techwooded

As other have said, housing, at least in the US, has always been seen as an investment, and investments are supposed to appreciate in value. It is difficult to sell to political bases that one of two things must then be true: 1) People who bought houses 20+ years ago will have to lose equity on the house which they potentially were relying on for some amount of retirement, or 2) The government will have to step in and fill the gap (a la systems similar to agricultural subsidies). Neither of those things would you be able to sell to a wide enough base that they could be acted on.

In the end, this was caused by two things. On a practical level, prices continued climbing while wages stagnated over the past 40 years. On a more philosophical level, I personally don’t think that necessities such as housing should be commodified.

This also brings up the fact that single family homes, the predominant home type in the US, are not good from an environmental standpoint or an urban planning standpoint. It would be better to convert into duplexes and such. In the end, I agree that buying a home is way too much, but in the long run it may be good that the market is pushing more people towards lower impact forms of housing

I would check out Semafor as well

I like the idea in theory, but I think it would be a hard sell of “hey trade in your $10k+ car for this few hundred dollar bike”

Fairly far left myself. I agree with the person who said that

The left is loyal to ideals, not people

To me, one of those ideals is being anti-death penalty. I believe that no matter what the crime is, a government that claims to represent all people, as a democratic government theoretically does, can never justify the killing of one of those people by their hand. Were it up to me, they would be removed from office, prosecuted, tried, convicted, and tossed in jail for the rest of their natural life (which judging by the age demographic of the federal government, wouldn't be too long).

The prospect for an impeachment for treason raises some interesting questions about how the legal and political systems of the United States interact though. Because impeachment is a political process, impeaching a government official doesn't constitute that a crime was committed, and committing a crime doesn't necessarily impose grounds for impeachment. If the Vice President was impeached and removed from office due to committing treason and let's say criminal proceedings were brought, there's no precedent as to whether any of the evidence brought in the impeachment trial or the successful removal would count towards evidence of the treason trial itself. In the most extreme of cases that would likely never happen, a government official could be arrested, tried, convicted, and (under current law that I disagree with) executed without ever being impeached and leaving office.

Also wanted to note that impeachment doesn't just apply to the President, it applies to

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States

Which means federal judges, cabinet officers, etc. Though most notably, no one in Congress

I feel that way whenever I finish a reread of Wheel of Time or the Broken Earth trilogy that makes me have to avoid the genre for a bit afterwards

It’s the same stuff with all these programs that have the trapezoid structure (income phase-ins). What the designers of the program are really looking to do is to not spend a lot of money, so the phase-ins move a large group of people (or children) from just below the line to just above the line so everyone can pat their back, they’re not actually interested in

Also actually having evidence that people just want to take care of children breaks the “moral hazard” narrative down which people don’t like

The problem isn’t socialism in the countries I’m sure you’ve seen (Soviets, etc), it’s totalitarianism. Leaders have used the guise of socialism to get the initial public support to gain power, and they make a show of it, but the real game in town is the power structure. Look into Pinochet’s Chile for a similar example with a hardcore capitalism as the economic system

Correct me if I’m wrong, OP, but it sounds like you’re talking about retreating to the axioms of the particular belief system, as in there is a point where reason breaks down because you get to things that you (the person whose expressing their opinion) have accepted that’s different than me.

To me this is a bit of a Motte and Bailey fallacy as your question was whether or not you have a good argument and then someone replied to that and then moved to the set of assumptions which has nothing to do with argument.

For me personally, the other person has to demonstrate some level of critical reasoning for me to respect their opinions, even if their assumptions are different than mine. Beliefs that are entered into using reasoning are more useful than ones without because they can be changed which is what discourse is all about

This is interesting. I’ve been wanting to sign up for something like this, Incogni, or DeleteMe for a while, but haven’t done any research yet

Link for people who, like me, spent 10 minutes trying to get links other than Barnes & Noble and publishing houses: https://hardcover.app

I also recommend StoryGraph for this same purpose

Don’t forget the Baha’i, the Babs, and the Druze. Don’t know if they’re considered people of the book or not. Same with the Samaritan Israelites