Your views, thoughts or simply opinions. The Economy is not well (understatement). I know there are some here that will try to link the country they are residing in as problems of the USA. Sorry the USA cannot be responsible for 100% of the problems in the world nor should they be expected to help repair all problems.
Nothing will happen to him, he is the presidents son, would you want to be the judge that put the presidents son in jail?
The clinton list would get a addition as the judge would have some strange accident.his lamp cord would jump up off the floor and choke him or something
Corruption is running rampant in washington right now.
In this case I would love to be the judge, but I would be disqualified because of my bias. Corruption in DC has been rampant for many years now. Maybe someone was close to disclosing it. If you were one of the corrupt ones then you would try at all costs from be disclosed.
The gun charge was probably real, but no one has ever been indicted for just that.
Every time someone was indicted for that, it was on top of another crime related to
gun use.
The average American who engages in tax-fraud doesn't have the Justice Department coming after them. That's just BECAUSE he's the son of the president.
By the way, tax-fraud is the least of the crimes that your preferred president has been accused of. Himself, not just both of his older sons and his daughter. Trump has been found guilty of 17 felonies, including tax fraud and falsifying business records.
Trump has to pay $1.6 million in fines, but why is he not going to jail?
Who is actually threatening judges and prosecutors and witnesses and the jury?
Never heard Joe Biden do that. As always, accusing the other side of what your side
is doing.
Hunters charges have absolutely nothing to do with corruption, because Hunter Biden
is not a politician and none of the charges are at all related to Joe Biden.
"Trump's Worst Lawyer, Alina Habba, May Be Disbarred For This"
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Didn't I say that Alina Habba is Trump's Worst Lawyer?
She really screwed Trump again, because the Appeals court denies Trump's 'presidential immunity' argument in the E. Jean Carroll's defamation suit, because Alina Habba had waited too long to raise it as a defense.
Of course it would be completely unconstitutional if the Court of Appeals had decided otherwise, but after all the court packing that Trump did, there is no guarantee anymore of judges actually caring about the constitution.
In any case, this is now an important precedent against Trump.
The right-wing group Moms for Liberty is in serious trouble right now. After reports emerged last week that one of the founders down here in the state of Florida, her husband, who happens to be the chair of the Florida Republican Party, has been accused of sexual battery by a woman who, both the man Christian Ziglar and his wife Bridget Ziglar, the founder of Moms for Liberty, were supposed to be having a threesome with,
but unfortunately they had to cancel it according to the affidavits now released by the police department. Bridget Ziglar, again, a co-founder of the right wing group, moms for Liberty behind some of the book bans across the country because they're indoctrinating our children into their sexual deviancy, told police "Yeah, we had scheduled a threesome with this woman, but I unfortunately had to cancel that particular day.". But according to the woman who made the complaint against Ziegler's husband, they had been doing this for quite some time.
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Right-wingers like them are accusing everyone of sexual deviancy, but meanwhile they are closeted homosexuals who suck male prostitutes in back alleys, or they hire a black man to fuck their wife while they are jerking off, or their teen daughter had several abortions already, or they have been watching teen boys in the shower, or they talk about how they would want to take the virginity of their daughter, or they are just doing everything they have ever accused democrats of doing.
It is amazing how hypocritical conservatives are. Every single thing they accuse others of doing, or are firmly against, is an admission of guilt for that exact thing.
Maybe you've heard about a car crashing at very high speed and exploding,
at the US-Canada bridge.
Here's the difference with liberal and right-wing media:
CNN and MSNBC just reported it as an accident, because there was no evidence
to report it as anything else.
Fox 'News' immediately called it a terror attack.
They had to retract it later, because there is no reason to think that.
And now Fox 'News' is blaming the liberal media, while it was their own
irresponsible fearmongering, to call it a terror attack.
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Fox 'News' doesn't have any journalistic integrity, it's propaganda.
They just want you to be afraid and angry, so you'll vote for a dictator,
to protect you from the bullshit they put in your brain.
They have nothing real to offer you, so they lie to you 24/7.
There is a code of ethics for journalists. Fox 'News' shits on it.
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I didn't watch these 2 but i watched something about cleaning your room.
head scratchers as to what it all has to do with the real world.
a few water pumps stop and ananas won't be with us any longer, and he thinks America has issues.
Those are AMERICANS, telling YOU that your country sucks.
Better listen, if you still want to do something to MAGA.
How can you MAGA, if you don't listen to people telling you
what problems you have in America?
Or are you like Hillary, saying 'America is already great'?
I want to see America be like it was when I was growing up. If you wanted a nice car,you went and bought what you WANTED,not what the government let the company sell you.Want a nice home, build it yourself! Now zoning and counties require specialist and such to do so much of the work all you can do is stand back and pay the bill and wait till they all leave to fix something the way you actually want it behind the governments back.
People were working, people were being successful ,achieving goals. Sure we had a "cold war" going on with Russia but at that time all they were doing was the same as us, trying to survive and make sure the world knew they would and could defend themselves ,same as us.
Now we shouldn't be that scared of russia ,both countries are
are blasting syria right now, keeping it's terrorist in check We are now forced to be scared of lone wolf terrorist and those backed by middle eastern interest. A fear we didn't have growing up.
People coming here to escape your socialist, marxist or communist ideology is about all I need to prove your crap is just that. I know there are some terrorists in the groups, but that is uncle joe's fault. Eventhough he does not know what day this is or who is going to change his diaper next.
You're showing how little you understand of it, by calling my ideas the 'socialist, marxist or communist ideology', parroting Trump and all other dumb right-wingers.
And, like always, the only thing you can come up with to criticize Biden is his age.
It shows that you are unable to think about what actually matters in the world.
Trump definitely wears a diaper (too). You're only claiming Biden does, because it was said about Trump way before. It's your standard projection.
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Trump regularly makes mistakes in his rallies, thinking Obama is still president or he won an election against Obama or warns that Biden is taking the nation into WWII. He's obviously experiencing mental decline, which is a problem, because he never had much intelligence, even when he was younger.
In any conversation, Biden is coherent and logical, while Trump is incoherent, chaotic, fully self-centered (which can be a mental health condition, a personality disorder and a symptom of Alzheimer's disease) and he's constantly saying the dumbest things imaginable. The only reason that Trump cares about the next election, is getting off from all his indictments, by pardoning himself, which would be the most shameful act by an American president in history, and getting revenge on all the people he holds accountable for holding him accountable. He doesn't care about you or any other American. He only cares about himself and you are a dumb-ass for supporting a man of that character.
I have NEVER criticized joey about his age, if so prove it here. I criticized his cognition which could also apply to a 3 year old. Stop lying about me. I know what matters in the world, but do you. Stop defending the underdogs that do terrorist acts. Ok you say Israel is a terrorist group. So if another terrorist group attacks then you agree with it.
Talking about his diaper changes is a 'joke' about his age,
because it's bullshit related to his cognition.
His lack of energy and the soft way he speaks is related to his age,
his actual cognition is in better shape than Trump's cognition.
You're judging Biden on appearing weak, which is related to his age.
You're not judging Biden on his memory or his ability to answer a question or his ability to understand a difficult topic, which is his cognition.
It's all just about appearances for you. And on appearances, Trump looks better. Trump speaks with confidence and energy. However, if you actually listen to what Trump and Biden are saying, then Trump is way more incoherent in his message, his vocabulary has diminished even further and makes mistakes about people and facts constantly. When he holds a rally, I can see that even some of his crowd are starting to notice. That's his cognition.
Additionally, Biden is more intelligent and more knowledgeable.
He'd do much better on any test than Trump, and you.
That's why I would vote for a weak but wiser man like Biden over a way more energetic, but dangerously stupid Trump, with his brain obviously turning into mush more every day.
You really think so, then bring it on anytime. I know the differece between a circle and triangle. I also know how to walk off of a stage without help and I can walk up steps without falling three times. I also need no diaper change which some do when they're COGNITION fails. Have any other smartass remarks about diaper changes? Cognition has a lot to do with having to wear a diaper, not just age. Keep the smartass remarks coming. Guess you got the dootie duty today by your remarks.
Don't be silly, I see him answer questions that YOU are not able to.
Neither can Trump. He can only talk about how he's 'being treated unfairly'.
I fear that either Biden and Trump in his current state will have troubles with that dementia test, but Trump has always been a dangerous selfish lunatic, who should have never been near The White House. Biden has always been a nice neo-liberal career politician, just like my last prime minister. Also not my favorite person to have in The White House, but at least not an imminent existential danger, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
When you vote for Democrats you get experienced bureaucrats who want to keep the government running smoothly. When their dementing president wants to do something stupid, they will calm him down and gently reason him out of it.
When you vote for Republicans, these days, you get utter lunatic Christo-fascists, who want to destroy the government, that keeps America minimally survivable. When their dementing president wants to do something stupid, they will cheer him on; "Yes, nuke them all!" and cum in their pants.
Not everything that you are saying is racist, but a lot. You hate a lot of people
and many of them are not white. It's not always because of their color, but you definitely have lots of prejudices based on color, religion and ethnicity.
Those prejudices based on color, religion and ethnicity are part of Trumpism.
America isn't racist; the Constitution is against racism. I like that.
Trumpism hates "all men are created equal", people having the unalienable Rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, equal rights, fair elections, equal protection under the laws, secularism, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, free education, three separate but equal branches of government, the power to declare war in the hands of Congress, the freedom against search and seizure and barring excessive bail and fines and cruel and unusual punishment.
Some of those rights you want for yourself, but for no one else.
That's not supporting the Constitution. You only support the Constitution,
if you support it for everyone.
It's not me that hates America, it's Trumpism that hates America!
That's why I call that Trumpism; Anti-American.
I do believe MAGA is winning and a majority say things were better with MAGA. Remember Maga was not ultra maga then, but joey made it that way. We have a weakling representing us now which much of the world like, you know idiots like you.
Better a weakling than a stupid, dangerous, selfish fascist.
Whatever MAGA stands for, there is nothing in your history that they want to bring back that will make your country better, let alone Great Again.
There were things that made America better than it is now,
the ability for a person with a normal job to buy a home.
Neither the 'normal' Republicans, nor MAGA, nor ultra-MAGA
has any plans that will ever give back the ability to a person
with a normal job to buy a home.
The only plans I see from 'normal' Republicans, MAGA, or ultra-MAGA
are screwing the middle class even more, in favor of the wealthy
and returning to racism, sexism and bigotry and supporting stupidity.
They support a mix of oligarchy and Christian fascism. Nothing else!
In any case, that's the opposite of what the Constitution describes.
Ultra-MAGA is unAmerican and planning to do treason against the USA (again).
People who understand that, would vote for a potted plant over Trump.
Why do you think I'm politically active? I'm 'cleaning my room'.
I have seen all the dirt and trash that right-wingers threw in 'my room',
and now I'm helping people with brains and responsibility clean it up.
Every problem in my country is the consequence of right-wingers giving away public ownership to the market, increasing the price and increasing bureaucracy, the exact opposite of what they promised would happen.
Still, my country is about 100X better organized than yours.
The US would rely on a 'few pumps' to protect your country, we do not.
There is literally nothing that the US does only a little bit better.
Your country is organized worse than the poorest countries in Europe.
The bottom 50% of Americans are living like the poorest Europeans.
Meanwhile, you have the richest 1% people in the world.
Supporting that system is hurting you, because you are in the bottom percentages.
So, when are you going to clean your room?
Or are you helping the 1% clean their room, by starving you to death.
I wouldn't HAVE a fucking room if it weren't for people with more than I have providing a job for me to work and earn a salary until i was unable.
would you have a room if you didn't have a job?
would it be as nice?
would should a free room be as good as 1 that a working person lives in?
a free room should be nothing that needs much cleaning,a floor 4 walls and a roof, want better,go to work for the man that has more than you and is willing to compensate you for your time spent doing his work.
To me you come across as someone that totally undervalues your own worth. It's not compensation. It's bartering using your labor and knowledge to trade for a worthy price. The employer is not doing you a favor. He needs you as much as you need him.
I understand that i have value ,I just have enough sense to know my value is not as high as someone with a higher engineering degree or more physical ability's than myself.
And I am doing the employer a favor and he is doing me 1.
The employer could have used the money he invested in a company or a product and just went to jamacia and lived and not made the choice of risking his worth to build a company that employes others.
Gm is 1 of few employers that may not be able to move totally off shore because of national security but most any company that makes wheel barrows or tractors or kitchen sinks can move off shore and save millions of dollars over the course of time. BUt they for some reason decide to stay here and employ Americans.So they are actually doing you a favor.
The reason for a business to stay here is that moving to another country is very very expensive and the transition to local laws, labor practices and language makes it an insurmountable task. Only big, multinational corporations can do that and they all have a foothold in the country they are moving to. Another reason is that owners have family and friends here. They don't want to move. You have this mistaken idea that employers are doing you a favor for creating a job for you. Their main interest is TO MAKE MONEY. They couldn't care who works for them as long as the work is done. You think they would give you a second thought when they don't need you anymore?. I can't believe you've reached late middle age and you haven't seen this.
How about people who are born unable to work or get turned that way as a kid,
by some drunk driver? Shouldn't they have a room?
If I didn't have a job, then 'Why not?', that's the question.
The answer determines how nice my room should be.
If I'm unable to work, the room should be nicer than when I'm unwilling to work.
There should be a minimum room for everyone, even the most lazy, selfish, drug addicted person who could be working at any job, but just are too lazy. That room shouldn't be nice, but nice enough to sit around doing nothing and living their life of the other people's effort.
That's the person that will otherwise just turn to crime, which makes them more damaging to society. They would hurt people and they would need to be incarcerated, adding to your $80 billion prison cost. It's much cheaper to just let those people be worthless but harmless.
Anyone who's not the most lazy, selfish, drug addicted person, would just want more than that minimum room, because most people want to have goals in life. Most people want to be useful or valuable to society. That's what we need, people who have the time to think about how they can serve society best. There is no use in forcing people to do some stupid, useless job, just because they need to eat and have a roof over their head.
The value I add to society is more than enough to feed and minimally house some useless bum. However, the value I add is not going to them or to me, but mostly to a few billionaires, who are just as useless. They sit around doing nothing too, but they have money working for them. That money is not serving bums, or society, it's just serving those billionaires in getting even richer.
Disabled people, kids, folks that are not in control of their destiny do need help. And the first place that help should come from is family. not government.
those without family, perhaps then the government should step up.
And i can't see the Financial gain in housing someone in a free room for being worthless over that of prison.
Prison can be contracted out and done in bulk in simple structures and feedings at a lower cost than housing bums in nice apartments. Putting a bum in a apartment with wifi and jacuzzi is not going to motivate them to be anything better.
The rich you call bums can always pull their investments,taking away your tax base for your government to provide freebies with and take away the jobs also.
Family does help and when it's not enough, it's the family's responsibility to ask for help outside the family. --------------------------------------- added after 5 minutes
And, by the way, the rich will NOT pull their investments and loose their profits just to keep from paying taxes that account for a very little percentage compared to their profits. Phart, just ask any businessman if he would close his business just to "moon" the government and see what they say.
"And i can't see the Financial gain in housing someone in a free room for being worthless over that of prison."
It is not that hard phart; to put someone in prison, they first need to commit a crime. I hope we agree on that, right? That crime causes damage to people. Understand? See why that is worse? And prisons are more expensive than just cheap social housing, because they require guards and lots of other facilities.
At least, some worthless bum can buy his own groceries and feed himself. An American prisoner costs $39,924 per year ($109.38 per day). Pay a bum half that money and they can take care of themselves.
"The rich you call bums can always pull their investments,taking away your tax base for your government to provide freebies with and take away the jobs also."
That's why you shouldn't allow a few individuals all that power and money!!!
Because, it makes democracy useless, if wealthy people control everything!!!
It's like, you got some bright moment of understanding here.
Keep it in your head for a while, think about it.
That's not "affordable" housing. That's a ridiculous price, resulting from housing being left to the 'market'.
I'm not asking to buy $300,000 houses for bums, I'm asking for low cost social housing projects, that they can rent.
Rent is just also ridiculously expensive, because that kind of housing is also left to the 'market'. Everything important for people to live has been changed to a 'market' for rich people to became even richer. My first rental home was $320 per month, when it was still owned by a social housing foundation. Not even 20 years later, those same houses, which are now even a little bit more dilapidated, are costing at least $600 per month now. That's because my right-wing government turned the the social housing foundations into partly privatized housing corporations, who need to make lots of profits, to pay the higher taxes that my right-wing government introduced.
We had one minister of housing, called Stef Blok, during the second term of our right-wing PM Mark Rutte, changing the housing responsibility of the government to a 'market'. He then claimed: 'The housing market is running like a charm'. Yes, for his rich friends, who are now making millions from investing in houses. Individuals who own and rent out houses almost pay no taxes, while the former social renting foundations are taxed through the nose. In 10 years the average rent increase was 35%. Because investors from all over the world are buying up houses, the price of houses for sale also shot up like a rocket.
We were smart to buy a house just before that, because we would never be able to afford one now anymore.
Your country has been controlled by right-wing policies for decades, mine hasn't. That's why I see their damage so clearly. I've seen a well organized government, providing good services to almost everyone, turned to shit in about 15 years by right-wing policies. That created 10 huge problems in my country:
1. Purchasing power / shrinking middle class (increased inequality)
2. Asylum crisis (cuts to the Immigration and Naturalization Service)
3. Energy crisis (due to privatization)
4. Nitrogen crisis (due to deregulation)
5. Housing crisis (due to privatization)
6. Healthcare costs getting out of control (privatization)
7. Climate causing increasing damages (not enough investments)
8. People receiving Child Benefits getting treated as fraudsters
9. Corona crisis managed poorly (ignorance)
10. Groningen natural gas extraction causing houses to collapse
We are still doing a lot better than the US, but left to right-winger, our country will be changed fairly quickly into something just as horrible as the US. We already have the second most expensive healthcare system in the world, after the US, because the Christian conservative government, before Rutte, privatized our healthcare system. It was promised to reduce costs and bureaucracy, but it did the exact opposite. All of the left predicted this, and they were 100% correct.
if you can't afford to feed kids and raise them you should not be getting benefits, unless something happened like your house burns or your health declines suddenly not allowing you to work to support them.
"if you can't afford to feed kids and raise them you should not be getting benefits,"
People should not NEED benefits to feed kids and raise them.
The problem is that too many jobs don't support feeding and raising kids,
even when nothing happened like your house burns or your health declines suddenly.
That's why you need a minimum wage; so people make enough money from a fulltime job, so they can feed kids and raise them.
That's why you need public services, supporting people's basic needs, instead of leaving it up to the market, which is only interested in maximizing profits to enrich a few selfish people, making those services unaffordable for lots of working class people.
This is exactly what I describing, but you're talking about 'benefits'.
You're not giving a REASON for what you're saying, you're just saying it.
You're just saying to people; "You're on your own!"
"Can't make enough money to have kids? Sucks for you!"
That idea results in millions of people not making kids.
If you are OK with that, have it your way, but it's not MAGA.
Why would you even consider having kids knowing full well you can't provide for them as they need?
Lack of common sense. You operate with the mindset of, "drop 10 and let the government feed them". Then they really are not YOUR kids anymore. When the government puts money into something,they also take control.
No man, anyone with a fulltime job should make enough money to be able to raise kids. Most couples are working at least one fulltime job. That should be enough to be able to raise kids. I just said that. How do you get from that, to the government feeding them, again?
It's crazy that the government should take care of people with a fulltime job. That's the system that you support, where wealthy people are allowed to exploit working people so much, that they are depending on the government. You still don't understand the socialism that I support. It will make people LESS dependent on the government, not more.
I don't want to pay taxes to subsidize companies who don't pay their employees enough. It's their job to pay their employees enough to live on and raise kids on. Companies who cannot do that deserve to go bankrupt. Then those employees can do more useful jobs. Any job that is useful should pay enough to live on and raise kids on.
Perhaps semantics inadvertently showed up in this chat. I believe you meant "affordable housing" as a unit that has, at least, a bedroom/living area, a bathroom, and a cooking area. If so, I agree with you.
I believe that "a place to stay" for homeless people is a communal area with bunk beds and a communal bathroom. The place would be a shelter from the weather and have a soup kitchen providing simple hot food.
In the US, affordable housing is subsidized (partial government funding) private development where the developer builds almost at cost plus a small profit. Then, the project is maintained by the local housing authority. The people that live there are long term tenants or renters.
Many homeless people, due to mantal health, addiction, or lack of education, don't stay in one place for long. The "place to stay" is just a shelter to catch their breath, so to speak.
In the case of affordable housing, those that are "housed" pay an affordable amount to maintain their unit. In the case of the homeless housing, the state and/or private donations maintain the housing unit. That's why I said they are opposites.
Well here is 1 issue. IF the homeless are homeless because of drugs, why arn't they expected to clean themselves up before getting help?
Why aid and abet their bad habits?
Why is a person becoming a drug addict ,quitting their job, leaving their family suddenly become the governments problem ?When they make the decision to pump dope or alcohol into themselves and allow it to take control, they are making their own bed. The people, the taxpayers ,are NOT making their bed.so why should the tax payers have to keep them up?
It's not aiding and abetting their bad habits, it's aiding and abetting their recovery.
Your idea is that it's their fault, so they have to be punished for it. However, you're not just punishing them, you are punishing society. People make mistakes sometimes. If they did a crime, then there should be punishment attached to that, but you are not even talking about crimes, but mistakes that are hurting mostly themselves. No one in their right mind would do that, so the best way to correct them is correct their mind. You don't do that with punishment, you do that with education and correcting their mental stability. Punishment is only prolonging their incorrect state of mind. Meanwhile, they are causing damage to other people than themselves. They are a burden to society, instead of contributing to it. The most efficient method of fixing that is my way. Your way will keep them in addiction longer, force them into crime, force them into prison, causing them in a downward spiral. Every step in that process funds drugs trade, destroys what remains of their brain, eliminates what morality and hope they have left and makes the rest of us less safe.
The tax payers should want to pay for their recovery, because it provides
a great RETURN ON INVESTMENT.
Another reason; someday it might be you. Even if you are part of the 1% club, there is always a possible route to the bottom. Bad luck is always around the corner and people make mistakes. Of course, in your country, the richest people are almost impervious to bad luck and mostly unaccountable for their mistakes, but most people are just a medical emergency away from bankruptcy. You have been told a lie, a million times, that all those people in trouble have caused it themselves. You know it's not true for you, but you keep believing it for everyone else and keep basing your ideology on that false belief.
I am 56 years old and no one has taken any action to f0rce me to take a drink ,or to take a pill or shot in the arm of illegal substances.
I have had doctors prescribe everything up to fentanyl for my pain that i had to stand down from after the 2d dose because it altered my thinking, mood and so forth to a point people were afraid of me.Oxy, what little of it I used, did deal with the pain but I was so demotivated that i had no desire to eat,or do anything but lay in a chair. A miserable exsistance.
So when you tell me that it is NOT the persons fault they are a drug addict, that is why i disagree. I had all the chances in the world of getting it legally and being 400 pounds and brainless. But I resisted. so can others. They willing allow themselves to take drugs, or a drink and once they realize it alters their well being ,if they continue, it is their fault. No one else's.
Now I can agree, they are a burden to society, but I have watched a former classmate,a genius by iq sadly, go thru rehab over 35 times and serve several prison sentences, only to have a calendar in his jail cell marking off the days until he could get some more crack. So rehab does not work for alot of people ,it is wasted faith in a broken system.
We agree on the basics but just not much on the solutions.
"Studies have found that of those who struggle with a addiction to meth and complete rehab, 61% will relapse within a year – that number rising to 74% three years post-treatment, and ending at 73% relapse rate five years post-treatment."
Good that you have responsibility in that way. I'm sure it saved your life.
Many other people in your situation would have gone down the tubes.
Respect!
Some of our addiction care has a 80% succes rate. That's 80% of their patients still being clean after 1 year.
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It's only in Dutch, but you can easily use Google Translate.
"Na een jaar is ruim 80% goed in herstel. Na drie jaar is zelfs bijna 90% goed in herstel."
But, it's not JUST people's own responsibility. It's ALSO the system.
Why else does your country have so much more addiction problems?
Why does America have the biggest fentanyl crisis in the world?
If it's JUST the people, then what is wrong with Americans?
What is the difference between Americans and Dutch people, who you think are weak liberals, who expect the government to help them in every situation? Why did the US have 70,601 fentanyl overdose deaths in the same year that The Netherlands had 150? That's 470 times more, while you only have 19 times more people. That's 25 times more per capita.
That cannot be JUST the people. Do you agree?
Yes, with 'affordable housing' I would be referring to a unit that has, at least, a bedroom/living area, a bathroom, and a cooking area, for one person. There should be affordable housing for families that need it too, providing more than that. I would say that 'affordable housing' should be provided to everyone that is not able to afford normal housing, even if they are not working. I think it's the minimum that everyone should have, because humanity has progressed to a level that we are able to provide that to everyone. The only reason for why we don't do that is that a few selfish wealthy people are taking most of the resources from the rest of the people.
The best way for people to get out of a circle of homelessness, is to provide 'affordable housing', and help them fix the mental health, addiction, or lack of education, that is limiting them to take care of themselves. There have been many experiments attempting to take people out of homelessness and making them self-sufficient again. Giving them money can be successful, but most of the time they are not able to make the right decisions yet. Providing 'affordable housing' is the most effective. It alleviates enormous stress, and provides a safe space to recover. Just sending addicts to rehab and returning them to the streets or homeless shelter is almost a guarantee to failure. The succes rate is even higher if you just provide the 'affordable housing' and let them try to rehabilitate themselves.
I would call it 'affordable housing' even when the person has no income at all and the government is fully paying for it. The goal is to come to a situation where the person can afford it themselves. We should not kick them out of their home, as soon as they get a job. They should be allowed to stay there as long as they want, until they can and want to afford something better.
I'm against private donations. People who have lots of money should be taxed high enough so the government is able to provide these basic services to everyone who needs them. In the end, this will benefit them too, because it allows everyone to contribute to society to their maximum potential. Homelessness, addiction and lack of education are very damaging to society. The damage is higher than the cost of preventing those limits to people's potential.
The biggest reason against affordable housing or shelters is because people of all income levels don't like to have them in their neighborhoods. The second reason is "I don't want my tax dollars to go for support of these worthless scum.". In other words, selfishness and bigotry. That's my country's failure. Many of us try to change the system but there are too many Phart types with their mindsets. They refuse to acknowledge that homelessness and unaffordable housing begets bigger problems for society.
A helping hand to someone who is down on their luck is 1 thing, but there are 3rd generations welfare folks all over this country. No one in the damn family has ever worked, that is the "worthless scum" we refer to.
Not a family who's house burned down or the factory got sent to china by no fault of their own.
Another thing, Citys and towns and county's zoned away affordable housing a long time ago.
There was affordable housing shortly after ww2 and it was available on up into the 90's.
It was called mobile homes. Conner ,Oakwood for example. There were several factory's that employed 100's of people that had to shut down around here because the city's and county's wanted more expensive homes to be built, more tax money.
they didn't have to be in "parks". When my uncle came home from vietnam he bought a brand new mobile home,put it up beside my grandparents house for a few years. When he got a good job and things were going well for hum, he bought about 20 acres 2 miles down the road. 1 sunday morning they hooked the trailer up to the 3000 ford tractor and pulled it down there to his own land,and later, added to it, and now it is a brick house with that little trailer somewhere in the middle of it. He paid for it all in a few short years on a foundry salary. It could be done then and it could be done now, if government would get the fuck out of the way and let people work and pay for the house they can afford.
Phart, "but there are 3rd generations welfare folks all over this country. No one in the damn family has ever worked, that is the "worthless scum" we refer to."
First, it's a fact of society that if one generation is piss poor, the following generations will be too. Second, you are wrong when you believe that welfare is a panacea. The amount of help in dollars and cents is not enough to maintain a family in the luxury you believe they have.
I believe your relative did what you say he did. What does that prove? You said it yourself, he smooched of his grandparents for several years. I remember well the Vietnam Vets coming home. At the time, the GI bill was still in effect. My brother got a house with nothing down. So what?
Your examples mean nothing unless you can make it the rule, but, even then, why are you suggesting that recipients of government help are ALWAYS deadbeats? That, sir, is a conservative view that's been debunked years ago.
Ok, Phart, just Google it. Woody58 has it right.
In the case of welfare that is provided to the citizens, considering the high levels of poverty in the United States, and considering the amount of oversight to those programs that try to provide a modicum of relief to our growing population living in poverty, the answer is that very few of them are actually “deadbeats”
Now, if you consider the amount of Corporate Welfare that is handed out indiscriminately to the corporations who plunder our economy without restraint, and if you realize that this amount of handouts are many times over what poor people are allowed, and if you object to handing out welfare to people and corporations who are already wealthy, you will understand that all corporate welfare recipients are deadbeats.
If your company closes, the money in your 401(k) doesn't disappear. The money will remain in your employer's plan unless the plan itself is terminated. In this case, the money in your account will roll over to another account on your behalf or get distributed directly to you.
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1 thing i never realized, welfare encourages broken or never formed familys because the benefits are higher for single people.That means kids growing up without dad so the mom can get more money
this is a scary amount of money,
"The financial cost of the War on Poverty has been enormous. Between 1965 and 2016, total means-tested welfare spending by federal and state governments cost taxpayers roughly $27.8 trillion in constant FY 2016 dollars. By contrast, the cost to the U.S. government for all military wars from the American Revolution to the present is $8 trillion in FY 2016 dollars."
And here is my pet peeve that is part of what is said early in the article ,"Self-defeating behaviors that increase the need for assistance are rarely even mentioned. "
If a dope head wants welfare ,or a alky ,they need to be forced to STOP that behavior before more than just life sustaining help is given.
Just to quote the summary for those with ADD,
"The true cost of welfare or aid to the poor is largely unknown because the spending is fragmented into myriad programs. Current welfare is focused largely on increasing benefits and enrollments and redistributing income. Self-defeating behaviors that increase the need for assistance are rarely even mentioned. Policymakers should replace welfare’s current focus with a new set of interlinked goals: reducing self-defeating and self-limiting behaviors, increasing self-support, and improving true human well-being. Welfare reform should (1) require all able-bodied adult recipients to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving aid, (2) remove the substantial penalties against marriage within the welfare system, and (3) fund programs aimed at improving behavior on a payment-for-outcome basis rather than today’s fee-for-service basis. "
I agree with you. The dopeheads need help to get of off drugs. It's been tried and it's still being tried. If not successful, what do you suggest? Let them die?
Put them away, out of harms way and out of society's way and let them croak, or get down to 0 and finally ask for real help.
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First, that city is Vancouver, Canada. Second, Vancouver is a very successful city. That video doesn’t prove much. Legal or illegal drugs are available to any druggie in any country in the world.
Vancouver is one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities in Canada: 49.3 percent of its residents are not native English speakers, 47.8 percent are native speakers of neither English nor French, and 54.5 percent of residents belong to visible minority groups.[7][8] It has been consistently ranked one of the most livable cities in Canada and in the world.[9][10][11] In terms of housing affordability, Vancouver is also one of the most expensive cities in Canada and in the world.[12] Vancouver plans to become the greenest city in the world. Vancouverism is the city's urban planning design philosophy.
Phart, what you propose is too costly any way you look at it and letting them die is inhumane, not to mention the costs of the repercussions.
You do have a point with free money. I know that it makes people lazy and incentivizes them not to work. Hell, why work when the government will give you more not to work. Kind of hard to return to work if you are going to make less than what the government gives out for free.
Tecsan, your point of view and Phart’s is true to some extent, but, it’s not the whole story.
Suppose you are in that situation where you are on welfare because you get more than if you went to work, why is that? Could it be that minimum wages are far below what a bottom of the barrel job should be?
The poverty threshold in the US is $15K/yr for an individual and $20K/yr for a family of two. Working at a hamburger joint, getting $10/hr for 32 hrs/week is $16640/yr LESS taxes and other deductions. A 32hr work week is standard in the industry. This allows the employer to qualify you as part time employee and not have to pay for extra benefits like OT or insurance.
In Florida, you can get up to $3,636 per year, based on the state's maximum benefit of $303 per month. The average benefit amount for Florida's SNAP program stands at $180. With approximately 2.85 million beneficiaries, which accounts for around 13% of the state's population, SNAP plays a crucial role in helping individuals and families afford groceries.Aug 7, 2023
So, in Florida, you can get $483/month on average plus extra SNAP benefits for extra people in the family.
That’s not very much of an incentive to NOT go to work, however, some people make do. Most people would like to make more. The answer, as I see it, is to make it more favorable to go to work. Fifteen dollars per hour minimum wage would be a minimum. And, yes, Phart, a burger would cost you more.
c'est la vie
At least you can see my cooking!
Chilli beans!
12 hours in the crock pot.
All kinds of goodies in it,good to! if I ate like this all the time,i would be really PHAT phart
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well that is why I call them chili beans,
just chili? odd
And this particular batch was made from kidney beans on sale at walmart, maters from the garden I froze during the summer for spaghetti sauce, onions, bell peppers from the garden ,salt, black pepper, ground cayenne pepper, and mild sausage made from some of the wild hogs shot in my neighbors back yard a few years ago. the sausage from the 1's shot in my back yard has been gone,I had it made HOT.
Guess I am an odd Texan. I call it chili. No beans in TX chili. But, it might be good. Never tried it here. Now maters , onions from my garden would be great. Too lazy to plant one though, damn weeds is all I can grow.
I make my own sauce using crushed tomatoes, plus tomato sauce and tomato paste. I also use the fillings from uncured Argentine pork sausage. I get those from Wild Forks Food. I go easy on the cayenne. We don’t like it super hot.
I find that the second day the flavor is so much better. I’m getting hungry
Better read again what I said there. I didn't say the 1% aint cleaning their own room.
I said; cleaning their room, for them means getting rid of poor people, like you.
They don't want to do it by giving you money, but by killing you in the most efficient way allowed. Not giving you access to medicine that you need is very effective. Or they get rid of people by locking them up. That's why the made weed illegal; to lock up young black men.
I'm referring to a racist policy. It is 100% proven that your government outlawed weed, with the intention to lock up young black men. You're right, that was racism, talking about it is not, unless you support that racism.
That is a false claim about 'weed".
Just some revisionist history.
Weed was and should be illegal because it is a entry level drug that has ruined 1000's of lives just as alcohol has.
You are destroying your own argument; ALCOHOL IS LEGAL!
Do we throw people who sell alcohol in prison?
You do know how awful the Prohibition turned out, right?
"It led many drinkers to switch to opium, marijuana, patent medicines, cocaine, and other dangerous substances that they would have been unlikely to encounter in the absence of Prohibition."
The Prohibition turned alcohol into a gateway drug. (And it created the Mafia)
But it didn't reduce any of the problems associated with alcoholism.
There is no evidence at all that weed is an 'entry level drug', actually legal weed can prevent people using more dangerous drugs. Fentanyl is mostly used by people who are in pain. Their pain can be treated much safer with weed.
If weed ever was an 'entry level drug', than that was BECAUSE IT WAS ILLEGAL.
Legalization might have increased the use a bit, but it reduces harm a lot.
People are no longer put in prison for carrying or smoking a bit of weed.
They can be active members of society, instead of a burden, by being in prison.
The same damage has been caused by other drugs being illegal.
It has saved NO LIVES, the US has the most addicted people in the world,
the most drug overdose deaths and the most people in prison.
Your ideas are clearly, objectively wrong.
Yes the US has a lot of addicted people thanks to other countries and joey (you know shitty britches) open border policy. I do not really know about marijuan though, if it were the same as when I were younger then maybe ok. But these new strains are really fucking people up more. Yes, we know how prohibition turned out. How is your EV models going to turn out there. Wait til China wants your Country. Please do not ask for help from us. Your Country fell for climate shit, more than joey (shitty britches).
People who need a truck to do their job, but that job doesn't pay much,
then they are bound to pay more for their car, than for their house.
There are lots of delivery drivers in my country that are forced to lease a van for their jobs. That is very expensive, but they get payed a very low amount per delivery. If they get a difficult route, they often make just enough to pay for the van. They are very lucky, or working like a machine, if they make more money to spend on a house than on their van.
If you don't need a truck to do your job, you don't need a truck and definitely not a new one. Then your first priority is housing. You only need a few thousand dollars for a dependable, fuel economical commuter. Buying a new truck for that, is a waste of money.
20 years ago ,a affordable used car for 3000 dollars, was a reality. But not any more. Cars have so much electronics on them that a 10 year old car needing just a ecm is considered not worth repairing .Alot of people are buying trucks now that don't technically need them because the cars are so damn small and ride rough and are cramped and have NO resale value to speak of.Your roads over there in the nether regions,you might go 40 miles 1 way for a long trip,a trip here is 300 miles. who wants to ride in a roller skate for 300 miles?
Twenty years of inflation turned that $3000 into $5091.
About 23 years ago, I bought a $3000 car that lasted me 7 years.
The first MOT uncovered a structural problem that costed $1000 to fix, but yearly maintenance after that was acceptable, because I used a non-brand garage.
I'm actually paying more on maintenance now, with a newer car, because with a newer car it's advised to keep it in good shape at the brand garage.
I pay at least $500/year in maintenance, tires not included. I need a new set soon, which will cost at least $750.
With a car that is well past a decade old, with over 100,000 miles on it, you start doing the minimum and just drive until it falls apart. My last Toyota, I bought at 4 years old, with 35000 miles on it, for $11,000. The first 5 years, I kept it up well, paying up to $500 per year in maintenance. The last 5 years was very cheap, but it required me to accept some noises and oil consumption. At age 17, almost everything broke down simultaneously, so I bought a new car and still got back $500 for the old banger. It was going to Africa for its second life.
In conclusion, it's the cheapest to buy a car for $5000, which is then like a 10 year old Toyota Aygo with 40,000 miles on it. It will last you at least 10 years, if you take moderate care of it and like 7 years if you only spend money on oil changes and tires, at a non-brand garage.
That same $3000 car from 20 years ago is therefore absolutely possible.
Wish I could find a car I would actually drive for $5,000. Guess I should be more like you and look for something like
a Toyota which you could not give me. I will stick with GMC. Hope it guzzles the 'gas' and pollutes the hell out of your little world. The chinese pollute more than I ever thought about doing.
I see you like sending your old crap to other countries.
It's you who's wasting money, if you buy a GMC.
American cars are low quality. The only part that lasts long is the engine,
because they are big lumps of iron, everything else breaks every odd year.
Japanese cars are built with parts that last.
All the old Toyota's go to Africa. That's not my choice, that's supply and demand. Labor is cheap there, so they will do a complete engine overhaul and give it another lease of life. That car didn't have a spec of rust on it and the interior was still very tidy. It was just not economically feasible for me, to get a refurbished engine, alternator, water pump, interior fan, window wiper motor and some other parts. But, they can do that cheaply in Africa, providing some African family with a car that can drive almost for ever, if they keep fixing it.
It's your little world too dumb-ass. The US will get into trouble much earlier
than my country, because we think ahead and the US is incapable of that.
Also, I live further from the equator than all of the US. You will probably starve, die from heatstroke or in a wildfire or in a hurricane or a flood or in some riot over food and water, many years before me.
China is emitting half the CO2 per capita of the US
and they are further in the energy transition than the US.
China is polluting a lot, but then they are making everything for everyone else in the world. That's not their pollution, that's your pollution too and mine. If we want them to pollute less, we should just have some demands on how they make all those things for us. But, that's thinking (ahead), something you are incapable of doing.
You are 100% sure not driving around with all of the same parts that the car came out of the factory with, excluding filters. That would be a 1 in a million outlier of American cars.
"Only 1 American Car Brand Is on Most Reliable Top 10 List": Lincoln.
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But that's a very expensive brand. Almost all Japanese, German and Korean cars are better value for money.
I am talking about economical optimization here. Any GMC is more expensive when you buy it and guzzles gas like a motherfucker. Unless you have a big family or another need for a big car, it's just burning money, that could have been spent on nicer things. But, maybe you feel some need to compensate for something, with a big car. I do not.
I don't believe that is true. Maybe you believe it, but I don't.
Even that Toyota I had, required some new parts, in its 17 year life.
It wasn't a lot; as far as I can remember, some axel rubbers and an ignition coil, in 17 years. All the parts that were getting old were still working, but to pass its MOT would have been expensive. And I was not going to do that, with all those aging parts making the future maintenance even more expensive. I had a very cheap last 5 years and then I bought another medium sized 4 year old, low mileage, fuel economical Japanese car for about $13,500, which is cheap on fuel, road tax and insurance.
I pay $40 for all risk insurance, which I needed a few years back, when I got into a pileup on the highway. It saved me about $1500 for the damage on the front. Still pretty low speed collisions, no airbags were triggered.
If that happens, it gets very expensive.
My car is mostly standing in my parking space, because I'm working from home for 90%. I use it more often for shopping and visiting friends and family. It has all the accessories that I wanted; climate control, cruise control, satnav, digital radio, parking aids and cameras all around and it seats 4 people comfortably, it has a trunk big enough for lots of shopping and our holidays and when I put the back seats down, it can take a big IKEA flatpack, it can easily do 110 mph, when I drive through Germany.
The little scooter cars like that are ok for folks that do very little but move themselves and some grocery bags.
Not practical for most Americans.
Half the time I am on the hwy going over 10 miles from home, I am towing a trailer ,sometimes over 3000 pounds cargo, not possible with a Camery.
Your system works for you,that's great, but it is like a pair of shoes,1 size does not fit all.
I still can't believe you got only 17 years from a toyota? My God what are you using for oil?
hondas and toyotas here last until people just decide to trade ,not because they are bad.
When you say it was not feasible to rebuild the engine,and bought a newer car,you just spent way more money than a new engine. I can't see that being a wise move if you only got 500 bucks for the car that was clean ,and straight, sounds as though it had plenty of life in it.
I don't have a 'little scooter car'. It's an average size car, for my country.
I know most Americans are huge, but I'm no small guy either and I fit comfortably.
True, my car cannot pull 3000 pounds of cargo. I have only needed that once in 3 decades. I'm not going to buy a big truck and pay for its gas consumption, for that one time that can easily be solved by renting a big van. I don't believe that all those Americans who drive huge cars have to pull 3000 pounds of cargo every other week.
When I had my Toyota, I still drove to work every day. It had 140,000 miles on it. It was still possible to fix it up, but just very expensive. I do think car-parts are way more expensive in The Netherlands. You don't compare the costs of the repairs with a new car, you compare them with the extended life of the old car. Even in mint condition that 17 year old Toyota would have had a value of at maximum $2000, way less than what the repairs were going to cost. Just the intake manifold alone, which was a very rare part, would have costed $1000. The lowest price was $750, in Russia, with no guarantees. A refurbished 1.4 16V VVTI was at least about $1200. Adding the other parts and the labor, would add up to at least $4000, to get several more years out of it. That would have made the car more expensive than its history. I bought it for $12,000 and drove it for 12 years, that's $1000 per year. If a car becomes more much expensive than that, I replace it for one that lowers my spending again or delivers me more comfort for my money. I could spend a lot less, by buying 10 year old cars and driving them till they break, but I want a car to be reliable and I do allow myself some comfort. I wanted cruise control for years, now I have it and use it a lot.
Maybe most of those Americans are forced to keep repairing an old car, because they cannot afford the big investment of replacing it, but at some point it's cheaper to replace than to repair. I have enough money saved, to buy a new car tomorrow, if I need. I just don't do it for the fun of it, but when it is financially optimal. I hope to get at least another 7 years out of my current car.
140,000 miles on a toyota and you sold it for 500 bucks?
Damn, any decent toyota if the timing belt is replaced and it is serviced regular should give 250,000 -300,000 miles and still be fit to pass along to the kid headed to college.
As for what you said to tescan about his gmc not being on the road for 20 years with the same parts, ha, i am sorry,but the car I drove to work for 12.5 years, still has it's original engine, 340,000 miles or so, don't 100% know because I drove it 2 years with a broken speedo cable, so it is probably higher than that.
I kept it serviced, brakes, tires, same thing a 4 year old car would need.
A well built durable car or a cheap0 car, there is part of the issue.
A gmc, has to be a suv or pickup,they don't sell car's under that name plate. Most have a chassis,which means more durable than a unibody car.Heavyer brakes, so less stress on them,longer wear,and etc.
No, I traded it in for 500 bucks. I might have gotten more for it, if I had sold it myself, but that takes time and is a nuisance. I needed to get rid of it quickly, because it's illegal to keep a car with a failed MOT on the road.
The engine itself was still mostly OK, but it required at least new piston rings and a new timing chain (not a timing belt). Both requires taking apart the whole engine. With labor and parts, that's over $800. It's then better to just put in a completely refurbished engine. However, all those other parts were then not going to last the new lease of life of the car. Bills will just keep adding up. It's possible to do that, but then I was still driving an old car, for the annual costs of a new one. My garage informed me several years before that all those parts were getting old and were going to require replacement in the next 5 years. That would add up to many thousands of dollars, which is absolutely more than the value of the car. So, I decided to drive it until it failed the MOT and the costs to repair would be too high. I drove another 3 years, with only basic service and then the last MOT would add up to at least $800.
If I remember correctly, that was just for new tires or brakes, not even the aging parts. That was not worth it, because the rattling intake manifold was bugging me and it was using a lot of oil. The $800 would not have fixed that or any of the other parts, just the MOT failures.
I'm sure that car could have reached 300,000 miles, and it is probably doing that somewhere in Africa, but that's not a financially smart thing to do in The Netherlands, where parts and labor are very expensive.
I also took the gas consumption into account. My Toyota did 31 MPG on average, my current car did about 47 MPG for the same use.
Pre-covid, that was a difference of at least $900 per year.
The cheapest GMC (C1500) that I can find on Autotrack.nl costs $13,121. It's from 1996 and has 180,000 miles on it.
Or, I could buy a Toyota Yaris from 2019, with 38,570 miles on it.
Are you telling me that the GMC would be cheaper, on service?
Lets calculate what I would pay for fuel, in The Netherlands:
At least it uses LPG, so that saves some money, but it would do about 7 to 8 MPG. With my pre-covid yearly driving, that would have costed me $4,600 per year, at least $1,800 per year more than with my Toyota. That's the cost of a new Toyota engine every year.
140,000 miles and the rings were shot in the engine? Annas, I am not being a smart ass here but literally I am in shock to read that a TOYOTA didn't last any longer than that. WOW
Not being a smart ass here,please find out what oil your mechanic is putting in your car! If it is that recycled shit,it is ruining your engine! You need to be running a better quality oil apparently 140,000 on a Toyota engine,is chump change.
"In general, piston rings should be replaced every 100,000 to 150,000 miles."
The intake manifold of a Toyota is not just a lump of metal, it has moving parts. It was designed to last the life of the car, but it was obvious that mine wasn't lasting. It sounded awful.
The annoying thing is that those intake manifolds are now dirt cheap, because most of those Toyota's have ended their lifetime and shelves are filled with good second hand parts, for the few remaining cars of its type that are still driving around. When I needed that part, it was very expensive and rare. The other parts had also exceeded their expected lifespan; the alternator (expected lifespan: 80,000 to 150,000 miles), the water pump (expected lifespan: 60,000 to 90,000 miles). Other parts were starting to make noises that they were close to the end of their life, like the interior fan (dependent on use), or the wiper motors (dependent on use).
You have a point with the oil changes. For several years, I brought my car to the Toyota dealership in the city I lived then, for MOT and service, at least that's what I expected. Every year, they told me that everything was fine again and billed me a significant amount of money. Then after several years they said: "Isn't it time that you do an oil change? It looks like tar!". I asked them: "What? Didn't you do that then?". And they told me that I hadn't asked for it. Turned out that they considered that not part of the yearly service. The bill was just saying "MOT and service", with a significant price behind it, so I expected that as included. I was very angry with them. I told them that I bought a Toyota and came to a Toyota dealership to not have to think about these things and that I expected them to discuss important things like "Do you want the oil changed?". I never returned to that Dealership again and used the one where I bought it. They were much more communicative.
What oil you are using doesn't affect the wear of the intake manifold, the alternator, the water pump, the interior fan, or the wiper motors.
The car was still pretty young when it had tar for oil, but it must have done some damage. That distribution chain was making noise after that, but it went away after a few months of driving with fresh oil. It would have been probably still OK for a while, when I traded in the Toyota, but I wasn't going to assume that, when I had the choice to start spending many hundreds of dollars, to extent the car's life.
When almost every part in the car has exceeded its expected lifespan, you make a financial decision between the value of the car and (expected) repair costs. I decided it was 'economically totaled'.
Sorry, you only believe in your woke BS anyway. But is true. GM does make good durable vehicles. I hope you do not believe it truthfully, go buy another little toyota.
Proudly spending lots of his money to fuck the climate!
Why don't you by some mercury and cyanide, to throw in the river,
that is used for your drinking water? That's the same thing, dumb-ass.
China is polluting a lot of water, so why don't you?
How do we get China and India onboard? By implementing regulation against buying shit from them, that is made by polluting factories and with energy from fossil fuels. The US is in the way.
I gave my 2004 Tahoe to my son-in-law 5 yrs ago. He uses it to give road service to his customers (he has a high end auto shop like Ferraris). The truck has 240K and still runs strong. At the time I paid $28K. It looks good too. He tells me he’s had to replace 2 batteries, one water pump and some type of clutch in the fan. Tires and oil and filter too. --------------------------------------- added after 5 minutes
The Nissan Rouge I bought new in 2015 to replace the Tahoe has 154K miles and the tranny is shot. The car is good for city driving only. The engine is still strong and will probably last another 100K but replacing the tranny, even if my son-in-law does the work, would be over $3500. Not worth it. The day it gives up the ghost I’ll pull the tag and call a junker to pick it up.
Wow, 8 years old and already a bad transmission?
I would not have expected that from a nissan.
3500 is still cheaper than a new car,
That is what people seem to miss, why make payments on something when you can repair it and be debt free longer?
I had a scooter car for a while. a inherited 2001 ford focus wagon. high mileage, good air, good radio, I had it a year and a half, I used it some ,it was a wagon so it had some space but couldn't tow, couldn't haul much. when it dropped a valve seat, I sold it for 500 bucks to a young fellow for him and his sons to fix for a family car. Sadly, it didn't work out as the replacement head failed and destroyed the engine.
When it was all said and done, I drove the car for free except gas, as I had spent 500 on tag,title,2 tires and a shifter cable, and insurance for that length of thime.
I priced a engine at pulla part for 450, should a went that route but it was just not worth the cost of tag ,insurance, and upkeep for a few more miles to the gallon.
Insurance on my truck is about 325 a year, tax and tags about 75-80,would have to check the paperwork.Sure it gets about 15 to the gallon, but the gas is no more costly than another cars up keep just to save gas.
If you do the math correctly, it doesn't agree with you.
The right new car is cheaper than continuing to repair an old one.
But, you are saying one thing; "why make payments on something when you can repair it and be debt free longer?". That doesn't apply to me.
The only time that I borrowed money for a car, was for that Toyota.
I was just short a few thousand on my savings account. I didn't want to sell any stocks for it, at that point, so I borrowed that money from my parents and paid them back in a few months. I never have to do that again. I have more than enough in my savings account for what I usually spend on a car and only 'play the stock-market' with money I don't need. I made at least $6000 pure net profit on the stock-market, not even including dividend and portfolio value increase. I do capitalism pretty well, because I know logic, math and science.
Before anyone start telling me what a hypocrite socialist I am, you don't understand it; I want EVERYONE who works to be able to make enough money to participate in the modern financial system, not just the few people who let other people work for them. Stocks are 100% compatible with socialism, they just should be created by public capital and part of the profits of the public investments should be distributed to working people on top of their salary. That would turn into a big part of their social security.
Maybe I should invent a new term than 'socialist', like 'Social Capitalist'.
I like it, that really describes my political ideas. Damn, the term already exists. There are even books about it.
Phart, we put approx. 25K miles/yr on our car. The Nissan, as a second car, is ok. We use it to haul everything from trash to building materials, but if we take it on the Turnpike, the tranny overheats in about half an hour of 70+ driving. It’s scary to suddenly not being able to do more than 45 MPH.
In the last 4 months we’ve been to Kentucky, 5 times to Key West, twice to Gainesville, and four times to Flagler Beach. We need a reliable car. Maintenance is a breeze. Jose, my son-in-law, takes care of anything the warranty doesn’t cover. BTW, we never buy a new, o miles, car. We look with for a vehicle with less than 30K. The depreciation as you drive a new vehicle out of the dealers lot is a ripoff. We’ve always been right side up on the value of our vehicles.
The clinton list would get a addition as the judge would have some strange accident.his lamp cord would jump up off the floor and choke him or something
Corruption is running rampant in washington right now.
Every time someone was indicted for that, it was on top of another crime related to
gun use.
The average American who engages in tax-fraud doesn't have the Justice Department coming after them. That's just BECAUSE he's the son of the president.
By the way, tax-fraud is the least of the crimes that your preferred president has been accused of. Himself, not just both of his older sons and his daughter. Trump has been found guilty of 17 felonies, including tax fraud and falsifying business records.
Trump has to pay $1.6 million in fines, but why is he not going to jail?
Who is actually threatening judges and prosecutors and witnesses and the jury?
Never heard Joe Biden do that. As always, accusing the other side of what your side
is doing.
Hunters charges have absolutely nothing to do with corruption, because Hunter Biden
is not a politician and none of the charges are at all related to Joe Biden.
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Didn't I say that Alina Habba is Trump's Worst Lawyer?
She really screwed Trump again, because the Appeals court denies Trump's 'presidential immunity' argument in the E. Jean Carroll's defamation suit, because Alina Habba had waited too long to raise it as a defense.
Of course it would be completely unconstitutional if the Court of Appeals had decided otherwise, but after all the court packing that Trump did, there is no guarantee anymore of judges actually caring about the constitution.
In any case, this is now an important precedent against Trump.
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The bidens are hunters and gatherers of money
but unfortunately they had to cancel it according to the affidavits now released by the police department. Bridget Ziglar, again, a co-founder of the right wing group, moms for Liberty behind some of the book bans across the country because they're indoctrinating our children into their sexual deviancy, told police "Yeah, we had scheduled a threesome with this woman, but I unfortunately had to cancel that particular day.". But according to the woman who made the complaint against Ziegler's husband, they had been doing this for quite some time.
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Right-wingers like them are accusing everyone of sexual deviancy, but meanwhile they are closeted homosexuals who suck male prostitutes in back alleys, or they hire a black man to fuck their wife while they are jerking off, or their teen daughter had several abortions already, or they have been watching teen boys in the shower, or they talk about how they would want to take the virginity of their daughter, or they are just doing everything they have ever accused democrats of doing.
It is amazing how hypocritical conservatives are. Every single thing they accuse others of doing, or are firmly against, is an admission of guilt for that exact thing.
at the US-Canada bridge.
Here's the difference with liberal and right-wing media:
CNN and MSNBC just reported it as an accident, because there was no evidence
to report it as anything else.
Fox 'News' immediately called it a terror attack.
They had to retract it later, because there is no reason to think that.
And now Fox 'News' is blaming the liberal media, while it was their own
irresponsible fearmongering, to call it a terror attack.
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Fox 'News' doesn't have any journalistic integrity, it's propaganda.
They just want you to be afraid and angry, so you'll vote for a dictator,
to protect you from the bullshit they put in your brain.
They have nothing real to offer you, so they lie to you 24/7.
There is a code of ethics for journalists. Fox 'News' shits on it.
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I found it through this guy, Nate Lawson, reacting to it:
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head scratchers as to what it all has to do with the real world.
a few water pumps stop and ananas won't be with us any longer, and he thinks America has issues.
Better listen, if you still want to do something to MAGA.
How can you MAGA, if you don't listen to people telling you
what problems you have in America?
Or are you like Hillary, saying 'America is already great'?
People were working, people were being successful ,achieving goals. Sure we had a "cold war" going on with Russia but at that time all they were doing was the same as us, trying to survive and make sure the world knew they would and could defend themselves ,same as us.
Now we shouldn't be that scared of russia ,both countries are
are blasting syria right now, keeping it's terrorist in check We are now forced to be scared of lone wolf terrorist and those backed by middle eastern interest. A fear we didn't have growing up.
And, like always, the only thing you can come up with to criticize Biden is his age.
It shows that you are unable to think about what actually matters in the world.
Trump definitely wears a diaper (too). You're only claiming Biden does, because it was said about Trump way before. It's your standard projection.
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Trump regularly makes mistakes in his rallies, thinking Obama is still president or he won an election against Obama or warns that Biden is taking the nation into WWII. He's obviously experiencing mental decline, which is a problem, because he never had much intelligence, even when he was younger.
In any conversation, Biden is coherent and logical, while Trump is incoherent, chaotic, fully self-centered (which can be a mental health condition, a personality disorder and a symptom of Alzheimer's disease) and he's constantly saying the dumbest things imaginable. The only reason that Trump cares about the next election, is getting off from all his indictments, by pardoning himself, which would be the most shameful act by an American president in history, and getting revenge on all the people he holds accountable for holding him accountable. He doesn't care about you or any other American. He only cares about himself and you are a dumb-ass for supporting a man of that character.
because it's bullshit related to his cognition.
His lack of energy and the soft way he speaks is related to his age,
his actual cognition is in better shape than Trump's cognition.
You're judging Biden on appearing weak, which is related to his age.
You're not judging Biden on his memory or his ability to answer a question or his ability to understand a difficult topic, which is his cognition.
It's all just about appearances for you. And on appearances, Trump looks better. Trump speaks with confidence and energy. However, if you actually listen to what Trump and Biden are saying, then Trump is way more incoherent in his message, his vocabulary has diminished even further and makes mistakes about people and facts constantly. When he holds a rally, I can see that even some of his crowd are starting to notice. That's his cognition.
Additionally, Biden is more intelligent and more knowledgeable.
He'd do much better on any test than Trump, and you.
That's why I would vote for a weak but wiser man like Biden over a way more energetic, but dangerously stupid Trump, with his brain obviously turning into mush more every day.
"I also know how to walk off of a stage without help and I can walk up steps without falling three times." That's his AGE!!!
Neither can Trump. He can only talk about how he's 'being treated unfairly'.
I fear that either Biden and Trump in his current state will have troubles with that dementia test, but Trump has always been a dangerous selfish lunatic, who should have never been near The White House. Biden has always been a nice neo-liberal career politician, just like my last prime minister. Also not my favorite person to have in The White House, but at least not an imminent existential danger, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
When you vote for Democrats you get experienced bureaucrats who want to keep the government running smoothly. When their dementing president wants to do something stupid, they will calm him down and gently reason him out of it.
When you vote for Republicans, these days, you get utter lunatic Christo-fascists, who want to destroy the government, that keeps America minimally survivable. When their dementing president wants to do something stupid, they will cheer him on; "Yes, nuke them all!" and cum in their pants.
and many of them are not white. It's not always because of their color, but you definitely have lots of prejudices based on color, religion and ethnicity.
Those prejudices based on color, religion and ethnicity are part of Trumpism.
America isn't racist; the Constitution is against racism. I like that.
Trumpism hates "all men are created equal", people having the unalienable Rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, equal rights, fair elections, equal protection under the laws, secularism, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, free education, three separate but equal branches of government, the power to declare war in the hands of Congress, the freedom against search and seizure and barring excessive bail and fines and cruel and unusual punishment.
Some of those rights you want for yourself, but for no one else.
That's not supporting the Constitution. You only support the Constitution,
if you support it for everyone.
It's not me that hates America, it's Trumpism that hates America!
That's why I call that Trumpism; Anti-American.
Whatever MAGA stands for, there is nothing in your history that they want to bring back that will make your country better, let alone Great Again.
There were things that made America better than it is now,
the ability for a person with a normal job to buy a home.
Neither the 'normal' Republicans, nor MAGA, nor ultra-MAGA
has any plans that will ever give back the ability to a person
with a normal job to buy a home.
The only plans I see from 'normal' Republicans, MAGA, or ultra-MAGA
are screwing the middle class even more, in favor of the wealthy
and returning to racism, sexism and bigotry and supporting stupidity.
They support a mix of oligarchy and Christian fascism. Nothing else!
In any case, that's the opposite of what the Constitution describes.
Ultra-MAGA is unAmerican and planning to do treason against the USA (again).
People who understand that, would vote for a potted plant over Trump.
I have seen all the dirt and trash that right-wingers threw in 'my room',
and now I'm helping people with brains and responsibility clean it up.
Every problem in my country is the consequence of right-wingers giving away public ownership to the market, increasing the price and increasing bureaucracy, the exact opposite of what they promised would happen.
Still, my country is about 100X better organized than yours.
The US would rely on a 'few pumps' to protect your country, we do not.
There is literally nothing that the US does only a little bit better.
Your country is organized worse than the poorest countries in Europe.
The bottom 50% of Americans are living like the poorest Europeans.
Meanwhile, you have the richest 1% people in the world.
Supporting that system is hurting you, because you are in the bottom percentages.
So, when are you going to clean your room?
Or are you helping the 1% clean their room, by starving you to death.
would you have a room if you didn't have a job?
would it be as nice?
would should a free room be as good as 1 that a working person lives in?
a free room should be nothing that needs much cleaning,a floor 4 walls and a roof, want better,go to work for the man that has more than you and is willing to compensate you for your time spent doing his work.
And I am doing the employer a favor and he is doing me 1.
The employer could have used the money he invested in a company or a product and just went to jamacia and lived and not made the choice of risking his worth to build a company that employes others.
Gm is 1 of few employers that may not be able to move totally off shore because of national security but most any company that makes wheel barrows or tractors or kitchen sinks can move off shore and save millions of dollars over the course of time. BUt they for some reason decide to stay here and employ Americans.So they are actually doing you a favor.
by some drunk driver? Shouldn't they have a room?
If I didn't have a job, then 'Why not?', that's the question.
The answer determines how nice my room should be.
If I'm unable to work, the room should be nicer than when I'm unwilling to work.
There should be a minimum room for everyone, even the most lazy, selfish, drug addicted person who could be working at any job, but just are too lazy. That room shouldn't be nice, but nice enough to sit around doing nothing and living their life of the other people's effort.
That's the person that will otherwise just turn to crime, which makes them more damaging to society. They would hurt people and they would need to be incarcerated, adding to your $80 billion prison cost. It's much cheaper to just let those people be worthless but harmless.
Anyone who's not the most lazy, selfish, drug addicted person, would just want more than that minimum room, because most people want to have goals in life. Most people want to be useful or valuable to society. That's what we need, people who have the time to think about how they can serve society best. There is no use in forcing people to do some stupid, useless job, just because they need to eat and have a roof over their head.
The value I add to society is more than enough to feed and minimally house some useless bum. However, the value I add is not going to them or to me, but mostly to a few billionaires, who are just as useless. They sit around doing nothing too, but they have money working for them. That money is not serving bums, or society, it's just serving those billionaires in getting even richer.
those without family, perhaps then the government should step up.
And i can't see the Financial gain in housing someone in a free room for being worthless over that of prison.
Prison can be contracted out and done in bulk in simple structures and feedings at a lower cost than housing bums in nice apartments. Putting a bum in a apartment with wifi and jacuzzi is not going to motivate them to be anything better.
The rich you call bums can always pull their investments,taking away your tax base for your government to provide freebies with and take away the jobs also.
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And, by the way, the rich will NOT pull their investments and loose their profits just to keep from paying taxes that account for a very little percentage compared to their profits. Phart, just ask any businessman if he would close his business just to "moon" the government and see what they say.
It is not that hard phart; to put someone in prison, they first need to commit a crime. I hope we agree on that, right? That crime causes damage to people. Understand? See why that is worse? And prisons are more expensive than just cheap social housing, because they require guards and lots of other facilities.
At least, some worthless bum can buy his own groceries and feed himself. An American prisoner costs $39,924 per year ($109.38 per day). Pay a bum half that money and they can take care of themselves.
"The rich you call bums can always pull their investments,taking away your tax base for your government to provide freebies with and take away the jobs also."
That's why you shouldn't allow a few individuals all that power and money!!!
Because, it makes democracy useless, if wealthy people control everything!!!
It's like, you got some bright moment of understanding here.
Keep it in your head for a while, think about it.
I'm not asking to buy $300,000 houses for bums, I'm asking for low cost social housing projects, that they can rent.
Rent is just also ridiculously expensive, because that kind of housing is also left to the 'market'. Everything important for people to live has been changed to a 'market' for rich people to became even richer. My first rental home was $320 per month, when it was still owned by a social housing foundation. Not even 20 years later, those same houses, which are now even a little bit more dilapidated, are costing at least $600 per month now. That's because my right-wing government turned the the social housing foundations into partly privatized housing corporations, who need to make lots of profits, to pay the higher taxes that my right-wing government introduced.
We had one minister of housing, called Stef Blok, during the second term of our right-wing PM Mark Rutte, changing the housing responsibility of the government to a 'market'. He then claimed: 'The housing market is running like a charm'. Yes, for his rich friends, who are now making millions from investing in houses. Individuals who own and rent out houses almost pay no taxes, while the former social renting foundations are taxed through the nose. In 10 years the average rent increase was 35%. Because investors from all over the world are buying up houses, the price of houses for sale also shot up like a rocket.
We were smart to buy a house just before that, because we would never be able to afford one now anymore.
Your country has been controlled by right-wing policies for decades, mine hasn't. That's why I see their damage so clearly. I've seen a well organized government, providing good services to almost everyone, turned to shit in about 15 years by right-wing policies. That created 10 huge problems in my country:
1. Purchasing power / shrinking middle class (increased inequality)
2. Asylum crisis (cuts to the Immigration and Naturalization Service)
3. Energy crisis (due to privatization)
4. Nitrogen crisis (due to deregulation)
5. Housing crisis (due to privatization)
6. Healthcare costs getting out of control (privatization)
7. Climate causing increasing damages (not enough investments)
8. People receiving Child Benefits getting treated as fraudsters
9. Corona crisis managed poorly (ignorance)
10. Groningen natural gas extraction causing houses to collapse
We are still doing a lot better than the US, but left to right-winger, our country will be changed fairly quickly into something just as horrible as the US. We already have the second most expensive healthcare system in the world, after the US, because the Christian conservative government, before Rutte, privatized our healthcare system. It was promised to reduce costs and bureaucracy, but it did the exact opposite. All of the left predicted this, and they were 100% correct.
People should not NEED benefits to feed kids and raise them.
The problem is that too many jobs don't support feeding and raising kids,
even when nothing happened like your house burns or your health declines suddenly.
That's why you need a minimum wage; so people make enough money from a fulltime job, so they can feed kids and raise them.
That's why you need public services, supporting people's basic needs, instead of leaving it up to the market, which is only interested in maximizing profits to enrich a few selfish people, making those services unaffordable for lots of working class people.
This is exactly what I describing, but you're talking about 'benefits'.
You're not giving a REASON for what you're saying, you're just saying it.
You're just saying to people; "You're on your own!"
"Can't make enough money to have kids? Sucks for you!"
That idea results in millions of people not making kids.
If you are OK with that, have it your way, but it's not MAGA.
Lack of common sense. You operate with the mindset of, "drop 10 and let the government feed them". Then they really are not YOUR kids anymore. When the government puts money into something,they also take control.
It's crazy that the government should take care of people with a fulltime job. That's the system that you support, where wealthy people are allowed to exploit working people so much, that they are depending on the government. You still don't understand the socialism that I support. It will make people LESS dependent on the government, not more.
I don't want to pay taxes to subsidize companies who don't pay their employees enough. It's their job to pay their employees enough to live on and raise kids on. Companies who cannot do that deserve to go bankrupt. Then those employees can do more useful jobs. Any job that is useful should pay enough to live on and raise kids on.
If there is 'affordable housing' for everyone, there wouldn't be homeless people.
Right?
I believe that "a place to stay" for homeless people is a communal area with bunk beds and a communal bathroom. The place would be a shelter from the weather and have a soup kitchen providing simple hot food.
In the US, affordable housing is subsidized (partial government funding) private development where the developer builds almost at cost plus a small profit. Then, the project is maintained by the local housing authority. The people that live there are long term tenants or renters.
Many homeless people, due to mantal health, addiction, or lack of education, don't stay in one place for long. The "place to stay" is just a shelter to catch their breath, so to speak.
In the case of affordable housing, those that are "housed" pay an affordable amount to maintain their unit. In the case of the homeless housing, the state and/or private donations maintain the housing unit. That's why I said they are opposites.
Why aid and abet their bad habits?
Why is a person becoming a drug addict ,quitting their job, leaving their family suddenly become the governments problem ?When they make the decision to pump dope or alcohol into themselves and allow it to take control, they are making their own bed. The people, the taxpayers ,are NOT making their bed.so why should the tax payers have to keep them up?
Your idea is that it's their fault, so they have to be punished for it. However, you're not just punishing them, you are punishing society. People make mistakes sometimes. If they did a crime, then there should be punishment attached to that, but you are not even talking about crimes, but mistakes that are hurting mostly themselves. No one in their right mind would do that, so the best way to correct them is correct their mind. You don't do that with punishment, you do that with education and correcting their mental stability. Punishment is only prolonging their incorrect state of mind. Meanwhile, they are causing damage to other people than themselves. They are a burden to society, instead of contributing to it. The most efficient method of fixing that is my way. Your way will keep them in addiction longer, force them into crime, force them into prison, causing them in a downward spiral. Every step in that process funds drugs trade, destroys what remains of their brain, eliminates what morality and hope they have left and makes the rest of us less safe.
The tax payers should want to pay for their recovery, because it provides
a great RETURN ON INVESTMENT.
Another reason; someday it might be you. Even if you are part of the 1% club, there is always a possible route to the bottom. Bad luck is always around the corner and people make mistakes. Of course, in your country, the richest people are almost impervious to bad luck and mostly unaccountable for their mistakes, but most people are just a medical emergency away from bankruptcy. You have been told a lie, a million times, that all those people in trouble have caused it themselves. You know it's not true for you, but you keep believing it for everyone else and keep basing your ideology on that false belief.
I have had doctors prescribe everything up to fentanyl for my pain that i had to stand down from after the 2d dose because it altered my thinking, mood and so forth to a point people were afraid of me.Oxy, what little of it I used, did deal with the pain but I was so demotivated that i had no desire to eat,or do anything but lay in a chair. A miserable exsistance.
So when you tell me that it is NOT the persons fault they are a drug addict, that is why i disagree. I had all the chances in the world of getting it legally and being 400 pounds and brainless. But I resisted. so can others. They willing allow themselves to take drugs, or a drink and once they realize it alters their well being ,if they continue, it is their fault. No one else's.
Now I can agree, they are a burden to society, but I have watched a former classmate,a genius by iq sadly, go thru rehab over 35 times and serve several prison sentences, only to have a calendar in his jail cell marking off the days until he could get some more crack. So rehab does not work for alot of people ,it is wasted faith in a broken system.
We agree on the basics but just not much on the solutions.
"Studies have found that of those who struggle with a addiction to meth and complete rehab, 61% will relapse within a year – that number rising to 74% three years post-treatment, and ending at 73% relapse rate five years post-treatment."
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Many other people in your situation would have gone down the tubes.
Respect!
Some of our addiction care has a 80% succes rate. That's 80% of their patients still being clean after 1 year.
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It's only in Dutch, but you can easily use Google Translate.
"Na een jaar is ruim 80% goed in herstel. Na drie jaar is zelfs bijna 90% goed in herstel."
But, it's not JUST people's own responsibility. It's ALSO the system.
Why else does your country have so much more addiction problems?
Why does America have the biggest fentanyl crisis in the world?
If it's JUST the people, then what is wrong with Americans?
What is the difference between Americans and Dutch people, who you think are weak liberals, who expect the government to help them in every situation? Why did the US have 70,601 fentanyl overdose deaths in the same year that The Netherlands had 150? That's 470 times more, while you only have 19 times more people. That's 25 times more per capita.
That cannot be JUST the people. Do you agree?
The best way for people to get out of a circle of homelessness, is to provide 'affordable housing', and help them fix the mental health, addiction, or lack of education, that is limiting them to take care of themselves. There have been many experiments attempting to take people out of homelessness and making them self-sufficient again. Giving them money can be successful, but most of the time they are not able to make the right decisions yet. Providing 'affordable housing' is the most effective. It alleviates enormous stress, and provides a safe space to recover. Just sending addicts to rehab and returning them to the streets or homeless shelter is almost a guarantee to failure. The succes rate is even higher if you just provide the 'affordable housing' and let them try to rehabilitate themselves.
I would call it 'affordable housing' even when the person has no income at all and the government is fully paying for it. The goal is to come to a situation where the person can afford it themselves. We should not kick them out of their home, as soon as they get a job. They should be allowed to stay there as long as they want, until they can and want to afford something better.
I'm against private donations. People who have lots of money should be taxed high enough so the government is able to provide these basic services to everyone who needs them. In the end, this will benefit them too, because it allows everyone to contribute to society to their maximum potential. Homelessness, addiction and lack of education are very damaging to society. The damage is higher than the cost of preventing those limits to people's potential.
Not a family who's house burned down or the factory got sent to china by no fault of their own.
Another thing, Citys and towns and county's zoned away affordable housing a long time ago.
There was affordable housing shortly after ww2 and it was available on up into the 90's.
It was called mobile homes. Conner ,Oakwood for example. There were several factory's that employed 100's of people that had to shut down around here because the city's and county's wanted more expensive homes to be built, more tax money.
they didn't have to be in "parks". When my uncle came home from vietnam he bought a brand new mobile home,put it up beside my grandparents house for a few years. When he got a good job and things were going well for hum, he bought about 20 acres 2 miles down the road. 1 sunday morning they hooked the trailer up to the 3000 ford tractor and pulled it down there to his own land,and later, added to it, and now it is a brick house with that little trailer somewhere in the middle of it. He paid for it all in a few short years on a foundry salary. It could be done then and it could be done now, if government would get the fuck out of the way and let people work and pay for the house they can afford.
First, it's a fact of society that if one generation is piss poor, the following generations will be too. Second, you are wrong when you believe that welfare is a panacea. The amount of help in dollars and cents is not enough to maintain a family in the luxury you believe they have.
I believe your relative did what you say he did. What does that prove? You said it yourself, he smooched of his grandparents for several years. I remember well the Vietnam Vets coming home. At the time, the GI bill was still in effect. My brother got a house with nothing down. So what?
Your examples mean nothing unless you can make it the rule, but, even then, why are you suggesting that recipients of government help are ALWAYS deadbeats? That, sir, is a conservative view that's been debunked years ago.
In the case of welfare that is provided to the citizens, considering the high levels of poverty in the United States, and considering the amount of oversight to those programs that try to provide a modicum of relief to our growing population living in poverty, the answer is that very few of them are actually “deadbeats”
Now, if you consider the amount of Corporate Welfare that is handed out indiscriminately to the corporations who plunder our economy without restraint, and if you realize that this amount of handouts are many times over what poor people are allowed, and if you object to handing out welfare to people and corporations who are already wealthy, you will understand that all corporate welfare recipients are deadbeats.
1 thing i never realized, welfare encourages broken or never formed familys because the benefits are higher for single people.That means kids growing up without dad so the mom can get more money
this is a scary amount of money,
"The financial cost of the War on Poverty has been enormous. Between 1965 and 2016, total means-tested welfare spending by federal and state governments cost taxpayers roughly $27.8 trillion in constant FY 2016 dollars. By contrast, the cost to the U.S. government for all military wars from the American Revolution to the present is $8 trillion in FY 2016 dollars."
And here is my pet peeve that is part of what is said early in the article ,"Self-defeating behaviors that increase the need for assistance are rarely even mentioned. "
If a dope head wants welfare ,or a alky ,they need to be forced to STOP that behavior before more than just life sustaining help is given.
Just to quote the summary for those with ADD,
"The true cost of welfare or aid to the poor is largely unknown because the spending is fragmented into myriad programs. Current welfare is focused largely on increasing benefits and enrollments and redistributing income. Self-defeating behaviors that increase the need for assistance are rarely even mentioned. Policymakers should replace welfare’s current focus with a new set of interlinked goals: reducing self-defeating and self-limiting behaviors, increasing self-support, and improving true human well-being. Welfare reform should (1) require all able-bodied adult recipients to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving aid, (2) remove the substantial penalties against marriage within the welfare system, and (3) fund programs aimed at improving behavior on a payment-for-outcome basis rather than today’s fee-for-service basis. "
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Vancouver is one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities in Canada: 49.3 percent of its residents are not native English speakers, 47.8 percent are native speakers of neither English nor French, and 54.5 percent of residents belong to visible minority groups.[7][8] It has been consistently ranked one of the most livable cities in Canada and in the world.[9][10][11] In terms of housing affordability, Vancouver is also one of the most expensive cities in Canada and in the world.[12] Vancouver plans to become the greenest city in the world. Vancouverism is the city's urban planning design philosophy.
Phart, what you propose is too costly any way you look at it and letting them die is inhumane, not to mention the costs of the repercussions.
Suppose you are in that situation where you are on welfare because you get more than if you went to work, why is that? Could it be that minimum wages are far below what a bottom of the barrel job should be?
The poverty threshold in the US is $15K/yr for an individual and $20K/yr for a family of two. Working at a hamburger joint, getting $10/hr for 32 hrs/week is $16640/yr LESS taxes and other deductions. A 32hr work week is standard in the industry. This allows the employer to qualify you as part time employee and not have to pay for extra benefits like OT or insurance.
In Florida, you can get up to $3,636 per year, based on the state's maximum benefit of $303 per month. The average benefit amount for Florida's SNAP program stands at $180. With approximately 2.85 million beneficiaries, which accounts for around 13% of the state's population, SNAP plays a crucial role in helping individuals and families afford groceries.Aug 7, 2023
So, in Florida, you can get $483/month on average plus extra SNAP benefits for extra people in the family.
That’s not very much of an incentive to NOT go to work, however, some people make do. Most people would like to make more. The answer, as I see it, is to make it more favorable to go to work. Fifteen dollars per hour minimum wage would be a minimum. And, yes, Phart, a burger would cost you more.
c'est la vie
Chilli beans!
12 hours in the crock pot.
All kinds of goodies in it,good to! if I ate like this all the time,i would be really PHAT phart
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just chili? odd
And this particular batch was made from kidney beans on sale at walmart, maters from the garden I froze during the summer for spaghetti sauce, onions, bell peppers from the garden ,salt, black pepper, ground cayenne pepper, and mild sausage made from some of the wild hogs shot in my neighbors back yard a few years ago. the sausage from the 1's shot in my back yard has been gone,I had it made HOT.
I find that the second day the flavor is so much better. I’m getting hungry
I said; cleaning their room, for them means getting rid of poor people, like you.
They don't want to do it by giving you money, but by killing you in the most efficient way allowed. Not giving you access to medicine that you need is very effective. Or they get rid of people by locking them up. That's why the made weed illegal; to lock up young black men.
Just some revisionist history.
Weed was and should be illegal because it is a entry level drug that has ruined 1000's of lives just as alcohol has.
Do we throw people who sell alcohol in prison?
You do know how awful the Prohibition turned out, right?
"It led many drinkers to switch to opium, marijuana, patent medicines, cocaine, and other dangerous substances that they would have been unlikely to encounter in the absence of Prohibition."
The Prohibition turned alcohol into a gateway drug. (And it created the Mafia)
But it didn't reduce any of the problems associated with alcoholism.
There is no evidence at all that weed is an 'entry level drug', actually legal weed can prevent people using more dangerous drugs. Fentanyl is mostly used by people who are in pain. Their pain can be treated much safer with weed.
If weed ever was an 'entry level drug', than that was BECAUSE IT WAS ILLEGAL.
Legalization might have increased the use a bit, but it reduces harm a lot.
People are no longer put in prison for carrying or smoking a bit of weed.
They can be active members of society, instead of a burden, by being in prison.
The same damage has been caused by other drugs being illegal.
It has saved NO LIVES, the US has the most addicted people in the world,
the most drug overdose deaths and the most people in prison.
Your ideas are clearly, objectively wrong.
then they are bound to pay more for their car, than for their house.
There are lots of delivery drivers in my country that are forced to lease a van for their jobs. That is very expensive, but they get payed a very low amount per delivery. If they get a difficult route, they often make just enough to pay for the van. They are very lucky, or working like a machine, if they make more money to spend on a house than on their van.
If you don't need a truck to do your job, you don't need a truck and definitely not a new one. Then your first priority is housing. You only need a few thousand dollars for a dependable, fuel economical commuter. Buying a new truck for that, is a waste of money.
About 23 years ago, I bought a $3000 car that lasted me 7 years.
The first MOT uncovered a structural problem that costed $1000 to fix, but yearly maintenance after that was acceptable, because I used a non-brand garage.
I'm actually paying more on maintenance now, with a newer car, because with a newer car it's advised to keep it in good shape at the brand garage.
I pay at least $500/year in maintenance, tires not included. I need a new set soon, which will cost at least $750.
With a car that is well past a decade old, with over 100,000 miles on it, you start doing the minimum and just drive until it falls apart. My last Toyota, I bought at 4 years old, with 35000 miles on it, for $11,000. The first 5 years, I kept it up well, paying up to $500 per year in maintenance. The last 5 years was very cheap, but it required me to accept some noises and oil consumption. At age 17, almost everything broke down simultaneously, so I bought a new car and still got back $500 for the old banger. It was going to Africa for its second life.
In conclusion, it's the cheapest to buy a car for $5000, which is then like a 10 year old Toyota Aygo with 40,000 miles on it. It will last you at least 10 years, if you take moderate care of it and like 7 years if you only spend money on oil changes and tires, at a non-brand garage.
That same $3000 car from 20 years ago is therefore absolutely possible.
a Toyota which you could not give me. I will stick with GMC. Hope it guzzles the 'gas' and pollutes the hell out of your little world. The chinese pollute more than I ever thought about doing.
I see you like sending your old crap to other countries.
American cars are low quality. The only part that lasts long is the engine,
because they are big lumps of iron, everything else breaks every odd year.
Japanese cars are built with parts that last.
All the old Toyota's go to Africa. That's not my choice, that's supply and demand. Labor is cheap there, so they will do a complete engine overhaul and give it another lease of life. That car didn't have a spec of rust on it and the interior was still very tidy. It was just not economically feasible for me, to get a refurbished engine, alternator, water pump, interior fan, window wiper motor and some other parts. But, they can do that cheaply in Africa, providing some African family with a car that can drive almost for ever, if they keep fixing it.
It's your little world too dumb-ass. The US will get into trouble much earlier
than my country, because we think ahead and the US is incapable of that.
Also, I live further from the equator than all of the US. You will probably starve, die from heatstroke or in a wildfire or in a hurricane or a flood or in some riot over food and water, many years before me.
China is emitting half the CO2 per capita of the US
and they are further in the energy transition than the US.
China is polluting a lot, but then they are making everything for everyone else in the world. That's not their pollution, that's your pollution too and mine. If we want them to pollute less, we should just have some demands on how they make all those things for us. But, that's thinking (ahead), something you are incapable of doing.
"Only 1 American Car Brand Is on Most Reliable Top 10 List": Lincoln.
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But that's a very expensive brand. Almost all Japanese, German and Korean cars are better value for money.
I am talking about economical optimization here. Any GMC is more expensive when you buy it and guzzles gas like a motherfucker. Unless you have a big family or another need for a big car, it's just burning money, that could have been spent on nicer things. But, maybe you feel some need to compensate for something, with a big car. I do not.
Even that Toyota I had, required some new parts, in its 17 year life.
It wasn't a lot; as far as I can remember, some axel rubbers and an ignition coil, in 17 years. All the parts that were getting old were still working, but to pass its MOT would have been expensive. And I was not going to do that, with all those aging parts making the future maintenance even more expensive. I had a very cheap last 5 years and then I bought another medium sized 4 year old, low mileage, fuel economical Japanese car for about $13,500, which is cheap on fuel, road tax and insurance.
I pay $40 for all risk insurance, which I needed a few years back, when I got into a pileup on the highway. It saved me about $1500 for the damage on the front. Still pretty low speed collisions, no airbags were triggered.
If that happens, it gets very expensive.
My car is mostly standing in my parking space, because I'm working from home for 90%. I use it more often for shopping and visiting friends and family. It has all the accessories that I wanted; climate control, cruise control, satnav, digital radio, parking aids and cameras all around and it seats 4 people comfortably, it has a trunk big enough for lots of shopping and our holidays and when I put the back seats down, it can take a big IKEA flatpack, it can easily do 110 mph, when I drive through Germany.
Why would I pay more for a faster or bigger car?
Not practical for most Americans.
Half the time I am on the hwy going over 10 miles from home, I am towing a trailer ,sometimes over 3000 pounds cargo, not possible with a Camery.
Your system works for you,that's great, but it is like a pair of shoes,1 size does not fit all.
I still can't believe you got only 17 years from a toyota? My God what are you using for oil?
hondas and toyotas here last until people just decide to trade ,not because they are bad.
When you say it was not feasible to rebuild the engine,and bought a newer car,you just spent way more money than a new engine. I can't see that being a wise move if you only got 500 bucks for the car that was clean ,and straight, sounds as though it had plenty of life in it.
I know most Americans are huge, but I'm no small guy either and I fit comfortably.
True, my car cannot pull 3000 pounds of cargo. I have only needed that once in 3 decades. I'm not going to buy a big truck and pay for its gas consumption, for that one time that can easily be solved by renting a big van. I don't believe that all those Americans who drive huge cars have to pull 3000 pounds of cargo every other week.
When I had my Toyota, I still drove to work every day. It had 140,000 miles on it. It was still possible to fix it up, but just very expensive. I do think car-parts are way more expensive in The Netherlands. You don't compare the costs of the repairs with a new car, you compare them with the extended life of the old car. Even in mint condition that 17 year old Toyota would have had a value of at maximum $2000, way less than what the repairs were going to cost. Just the intake manifold alone, which was a very rare part, would have costed $1000. The lowest price was $750, in Russia, with no guarantees. A refurbished 1.4 16V VVTI was at least about $1200. Adding the other parts and the labor, would add up to at least $4000, to get several more years out of it. That would have made the car more expensive than its history. I bought it for $12,000 and drove it for 12 years, that's $1000 per year. If a car becomes more much expensive than that, I replace it for one that lowers my spending again or delivers me more comfort for my money. I could spend a lot less, by buying 10 year old cars and driving them till they break, but I want a car to be reliable and I do allow myself some comfort. I wanted cruise control for years, now I have it and use it a lot.
Maybe most of those Americans are forced to keep repairing an old car, because they cannot afford the big investment of replacing it, but at some point it's cheaper to replace than to repair. I have enough money saved, to buy a new car tomorrow, if I need. I just don't do it for the fun of it, but when it is financially optimal. I hope to get at least another 7 years out of my current car.
Damn, any decent toyota if the timing belt is replaced and it is serviced regular should give 250,000 -300,000 miles and still be fit to pass along to the kid headed to college.
As for what you said to tescan about his gmc not being on the road for 20 years with the same parts, ha, i am sorry,but the car I drove to work for 12.5 years, still has it's original engine, 340,000 miles or so, don't 100% know because I drove it 2 years with a broken speedo cable, so it is probably higher than that.
I kept it serviced, brakes, tires, same thing a 4 year old car would need.
A well built durable car or a cheap0 car, there is part of the issue.
A gmc, has to be a suv or pickup,they don't sell car's under that name plate. Most have a chassis,which means more durable than a unibody car.Heavyer brakes, so less stress on them,longer wear,and etc.
The engine itself was still mostly OK, but it required at least new piston rings and a new timing chain (not a timing belt). Both requires taking apart the whole engine. With labor and parts, that's over $800. It's then better to just put in a completely refurbished engine. However, all those other parts were then not going to last the new lease of life of the car. Bills will just keep adding up. It's possible to do that, but then I was still driving an old car, for the annual costs of a new one. My garage informed me several years before that all those parts were getting old and were going to require replacement in the next 5 years. That would add up to many thousands of dollars, which is absolutely more than the value of the car. So, I decided to drive it until it failed the MOT and the costs to repair would be too high. I drove another 3 years, with only basic service and then the last MOT would add up to at least $800.
If I remember correctly, that was just for new tires or brakes, not even the aging parts. That was not worth it, because the rattling intake manifold was bugging me and it was using a lot of oil. The $800 would not have fixed that or any of the other parts, just the MOT failures.
I'm sure that car could have reached 300,000 miles, and it is probably doing that somewhere in Africa, but that's not a financially smart thing to do in The Netherlands, where parts and labor are very expensive.
I also took the gas consumption into account. My Toyota did 31 MPG on average, my current car did about 47 MPG for the same use.
Pre-covid, that was a difference of at least $900 per year.
The cheapest GMC (C1500) that I can find on Autotrack.nl costs $13,121. It's from 1996 and has 180,000 miles on it.
Or, I could buy a Toyota Yaris from 2019, with 38,570 miles on it.
Are you telling me that the GMC would be cheaper, on service?
Lets calculate what I would pay for fuel, in The Netherlands:
At least it uses LPG, so that saves some money, but it would do about 7 to 8 MPG. With my pre-covid yearly driving, that would have costed me $4,600 per year, at least $1,800 per year more than with my Toyota. That's the cost of a new Toyota engine every year.
Not being a smart ass here,please find out what oil your mechanic is putting in your car! If it is that recycled shit,it is ruining your engine! You need to be running a better quality oil apparently 140,000 on a Toyota engine,is chump change.
The intake manifold of a Toyota is not just a lump of metal, it has moving parts. It was designed to last the life of the car, but it was obvious that mine wasn't lasting. It sounded awful.
The annoying thing is that those intake manifolds are now dirt cheap, because most of those Toyota's have ended their lifetime and shelves are filled with good second hand parts, for the few remaining cars of its type that are still driving around. When I needed that part, it was very expensive and rare. The other parts had also exceeded their expected lifespan; the alternator (expected lifespan: 80,000 to 150,000 miles), the water pump (expected lifespan: 60,000 to 90,000 miles). Other parts were starting to make noises that they were close to the end of their life, like the interior fan (dependent on use), or the wiper motors (dependent on use).
You have a point with the oil changes. For several years, I brought my car to the Toyota dealership in the city I lived then, for MOT and service, at least that's what I expected. Every year, they told me that everything was fine again and billed me a significant amount of money. Then after several years they said: "Isn't it time that you do an oil change? It looks like tar!". I asked them: "What? Didn't you do that then?". And they told me that I hadn't asked for it. Turned out that they considered that not part of the yearly service. The bill was just saying "MOT and service", with a significant price behind it, so I expected that as included. I was very angry with them. I told them that I bought a Toyota and came to a Toyota dealership to not have to think about these things and that I expected them to discuss important things like "Do you want the oil changed?". I never returned to that Dealership again and used the one where I bought it. They were much more communicative.
What oil you are using doesn't affect the wear of the intake manifold, the alternator, the water pump, the interior fan, or the wiper motors.
The car was still pretty young when it had tar for oil, but it must have done some damage. That distribution chain was making noise after that, but it went away after a few months of driving with fresh oil. It would have been probably still OK for a while, when I traded in the Toyota, but I wasn't going to assume that, when I had the choice to start spending many hundreds of dollars, to extent the car's life.
When almost every part in the car has exceeded its expected lifespan, you make a financial decision between the value of the car and (expected) repair costs. I decided it was 'economically totaled'.
Why don't you by some mercury and cyanide, to throw in the river,
that is used for your drinking water? That's the same thing, dumb-ass.
China is polluting a lot of water, so why don't you?
How do we get China and India onboard? By implementing regulation against buying shit from them, that is made by polluting factories and with energy from fossil fuels. The US is in the way.
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The Nissan Rouge I bought new in 2015 to replace the Tahoe has 154K miles and the tranny is shot. The car is good for city driving only. The engine is still strong and will probably last another 100K but replacing the tranny, even if my son-in-law does the work, would be over $3500. Not worth it. The day it gives up the ghost I’ll pull the tag and call a junker to pick it up.
I would not have expected that from a nissan.
3500 is still cheaper than a new car,
That is what people seem to miss, why make payments on something when you can repair it and be debt free longer?
I had a scooter car for a while. a inherited 2001 ford focus wagon. high mileage, good air, good radio, I had it a year and a half, I used it some ,it was a wagon so it had some space but couldn't tow, couldn't haul much. when it dropped a valve seat, I sold it for 500 bucks to a young fellow for him and his sons to fix for a family car. Sadly, it didn't work out as the replacement head failed and destroyed the engine.
When it was all said and done, I drove the car for free except gas, as I had spent 500 on tag,title,2 tires and a shifter cable, and insurance for that length of thime.
I priced a engine at pulla part for 450, should a went that route but it was just not worth the cost of tag ,insurance, and upkeep for a few more miles to the gallon.
Insurance on my truck is about 325 a year, tax and tags about 75-80,would have to check the paperwork.Sure it gets about 15 to the gallon, but the gas is no more costly than another cars up keep just to save gas.
The right new car is cheaper than continuing to repair an old one.
But, you are saying one thing; "why make payments on something when you can repair it and be debt free longer?". That doesn't apply to me.
The only time that I borrowed money for a car, was for that Toyota.
I was just short a few thousand on my savings account. I didn't want to sell any stocks for it, at that point, so I borrowed that money from my parents and paid them back in a few months. I never have to do that again. I have more than enough in my savings account for what I usually spend on a car and only 'play the stock-market' with money I don't need. I made at least $6000 pure net profit on the stock-market, not even including dividend and portfolio value increase. I do capitalism pretty well, because I know logic, math and science.
Before anyone start telling me what a hypocrite socialist I am, you don't understand it; I want EVERYONE who works to be able to make enough money to participate in the modern financial system, not just the few people who let other people work for them. Stocks are 100% compatible with socialism, they just should be created by public capital and part of the profits of the public investments should be distributed to working people on top of their salary. That would turn into a big part of their social security.
Maybe I should invent a new term than 'socialist', like 'Social Capitalist'.
I like it, that really describes my political ideas. Damn, the term already exists. There are even books about it.
In the last 4 months we’ve been to Kentucky, 5 times to Key West, twice to Gainesville, and four times to Flagler Beach. We need a reliable car. Maintenance is a breeze. Jose, my son-in-law, takes care of anything the warranty doesn’t cover. BTW, we never buy a new, o miles, car. We look with for a vehicle with less than 30K. The depreciation as you drive a new vehicle out of the dealers lot is a ripoff. We’ve always been right side up on the value of our vehicles.
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