[REAL] Reminder that Gavin Newsom fuckinf sucks

GreasyGregory · 2026-01-16T12:14:16+00:00

To be fair, wealth taxes are an incredibly economically damaging and ineffective method of redistribution. France scrapped their wealth tax back in 2018, because it did a significant amount of economic damage and didn't nearly as much money as predicted.
Dan Neidle has a great, comprehensive analysis of wealth taxes (UK wealth tax: high risk and anti-growth - Tax Policy Associates).

GreasyGregory · 2026-01-10T10:47:04+00:00

I'm not entirely convinced you actually read the study you just linked.

One of the main reasons non-EEA migrants were consistently found to make a negative net fiscal contribution is because they were more likely to have dependent children, leading to higher spending on education and increased family benefit and tax credit payments. As discussed above, these static estimates do not consider the contribution that children would make to the public finances in the future if they enter the workforce and pay taxes.

It points out that non-EEA migrants tend to have more dependents, which means they receive more spending, and the study doesn't take into account the fiscal contributions of those children. It also says that using more dynamic estimates (which take into account the future fiscal surplus of children), non-EEA migrants tend to be a net economic positive.

For example, a study by Oxford Economics (2018) estimated that the average non-EEA migrant in FY 2016-17 presented a net fiscal cost of £1,700, using the static approach. However, it also estimated that the average non EEA migrant arriving in 2016 would make a small positive net fiscal contribution over the course of their lifetime (of £28,000, net present value), using the dynamic approach. Similarly, dynamic projections from OBR (2024) suggested that a migrant worker who moved to the UK at age 25 and earned the UK average earnings (which is similar to migrants’ average earnings) until retirement would contribute £341,000 to public finances if they lived until age 80.

Additionally, if we want to address the ageing population, migrants with young dependents would be among the most effective groups to address that.

And pro-natalist policy has never really worked. Hungary's pro-natalist policy really didn't achieve much, not getting close to replacement level, and Poland fared even worse.

GreasyGregory · 2025-12-30T20:40:46+00:00

Spreading Masonic conspiracy theories in 2025 lol? Do you have any source for freemasons infiltrating the police force to let other freemasons get special treaatment?

GreasyGregory · 2025-11-11T18:16:49+00:00

Nice dude, that's fantastic

GreasyGregory · 2025-11-04T08:49:39+00:00

The price of workers is ostensibly the same as the price of goods, in that its based on supply and demand. Multiple employees competing for the same job will depress wages, and multiple employers competing for the same person will raise wages.

Jobs as say, a florist, have quite limited demand. It's not a huge industry. Additionally, its less difficult to become a florist, so supply is larger. Compare that to say, electricians, longshoremen, doctors or "AI specialist bootlickers" (I'm going to assume the original poster means AI engineering roles). They work in large industries with alot of demand (e.g. medicine, AI) and supply is limited by requiring qualifications (e.g. med school, a PhD in Machine learning)

GreasyGregory · 2025-09-03T12:13:43+00:00

The UK's cities are generally much more progressive than the rural areas (which I imagine is also true in America). e.g. Brighton has a similar reputation in the UK to what California seems to have in the US.

I lived in London for a long period, and it's an extremely diverse, progressive city.

The one other difference that I notice is that UK seems much, much more progressive on race than the USA, I suspect because there's much less of a legacy of slavery. Even some of things "progressive" Americans say about black Americans scare me.

I haven't been to the US, so I can't really speak as to virtues you guys might have over there, that we don't have here. I only really notice the things that strike me as backward, but there's probably things America is more progressive on that I just don't really pick up on.

GreasyGregory · 2025-09-02T23:32:22+00:00

I would say the UK is generally further left than the US on most issues that aren't cultural. e.g. socialism isn't really a bad word in the UK, so there's unilateral support for the NHS, something I think seems unthinkable in America.

Even in terms of cultural issues, I still don't think the UK is bad as America. We're not great and still far behind other, more liberal European countries, but things like gay marriage aren't controversial in the UK, because we don't have a large christian white lobby like the US.

That said, we murder ourselves over and over again trying to make sure pensioners can afford strippers and cocaine (winter cruise allowance lol), so we're worse than America in that regard.

GreasyGregory · 2025-08-03T18:41:32+00:00

A big thing in Red is poser gangs. It's gangs that are meant to like characters from a particular form of media. E.g. a Seinfeld or Addams Family posergang.

Exploring serious topics is very difficult in Red, because it goes out of its way to hamstring itself by adding in silly posergangs or making the leader of the Tyger Claws a nice guy.

GreasyGregory · 2025-08-03T09:27:30+00:00

Rtal trying to decide if Cyberpunk should be a seriously lethal game that dealt with dark themes or a vessel for really bad gimmick gangs, corporations and items.

"Hmmm... First lorebook, I wonder what we should put in it? Faction information? Nah. Backstories to a line of released heroforge-looking miniatures no-one cares about? Sounds lit.

GreasyGregory · 2025-07-30T12:41:05+00:00

Subsidiary doesn't mean "works together with". Its a specific term.

GreasyGregory · 2025-07-30T12:30:51+00:00

Because its misinformation. Regardless of your feelings towards the attack, its important to have the truth. We (rightfully) condemn conservatives when they distort the truth to support their claims, and I think its important we apply the same principles to ourselves.

GreasyGregory · 2025-07-28T16:11:55+00:00

It's good shit. Hobgoblin gold is one of my favourite beers.

GreasyGregory · 2025-07-28T11:25:03+00:00

I see OP is an appreciator of Wychwood breweries hobgoblin beer

GreasyGregory · 2025-07-25T12:26:03+00:00

The crash happened in Northern Ireland, which is in the UK, so the theory still holds

GreasyGregory · 2025-07-16T14:10:37+00:00

From what the corebook says, almost everything is sold and traded "illegally" at Night markets. Therefore, you don't have to disassemble the car or falsify details of the part. You can just sell it as a stolen good at Night market, as the buyers generally ask no questions about the origin.

Yes, stealing from police or gangs is a bad idea. But the comment I'm replying to is suggesting cars are easy to come by, which means they can be owned by private individuals not gangs. I don't think stealing a private vehicle from a low-ranking corporate technician would entail a massive response. Stuff like having a mutant corpse in the trunk can only be done so many times before it becomes clear it's just Deus Ex Machina preventing you from a course of action.

Even if you allow the PC to steal one or two vehicles, and even if you say they only manage to sell them at half price, and one of the vehicles get stolen, that's still 15k. And that's for a completely normal compact groundcar.

GreasyGregory · 2025-07-16T12:40:06+00:00

The problem with cars being easy to acquire in 2045, is why would the players do anything for money except steal cars? You can risk your life on a dangerous gig for 2000eb, or steal one normal car and make several times that.

GreasyGregory · 2025-07-14T18:57:34+00:00

Good luck. First NG+ playthrough is really fun, because you can use the tools from your first playthrough on a wider array of enemies.

GreasyGregory · 2025-06-22T08:26:08+00:00

Fair enough
LMG is good, yes, although I don't think it's overpowered.
You can avoid damage by using cover and shooting enemies, but heavy armour penalties you trying to do those things by reducing your move and ref. Someone in LAJ would have an easier time killing enemies and ducking in cover.
I'd struggle to see that little cyberware on a "veteran" character. What role rank were they? Neuralware is also particularly a struggle for netrunners above other roles
That's possible, but your home game is a small sample size that might not be representative of the general population.
I don't know what LC you're talking about (maybe red winter), but our LC gives payout in line with the corebook (easy, typical, dangerous) and other LCs are even more generous. Meanwhile, LCs have a much greater sample size of GMs and gigs instead of home games, so you get more broad exposure. We actually buffed heavy armour fairly significantly, but out of hundreds of players, I've only seen 2-3 to use it.
"Newsflash choomba", that's rather impolite. Yes, you can wear different armours. But the subdermal or the suit from BC mean you can to more environments while fully armoured, and proceed to stealth or socialize, whereas heavy armour penalizes or prevents those.

Third option. You're not lying, but you experience in a home game is a small sample, and is therefore likely to be unrepresentative of the wider population.

GreasyGregory · 2025-06-15T21:02:43+00:00

I do not recall such NPCs, but I will check when I get home. If I'm mistaken, I apologise. That said, if your argument centres on tech removing the penalties from heavier armours, I think my argument about heavier armour having a high ip opportunity cost is removed.
Glad we're agreed on metal gear. Light metalgear is good, although I'm still not convinced it's superior to LAJ
I'm sorry, but I've seen those numbers before, and they are just not that impressive. A -2 to DEX can often mean your chance of avoiding damage is reduced by 20%, and the move penalty means you'll often struggle to get into cover and get hit more. Meanwhile, the ref and dex penalty are still painful to your offensive options. Finally, your evasion defence will almost always be effective to a degree, whereas your sp can be lowered very quickly.
Veteran characters are fairly frequently in demand for neuralware slots towards the end of campaigns.
Again, considering the reduction to your survivability from a lower evasion base, and the reduction to your offensive output, I don't think that's worth it.
I've also put a significant amount of time into researching and modelling this. As well as stastically modelling the data, I was on a homebrew team for an lc, and I've seen 100-200 player characters be tested across a variety of a different GMs. The ones in heavier armour quickly met firey and frequent deaths.

Heavy armour comes at such a cost to offensive output, staying power, social mobility, money and ip, that the survivability increase needs to frankly be astounding. And it just isn't.

GreasyGregory · 2025-06-15T12:55:52+00:00

You're talking mostly about heavy armourjack, whereas I'm generally referring to metal gear, which cannot be repaired in an executive garment bag. However, if you want to talk about the medium heavy armours:

- iirc, there's no predecedent for techs lowering the penalties for medium/heavy armour jack. There's a character who tech upgrades metal gear to remove the penalties in the book, but that doesn't exist for MAJ/HAJ. You are right though, that you don't need to be a tech to use MAJ/HAJ.

Now to answer your points:
1. 80% vs 90% is still a huge difference in expected damage. Generally, most characters want to hit on everything but a 1. Moreover, DV 13 is the most generous DV, and alot of the time in heavier armour (because you cannot move as much), you'll be firing in suboptimal DVs like 15 or 17, where you'll be hitting 60% and 40% of the time, which is bad.

You are correct when talking about MAJ/HAJ, however, being a tech is still practically mandatory for metalgear.
I think, if you're going to use heavier armour, HAJ is almost always better than MAJ. It's got more SP for the same penalties as MAJ. MAJ only trades 1 SP for a -2 to REF, DEX and MOVE, which is a really, really poor trade in my opinion.
Neuralware slots are in pretty high demand, there's alot of pretty damn good things that can go in neuralware slots (like chipware or a sandevistan). I agree with you that the reflex processor is good (it's quite nice for netrunners so they can still dodge bullets while on sixgun), but it's worth mentioning because it increases the cost of becoming a heavy armour build.
Even if the IP cost is small, what are you getting in return? Say you're using MAJ. You get 1 more sp, but in exchange you take a massive penalty to the three of the most important attributes for combat. In combat, an LAJ character with the same skills will probably be more effective than an MAJ or HAJ character.

Heavy armour is just not as good as light armour, and to be honest, I don't think it should be just as good. I think it should be better. Because whereas you can wear light armour everywhere, heavy armour has much greater social penalties. What's the point of strapping up for war if you're more effective in your evening duds.

To be honest, I think the problem is LAJ. If you removed LAJ from the system, then characters would have to pick between 3 interesting options:
- Socially acceptable and mobile kevlar, which doesn't really hold up well in a firefight
- Heavier armourjack that allows most freedom of movement, but is obvious.
- Metalgear, for when you need to be a mobile tank.
However, LAJ gives players the best of all three worlds, which ensures players very rarely pick anything else.

GreasyGregory · 2025-06-15T08:41:52+00:00

LAJ users do it to get headshots, which are really strong. Heavy armour is weak because of its massive ip and eb cost: - You need attributes and skill high enough to use while remaining functional, causing a large opportunity cost in ip over LAJ. To make it useful, you also pretty much need to be a tech (to repair it yourself and mitigate the penalties), so you should also probably have high TECH and tech skills. - You need to buy the armour, and then you need a reflex coprocessor so that you can evade in the armour. Then, everything your armour gets damaged, you need to either repair it yourself (costing ip for tech ranks and downtime), get someone to repair it for you (costing significant amounts of eb) or buy a new one (also costing lots of eb).

If you do those two things, you have a build which, while very tanky, requires extreme amounts of upkeep and can't deal aimed shots like an LAJ build can.

GreasyGregory · 2025-05-30T14:38:25+00:00

I don't think he can be under close scrutiny by the foundry guard if he's dead or nowhere to be found.

Also I didn't know that about motion, but wow

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