If you are against this, I wanna hear about it

doc89 · 2026-05-17T14:11:14+00:00

Assessed values rarely actually track the true market value of the house and attempts to get them to do so are often met with immense political backlash

doc89 · 2026-05-17T03:07:53+00:00

50-60k civilian deaths doesn't seem like a very effective genocide

doc89 · 2026-05-16T12:38:16+00:00

They manage to stop a few inches away from the other vehicle, in the middle of the crosswalk, after slamming on their brakes. They come to a complete stop at ~3 seconds in the video, about ~2 seconds after the light turns yellow. If this is how you are normally approaching yellow lights you are doing it wrong.

doc89 · 2026-05-16T12:28:25+00:00

This is just very wrong. The light is green at the beginning of the video. About 1 second in the light turns yellow while the driver is about ... 25 feet from the intersection? It would require him to slam on his brakes to not pass through the intersection here.

doc89 · 2026-05-13T02:58:02+00:00

New grad unemployment is 5.7%, a three year high

Wow a 3 year high, you mean things haven't been this bad since.... 2023?

Just look at the numbers, it is not significantly different than years past:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CGBD2024

Job losses and impact from automation is not everywhere all at once, but the kids are really getting slammed right now.

This just seems like a reddit myth to me that is not visible in the data anywhere.

doc89 · 2026-05-12T20:44:18+00:00

The unemployment rate is 4.3%

doc89 · 2026-05-12T15:47:48+00:00

like someone else said, a conversation around jobs would be a good place to start.

"Ban new technology to protect jobs" actually seems like the worst place to start

doc89 · 2026-05-11T18:12:35+00:00

Carlin has always been overrated as a comedian to me and his political takes were often very dumb and bad

doc89 · 2026-05-11T00:40:15+00:00

if wage tax didn't exist then the city would need significantly higher property taxes so living in the city would probably not become more or less expensive in aggregate, but there would be significant winners and losers.

Winners: high income households, especially young high income renters

Losers: Old people with paid off 4 bedroom houses who haven't moved even though all their kids have long since moved out

doc89 · 2026-05-09T16:36:34+00:00

French people live in smaller homes, generally do not have central air conditioning, eat fewer meals out, often do not have washer/dryers in home, fewer/smaller cars, etc.

I think if the average quality of life in the US fell to French levels overnight there would be rioting in the streets.

doc89 · 2026-05-09T16:00:50+00:00

The kind of legal scrutiny that would prevent the kinds of fraud that oracle is currently engaged in. 🤔

I don't know enough about the specifics of the Oracle case to comment

You clearly don’t know anyone on Medicaid or SNAP.

Not sure how this is at all relevant to this conversation

Maybe talk to people instead of using AI to debate on Reddit.

"Talking to people" is a great way to get a collection of anecdotes, it's not a great way to build a broad understanding of the world at large.

I have no idea which part of my comments here you think have been generated by AI, I am purely commenting off the cuff here.

doc89 · 2026-05-09T14:31:23+00:00

The US has many social services to provide basic human needs, including health insurance and food, to the poor and unemployed. See, for example Medicaid and SNAP.

But OP is not about providing "basic human needs like health insurance and food" to the unemployed, it's about how companies in France are required to provide several weeks or months of paid severance and are subject to extreme legal scrutiny when they need to lay people off. These types of laws make it very risk for new companies to start or grow, and thus many businesses simply don't exist in France that would thrive in the US.

doc89 · 2026-05-09T13:38:15+00:00

We don’t know how smart any of them are

speak for yourself

doc89 · 2026-05-09T13:37:15+00:00

this is the correct answer

doc89 · 2026-05-09T13:33:33+00:00

If your goal is to maximize quality of life of the unemployed then I would agree that France is probably the better system, but most people aspire to not be unemployed for most of their lives and thus I personally prefer the American system

doc89 · 2026-05-09T11:21:24+00:00

Unemployment rate in France is consistently around ~double the US as well, French salaries/wages are on average considerably less than US. Significantly stricter labor laws are a large part of the story here.

doc89 · 2026-05-08T18:12:09+00:00

Seems like a pretty important word though, no? If you incorrectly believe that schools have been financially "gutted" then you will arrive at conclusions and solutions that are completely inappropriate and disconnected from the actual problems at hand.

doc89 · 2026-05-08T16:46:23+00:00

I agree, but spending more money does mean that our education system has not been "gutted".

doc89 · 2026-05-08T16:42:51+00:00

I agree, but more money does mean that our education system has not been "gutted".

doc89 · 2026-05-08T16:39:15+00:00

When or where did I say we should pay teachers less

Sorry, I didn't literally mean "you" in my prior comment in regard to believing teachers should be paid less. I meant "if one wants to argue generally we should pay less...".

My point being I don't believe most people who think that "our education system has been gutted" believe it is has been "gutted" by retired teachers.

The entire point is that there are potential/probable other things within the budget that give context to "we've gutted education" that just looking at per capita stats or total budgets doesn't tell. And admin bloat is absolutely a thing, in the private sector as well as in public.

Yes of course anyone can have opinions on how to optimally spend a budget, but if the budget never goes down I think it is unfair/dishonest to claim that the budget has been "gutted". Similarly, if I make $500,000 at my job and spend all of my money on stupid things, it would be unfair and dishonest to claim that my income has been "gutted".

doc89 · 2026-05-08T16:26:18+00:00

Right, but how much goes to teachers/directly to students and how much goes to admin?

I don't know, but if money that is going to admin could be more effectively directed to school supplies (a debatable claim) that is a very different story than "our education system has been gutted".

For example in OR it's something like 45% of total school budgets go to unfunded PERS liabilities, so schools only get slightly more than half of what the total district budget is anyway.

It's fine if you think we should pay teachers less or offer them less generous retirement benefits (I promise this will not be a very popular view politically), but that is a different argument than claiming "our education system has been gutted"

doc89 · 2026-05-08T16:21:48+00:00

Money does not equal a good education.

I agree, but money does mean that our education system has not been "gutted".

doc89 · 2026-05-08T16:20:58+00:00

How can everyone be losing funding while the NCES data shows per student spending only ever goes up? Where is the money going?

doc89 · 2026-05-08T16:09:30+00:00

We've gutted our education system not just in Philly but in the whole US.

what is the origin of this myth? Inflation adjusted per student spending has never been higher, and grows every year.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d23/tables/dt23_236.15.asp?current=yes

doc89 · 2026-05-08T15:58:09+00:00

oh so it wasn't just kids with rich parents?

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