I think it makes sense to want a study that controls for gun training and intelligence, I don't think it makes sense to reject data based conclusions due to anecdotal disagreement. My understanding is that a lot of those self-inflicted wounds are suicide attempts, which one would not expect to be influenced by firearm proficiency (except perhaps in success rate).
I bought an '03 for $3k probably six years ago (has around 230k on it now). I noticed the transmission was whining a bit immediately after I paid for it. Refuses to die, and it's so useful I can't get rid of it. I've put 4x8 sheets of drywall in back many times.
My dad recently totaled his old Mazda pickup. Insurance gave him about three times as much for it as I expected. Turns out the value of used small pickups is through the roof, because there are no new small pickups and used ones are getting harder to find.
Somehow I have a hard time picturing a senator, member of Congress, governor or other high-level official turning down a pork barrel project for their state due to some difficulty hitting hiring goals.
It seems a little crass to say "it felt like a genocide" considering the horrors of slavery. Similar thoughts regarding erasure from history, given the amount of controversy around whether or not schools should be able to discuss the horrors of slavery.
Correct, but I'm trying to draw a parallel between regular, scheduled shareholder votes and regular, scheduled votes for elected officials. In the U.S we typically have around 60% of eligible voters participating in presidential elections. My analogy assumes that voting against the incumbent follows the same rules as voting against the board, in which case we would need something like 84% of cast votes to be for the challenger to avoid re-electing the incumbent. (Assuming I haven't gotten my math wrong.) I'll also go so far as to suggest voter participation is low in both cases but it isn't a very effective tool for changing policy. :-)
IIRC voting rules for the company I hold the most equity in are that a board-opposed measure does not pass unless more than half of all voting shares vote in favor. Which is a significantly different measure than half of all votes cast. (Essentially any unvoted shares vote with the board.) Imagine if we needed half of all eligible voters to vote for a new candidate before we could change the president. (U.S.A)
I am endlessly annoyed by the gap between providing value and appearing to provide value. In an ideal world management would be able to distinguish between those working hard to serve customers, improve the bottom line, etc, and those working hard to give that appearance, rewarding the former and penalizing the latter. The gap between such a world and the one I regularly experience however, is so wide as to be nearly unfathomable.
A close look at the political system here in the U.S. exposes many significant ways in which policy is protected from voter intent: Electoral college, gerrymandered districting, a first-past-the-post system that is hostile to third parties (the main parties control the national debate process, for example). It is indeed possible for a policy to be widely popular with the voting public, but NOT on the ballot in any meaningful way. This is without even dipping into the fear-mongering toward more egalitarian policies in healthcare, taxation, workers rights, etc.
They could, but my opinion is that this is putting personal responsibility front and center on what is a systemic problem. If our economic systems encourage the consolidation of wealth, we should change the systems, rather than blaming individuals.
This assumes the job of policing in the U.S. is, in fact, to enforce the law. It could also be several others things, such as raising funds for local government (primarily by targeting less privileged members of society). Another common argument is that they are primarily employed to reinforce existing power structures - See violence against anti-police violence protestors. Our government in general (and Supreme Court in particular) are loathe to put almost any limits on police behavior, or to enforce consequences for bad behavior. There is largely bi-partisan agreement on this, and the stranglehold the two-party system has on elections prevents alternatives.
First thing's first, taxes on capital gains should be much higher, and always higher than taxes on wages.
Second, loans require repayment. Even if the bank accepts your stock directly as payment, there's a taxable transaction. I don't understand how loans evade taxation.
Third, marginal tax rates used to be MUCH higher than they are today. Example from USA Today: "For married people filing jointly in 1953, for example, any income above $200,000 was taxed at 90%, above $300,000 at 91%, and above $400,000 at 92%."
FWIW, anecdotally and as a member of the motorcycling community, being loud does not seem to help much. People hear noise, but in traffic it doesn't help them locate the source of the noise. Things that do seem to help are primarily visual: bright solid colors, sitting high relative to traffic. Pretty much the opposite of the flat black low-rider with loud pipes.
The DOJ being notificed could result in a lot of people spending time in prison. It could also result in no action. Retaliation by local officials could be limited to a few hours and a few hundred dollars of lost income. It could also be a lot worse. Based on my personal experience I certainly wouldn't bet a few hundred dollars on the former in either case.
Just a wild guess, but If I were trying to find illegal immigrants, seeding a social graph with legal immigrants might be a good place to start. (This comment is in no way an endorsement of the methods or goals of ICE.)
I sometimes like to remind myself that there are lots of things we do competently here in the U.S. Our medical system, for example, converts a public problem into private profit in a way that is unrivaled in the developed world.
Of course the trouble is those same people have been capturing enough value out of the destructive process that they will surely go last. I suspect this is no small part of the reason we're in the fix we're in.
Certainly not the first to mention this, but see also: microwaves. I worked at a restaurant that had a microwave with precisely one input: a timer dial. To start the microwave, you turned the dial to the desired time. To stop the microwave, you open the door (ok, that's two inputs). To add time, you turned the dial further. It didn't beep a million times either.
Was that something living in a state that decided it should be a different kind of ethnostate? This might be a controversial take, but I think ethnostates in general lead to poor outcomes.
Seems like unfettered trade with countries with low labor and environmental standards makes domestic production unprofitable. Surely we can only compete by limiting domestic labor and environmental protections. /s
I'm happy to consider a non-Tesla (mostly because I'd really prefer a more traditional gauge cluster and more physical controls), but have struggled to find anything that beats the price for performance of the Model 3 Performance. And yes, I realize I'm a niche buyer.
I don't understand this comment. If you picture a company with a few 100MM dollars in sales per year, that manufactures or retails physical products, without software how many people work in Accounting? Inventory control? Do you have paper order records, that you use to process returns? Switching to electronic systems for these and many other areas has resulted in huge efficiencies of labor (not always to the benefit of employees, I should be clear). Obviously not all change in hardware and software over the last 50 years has been improvement, and certainly some of the difficulty in these areas is due to inefficient policy (either by the business or by government), but claiming that the work should be complete seems to vastly underestimate the complexity of the problems being addressed - whether by software or through more manual solutions.
Your second paragraph makes sense, but only to the extent that one views people needing support as a local issue. This is one of the ways we (as a U.S. resident) avoid taking responsibility: This problem is some other locality's responsibility.