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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: September 23rd, 2023

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  • Bullshit

    I’m born and raised in Appalachia, my daddy worked in the coal mines and drove an 18 wheeler. Certified redneck enough that I confuse the shit out of my New England neighbors.

    I went out and marched with striking nurses when Bernie put out the call, and I’ve never voted Republican in my entire fucking life.

    OP, you need to learn what a redneck is.



  • To me, it’s all about rational return on investment providing economic incentives to achieve what we want to achieve.

    My favorite example to explain what I mean is my own personal health insurance. I have a chronic medical condition that requires constant medication, frequent visits to specialists, and expensive medical tests and procedures. There is simply zero chance that I will ever pay enough in a monthly premium to cover what I cost. Meaning I am always a net financial loss for a private, for-profit insurance company.

    This gives a private company every incentive in the world to obstruct and deny my care in hopes that I’ll get frustrated and give up, or maybe even die and get off their books forever.

    The government, on the other hand, has a positive financial incentive to keep me healthy. If I am healthy, I am working, paying taxes, buying goods and services that contribute to the economy, and hopefully contributing something beneficial to my community. Only the government (acting as a proxy for “society”) naturally profits from insuring my healthcare.

    This is why I believe we should have fully socialized medical care. Because there are some specific things that only the government has natural positive economic incentives that align with what is beneficial for the general public.

    Whatever those things are, they should be socialized. And generally those things are basic life sustaining things like food, housing, medicine, education, utilities.

    I’m fine with privatized capitalism in a very restricted, heavily regulated niche form. But all the basic necessities should be socialized.








  • The rail strike would have had major economy-wide side effects, including people in other industries being laid off and inflation being exacerbated by shortages in basic food, water, gas.

    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/looming-rail-strike-would-take-a-major-toll-on-u-s-economy

    After averting the strike, the Biden administration continued to pressure and negotiate with rail companies to get the paid sick days that were the sticking point. But there’s been almost no news coverage about that fact.

    "Negotiations with the other labor coalition unions continued toward a Sept. 15 deadline, but when it became obvious that the bargaining parties would not reach consensus by then, Biden asked then-Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh to assemble the sides and reach an acceptable agreement that would head off a national freight rail strike.

    On deadline day, the parties reached an agreement on an updated contract that included the biggest wage increases in 47 years. Over the next several weeks, while acknowledging that the agreement was less than perfect, the IBEW and several of its fellow coalition unions voted to ratify the agreement. A handful of others, however, did not, instead threatening a December freight rail strike.

    Biden, citing the potential economic impact of a national freight rail strike during the winter holidays, on Nov. 28 called on Congress to impose the emergency board’s agreement.

    Since then, several other railroad-related unions have also seen success in negotiating for similar sick-day benefits. These 12 unions represent more than 105,000 railroad workers. (emphasis mine)

    “Biden deserves a lot of the credit for achieving this goal for us,” Russo said. “He and his team continued to work behind the scenes to get all of rail labor a fair agreement for paid sick leave.”

    https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid

    A much, much larger question is this: If that rail infrastructure is THIS critical to the basic functioning of our economy, why are we allowing it to be held hostage by private for-profit corporations? This shit should be nationalized and those should be government jobs.