> Because the taxpayers (and all users of USD) repeatedly bail them out.
The taxpayer didn't pay for those bailouts. They were funded by the DIF, which was replenished by premiums that banks pay.
> They’re a pretty bloated middleman if their sole purpose is to update a database to reflect incoming and outgoing cash flow.
Did you just look into what banks do at all before making this claim? If that were the case, companies like Apple, Bilt, and Robinhood wouldn't be relying on real banks and could easily start their own.
> Renting a private room was possible on nearly any wage 50 years ago, and the only reason it seems out of reach for many now is because purchasing power has been slowly stagnating for decades
50 years ago, in high cost of living areas, you could rent an SRO, but now they're either banned or practically banned because they're strongly disincentivized against. Combine this with not building enough new housing and you get a recipe for rent increases. Even if a minimum wage works as intended, it can only subsidize demand, which would do nothing when the bottleneck is the supply.
It's disappointing that people increasingly expect news to be propaganda for their own side. The news is meant to be a source of information. You don't have to agree with everything an article has to say to get useful information from it. There is no shortage of quasi-revolutionary content on the internet if that's what you seek.
It's 2026. Everyone knows that NYT is written by liberal elites for liberal elites (or aspirational liberal elites) who spend their money to read such articles. Even if you think it's propaganda, legacy media offers information and a perspective that cannot be found everywhere else. It's the same reason why traders read Zero Hedge even if they aren't ultra-libertarians.
It may comfort you to imagine the NYT's editorial stance as the last thing holding back a revolution, but I guarantee that is not the case. That may change some wannabe liberal elites to wannabe revolutionaries, but the elites who you actually want to change will get their news someplace else.
Michelle's Becoming sold 14 million copies. I don't see any recent figures for Barack's A Promised Land, but the initial 3.3 million print run sold within a month, and there is another volume in progress.
> Basically they buy weakening businesses and carve them up for parts, selling anything of value and squeezing max revenue of whatever is left.
People say this like it's a bad thing, but without "vulture capitalists", struggling companies would default and banks would attempt to do the same, except they are much worse at it and even more people would lose their jobs.
> the police have zero obligation to actually protect anybody from crime
This gets misrepresented on the Internet all the time. What this really means is that you can't sue the city for incompetent policemen, which is the case in basically every country. That only punishes the taxpayers after all. What is different about other countries is that they are much better at firing incompetent police.
In some (EU) countries, as a public officer/agent you can actually get prosecuted (civil or criminal proceedings per case), in cases of blatant or willful incompetence. (Think of the levels of gross wanton disregard/negligence.)
(There is also the legal vehicle of insubordination.)
The bar is high, of course, and yet people have historically managed to get prosecuted, lose their jobs, and go to prison.
I think the problem in the U.S. is, ironically, the power of police unions in a fragmented police force (city, territory, county, etc.) ecosystem, coupled with the lack of unified, express state and federal statutes to enforce a standard of care and competence.
Add to that that peace officer-specific state statutes (e.g., describing manslaughter while on duty) are written in such a way that, as a matter of law, it becomes a herculean task to tick all the boxes to successfully preserve a conviction on appeal. It is truly troubling. (I am hopeful, as this can be solved by the U.S. legislature, which I think we have a lot of reasons to demand to be done.)
The case in NY was police setup a sting on the subway to catch a serial stabber. Instead of stopping him they stood by and watched him attack several innocent bystanders.
They were sued for incompetence. For the failed sting.
The two police officers who stood and watched him get attacked were ruled to be immune because they had no duty to protect him.
Point being, if police see you getting attacked, they have no duty to /stop/ that from happening. Their only duty is to take a report once they feel safe enough to approach.
If you see two police on the corner and think "this is a safe area" you'd completely be operating on faith in their character.
And then chain that with the ridiculous "clearly established" bar for qualified immunity and it's nigh on impossible to hold police in the US accountable for what most citizens would recognize as clear malfeasance.
Not to speak highly of the NYPD - but it is the character of most violent criminals to refrain from attacking you when police officers are standing close at hand.
This is false and a gross oversimplification based on one specific thing, which is that petty theft in particular has taken a backseat in many areas as it's not a felony and is usually a waste of time and money to persue, especially when the thief just gets turned loose with no big consequences.
Depends on the violent crime. I've been nearly run over in crosswalks dozens of times in view of police, sometimes when they're in traffic as well and could easily pull over the perpetrator. It's never happened.
I am sick to the back teeth of this narrative that all grievances can be resolved into currency and that paying this hurts taxpayers. We can jail negligent or reckless public officials, the financial costs of investigating and compensating people are an economic incentive to promulgate better standards in the first place.
> I am sick to the back teeth of this narrative that all grievances can be resolved into currency and that paying this hurts taxpayers.
I don't understand. This seems contradictory. If the problem is that we're trying to resolve too many grievances with currency, then doing so does nothing but hurt the taxpayer. Americans are already significantly more litigious against police, yet you get significantly more misconduct. The same goes for doctors, drivers, etc.
We were in a lockdown, and Congress voted for multiple trillion dollar stimulus' financed by debt. Refusing to "print money" in those circumstances is just asking for a worse Great Depression.
A crisis prevents people from earning money. No money means nobody buys anything. Nobody buys anything means no company can now sell stuff, so no revenue. Companies start closing down, so there are even more people who cannot earn money.
The government can print money and inject into the system. Some people have money so they continue to buy stuff but maybe at a slower pace or less amount. Things also can get expensive but it is not a total collapse.
one of the big problems of the great depression was banks went bankrupt left right and centre, and took everyone's life savings with them. Also as a lot of banks generally hold mortgages in their portfolio, so when a bank collapses it means that mortgages all get fucky too.
So the mass printing of money meant that banks didn't collapse.
It also meant that a fucktonne of cash went into the hands of the uber rich.
This is one of the reasons safety nets on savings exist in both the USA and in Europe (and probably other places as well about which I'm less informed). Even so, the tacit understanding is that this is more about preventing bank runs than about the practical effects on the currencies involved because it could very well be that that insurance will pay out in money that is worthless.
> It's the suburban equivalent of a yuppie's Rolex Submariner.
The difference is that the Submariner can actually be used as a dive watch. If it turned to fail significantly more often than other dive watches underwater, people would be much less inclined to buy it even though it would literally make no difference for them.
I mean the Cybertruck, and EV trucks in general to a certain extent, are rather lousy trucks, so they aren't seen as aspirational the same way a normal F150 or Submariner are.
> Jeff Bezos has already reaped many multiples of his investment in the Washington Post.
Has he though? The Washington Post has actually been a leader in primary reporting in Amazon's union busting activities [1]. He may have pressured them to not endorse Kamala Harris, but he likely would have better standing with Trump had he had never bought the Post in the first place.
For all the shit that mainstream media gets, much of which is deserved, alternative media is order of magnitudes worse with regards to manipulating public discourse.
I don't think the Washington Post really would of made a difference in terms of the election, but I have no faith in them having any editorial independence.
My boss also lets me criticize parts of the business, but he's still my boss
Can you tell me what exactly about the Washington Post differs from any other center left American news source and how those differences benefits Bezos?
The taxpayer didn't pay for those bailouts. They were funded by the DIF, which was replenished by premiums that banks pay.
> They’re a pretty bloated middleman if their sole purpose is to update a database to reflect incoming and outgoing cash flow.
Did you just look into what banks do at all before making this claim? If that were the case, companies like Apple, Bilt, and Robinhood wouldn't be relying on real banks and could easily start their own.