cost of living, which is about double what it costs for a single individual. If both of those income earners were paid at minimum $35 an hour, then families would actually be much closer to affording COL for a family of four. But they would still need additional income to reach the level of 50/30/20 comfort.
People struggle to understand just how far off the modern American worker is from the financial security that was had by the average male worker or median household in 1958. If we were to draw a direct comparison to that situation and say everyone should get paid enough to support a family of four individually, like you could back then, then everybody would have to be making like $80 an hour due to the massive inflation in costs that wages have not remotely kept up with.
Households in the 1950s had practically zero debt, in comparison to modern households which are absolutely drowning in it. Americans right now hold, collectively, over 1 trillion dollars in just credit card debt. On average each American holds over $6k in credit card debt, which would be over 10% of the average salary earner’s income ($61k). Again, just on credit card debt and nothing else. In 1950, all debt owned by the average household equated to only 2% of their income. Two percent. And people were way worse off financially in 1950 than they were by 1958
Even if the federal minimum wage were $35 per hour, on average people working for that wage would still be unable to afford to live comfortably at 50/30/20 without working a second job. Meanwhile, real actual minimum wages in nearly 10 states are still at $7.25 an hour. Let that sink in for a second. There are people close to getting paid literally 5 times less than what it costs to live anywhere near a base level of comfort. That doesnt even go into agriculture, where the federal minimum wage is even lower
Our economy is massively fucked. Were long past a crossroads point where, in order to reach a point of sustainability, we either have to pay people more or have legitimate social services like universal healthcare and childcare. Continuing down the same path is doomed to fail just based on simple logic. All of the people’s money has disappeared into the pockets of the 1%, who provide nothing with their hoarding. They create something of value by spending, but their hoarding massively outweighs their spending and will only continue to do so without intervention
47% of households, not individuals, are below the amount of income for one individual to live comfortably.
In 1958, about that same percentage of households were below an inflationary equivalent income, but the difference was that at $5k-$6k a year they were affording COL for their entire household. Being below the median of income was not such a crushing situation as it is today. Dont forget how many of the richest people in the world are not visible in terms of their full wealth on the modern chart, because their money is not recorded as income in the same sense as a wage earner. CEOs, for example, rarely have high income compensation because they are usually paid a significant portion in stock options, which wouldnt be taxed as income until sold. But which can be borrowed against, donated for tax breaks, etc
Only 1 in 44 American households made over the equivalent of $170k today, in the ultra wealthy category. Thats 2% of them. Probably 20% of households today make an excess of $170k, with a handful of them hoarding an insane amount well beyond what a household that makes $170k a year could ever feasibly hope to earn.
$170k is still $7k shy of comfortable cost of living for a family of four in Mississippi, and about half of what it costs in Hawai’i, Cali, Mass…
Therefore, most people making the equivalent of a top tier bracket income in 1958 would not be able to afford the average cost of living at basic financial security in 2025. Holy shit
Even the richest guy in 1958, J Paul Getty, was worth only $1B. The equivalent of a “meager” $12B or so today. Elon Musk has $433B and hes not even lonely up there
At this point I dont think anyone could fault California for taking their ball and going home. God knows the western half of the country would probably go with them, solving any potential water issues.
an FBI SWAT team smashed in a front door and set off a flashbang grenade, pointing guns at a couple and terrifying a 7-year-old boy before realizing they were in the wrong house.
The FBI team quickly apologized and left for the right place, with the team leader later saying that his personal GPS device had led him to the wrong address
Imagine breaching someones house, flashbanging them, and pointing guns at them and then just being like “ope, sorry” as if you are a pizza driver knocking the wrong door
Any military member who is court marshaled has a JAG representing them, just like there is a JAG prosecuting them. A system that gives you someone with far more time to deal with your case than a public defender, and even some private attorneys.
Like the movie A Few Good Men, Tom Cruise is a JAG
Libertarian attempts make it pretty obvious why libertarianism fails wholesale. Everybody says “live and let live” at first, but as the author notes in that article it must inevitably devolve into “arguments over who is living free in the correct way”. Which is blatantly antithetical to the concept they started from.
And if they didnt devolve into those arguments, then they would just all drown in a sea of trash and angry bears. Libertarianism is fundamentally flawed and inherently lose-lose no matter how it plays out. Governance is actually important. Whoda thunk?
Everyone cant just be free of their neighbor. If your neighbor feeds the bears you will deal with the consequences too. Probably worse ones, since you arent so friendly with the bears (from the bear perspective)
The pell grant is one of the few guaranteed opportunities of social mobility in this country. If it is taken away, colleges and universities will return to being something accessible only by the top 50%. Community colleges will crumble without the financing provided by pell grants, which usually cover the full cost of tuition for many people. Community colleges that produce massive segments of the technical workforce in the communities they serve.
Without the pell grant, I would not have a bachelors degree, just like many other people out there. Even with the pell, I had to fight like hell to earn scholarships that would cover everything I couldnt afford on top of grants and federal loans. Social mobility is already a joke even with the pell grant, but if we take it away shit will be infinitely more dark than it already has been
They dont have to do anything, they arent looting. The cops are visibly watching the people who are looting the gas station. The cops can still go after those people later. No one really cares to make a fucking scene out of a bunch of chips and pop getting stolen. The protesters have no reason to stop protesting
You mean back when Christian people were so rabid that they thought of Catholics, the OG jesus folks, the way this lady sees any non-christian religion?
Maryland was created as the birthplace of religious freedom in this country specifically because catholics had nowhere else to go in the colonies without getting harassed. Ultimately, the concept of religious freedom would be elevated to a higher place of importance than christian snobbery by the time America was forming a country. Religious freedom was part of escaping the thumb of the King of England and other monarchs.
So, on the one hand, Miller is truly going old school by being a bigoted fuckhead. But on the other, she seems to have no idea that “America” would not exist if people hadnt been willing to tell the bigoted majority of protestants to shut the fuck up, and force them to live and let live
My birth certificate doesnt have a photo of me on it either.
DLs and other photo documentation are easily faked in comparison to a SSN.
My comment was meant in the assumption that you have a normal form of ID as well. While your ID could easily be faked to show your picture, only you should know your social security number. Thereby identifying the validity of your photo ID.
Regardless, many government databases should have your photo ID from drivers licenses, passports, etc, tied to your social
I have literally used only my SSN to prove my identity to a game warden before. I didnt have my ID because I was out fishing in a boat. We got checked for licenses. I gave him my social and all was good. ICE should be no different than that
