• @[email protected]
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    15211 months ago

    Meanwhile republicans are fighting tooth and nail to claw back student loan forbearance during pandemic and cancel any student loan forgiveness

    Priorities, I guess.

      • @[email protected]
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        2911 months ago

        Tricky to elect younger & more competent when the older generation is so much more practiced at the schmoozing aspect, unfortunately. Not to mention better funded by special interests who trust their predictability.

          • @[email protected]
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            011 months ago

            We have them, they’re called elections. I don’t like most people in Congress, but it’s not up to me to decide who the people of Kentucky or California want to represent them. I have the right to weigh in on exactly 3 members of the legislature: 1 Congressional representative and 2 US Senators.

        • Zorque
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          1411 months ago

          Don’t worry, there’s plenty of young incompetent people in office, too!

    • FlashMobOfOne
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      -2911 months ago

      Also doing everything they can to funnel more of our money to another country’s war.

      Awesome.

      • ArxCyberwolf
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        1511 months ago

        The money is only being spent on replacing the outdated military hardware that’s being sent over to Ukraine, which would otherwise be sitting and rotting in storage and would need replacement or expensive repairs to get running again. The US loses nothing from sending weaponry to Ukraine, and has everything to gain. It prevents continued Russian aggression on other countries (and Russia has explicit plans to invade more countries), saves Ukrainian lives and drives away the invaders so civilians aren’t being murdered in their homes, and boosts the economy through the increased number of jobs created for building the newer, better replacement equipment.

        To claim that the money is being wasted is naive and misinformed at best, and actively disingenuous and malicious at worst. Putin would love for the US to stop sending support so he can continue his genocide.

        • FlashMobOfOne
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          -1811 months ago

          The money is only being spent on replacing the outdated military hardware that’s being sent over to Ukraine, which would otherwise be sitting and rotting in storage and would need replacement or expensive repairs to get running again.

          Would be totally fine with that if it were being deducted from the next budget, but it’s not, so it’s added to the hundreds of billions we’re already taking on in debt while also neglecting our own people.

          It prevents continued Russian aggression on other countries

          Couldn’t care less. Our people don’t have health care, education that they can afford, and the minimum wage is still 7 bucks. I’d much rather see that money spent saving our people from the aggression of our predatory economic environment, as is already the case in most first-world countries.

          • @[email protected]
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            1711 months ago

            It’s not like your country was about to provide socialized health care, affordable quality education, and a living minimum wage, and suddenly stopped those programs in order to fund the war. And you politicians most likely to stop funding the Ukraine are the least likely to vote for any of these “socialist programs”

            • FlashMobOfOne
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              -1111 months ago

              That doesn’t make it any less problematic, nor does it make me any less right in pointing out the extent to which our people are neglected so war profiteers can fund their golden parachutes. (Sadly, with help from a lot of chickenhawks, like the folks on this thread.)

              • Cosmic Cleric
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                311 months ago

                (Sadly, with help from a lot of chickenhawks, like the folks on this thread.)

                Sometimes it’s not everyone else that’s wrong, it’s just you.

            • @[email protected]
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              -1411 months ago

              Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

              Maybe the fact that they have varied points of view actually shows that they think for themselves instead of parroting anything?

              • @NekoRiv
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                111 months ago

                ‘varied’, you mean standing for whatever benefits them the most at any given moment even if it immediately contradicts the statement they made immediately before.

      • Cosmic Cleric
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        111 months ago

        Sometimes it’s not about the money, it’s about doing the right thing.

    • @[email protected]
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      -3011 months ago

      So that’s how the economy should be fixed. Let more people get away from paying what they agreed to pay. The only reason people are so for student loan forgiveness is because it actually effects them. You agreed, you signed the paper.

      • comfortablyglum
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        1911 months ago

        No one signs anything agreeing to be sucked dry by greedy companies while they desperately scrounge for affordable housing food and a job that pays a living wage with a company that doesn’t treat its employees like cattle. People sign with the idea that going to college will increase their chances of a better life; that’s what the “American dream” promises. People bust their ass, do everything they are supposed to do, but America (and the companies that run it), break promises (if not out right lied to begin with). How is anyone supposed live up to their end of the bargain, when America doesn’t live up to their’s?

        • @[email protected]
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          -1411 months ago

          When you sign loan paperwork, this isn’t an agreement with "America’. I’m not saying that most companies don’t do everything they can to fuck people over, but you can’t not pay what you agreed to because you are upset at the world. That’s a teenager mentality.

          • Cosmic Cleric
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            011 months ago

            That’s a teenager mentality.

            No, it’s not. You’re just missing the point being expressed.

            • @[email protected]
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              -111 months ago

              I get the point. It is just wrong. At the end of the day, you can’t make an agreement and years later say, “I shouldn’t have to pay this cause I’m upset at unrelated things”.

              • @[email protected]
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                111 months ago

                Did you miss what this post is about? and how they borrowed $500 million.

                There also not paying pensions to people who dedicated their lives to work for them.

      • wanderingmagus
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        1911 months ago

        Or, we seize the assets of the rich, redistribute it to the poor, implement a wealth and inheritance tax, universal healthcare, free college education and universal basic income. As someone who doesn’t have student loans, fuck the paper and fuck this greed-driven system. Why does the richest nation on the planet still have poverty and homelessness and shit medical systems where people literally vomit shit because they can’t afford treatment?

        • Cosmic Cleric
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          211 months ago

          Or, we seize the assets of the rich,

          Do you mean that in a fix the tax code sort away, or literally walking up to their front door with pitchforks and torches and breaking their front door down?

          • wanderingmagus
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            011 months ago

            If we don’t try the former, the latter becomes inevitable with time. Witness the multitude of civilizational collapses and revolutions and peasant rebellions that have occurred throughout history all over the world. Personally, I’d rather head off such an event and do it peacefully, but that will only be an option for so long.

        • @[email protected]
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          -2911 months ago

          Yes give people money for not doing anything. Thats fair. There is places with universal Healthcare, ask them how that works. Well doesn’t work more like. Free college will have big ramafications. What good will a degree be if everyone has one. Then everyone will have to get a university degree and cry about loan forgiveness for that.

          • wanderingmagus
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            1511 months ago

            Ask Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands. People like you are what’s wrong with the world. I bet you’re one of those people who thinks poor people only exist because they’re lazy and need to pull themselves up by their fucking bootstraps.

            • @[email protected]
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              -1711 months ago

              Weird that people from all these great places come to America for real Healthcare. That’s weird. There is many reasons why people are broke. Some of them are self inflicted, some aren’t.

              • FlashMobOfOne
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                11 months ago

                They come to America for very specialized health care, and only that.

                And you know why?

                They won’t be bankrupted for an injury or illness in their own countries, and not a god damn one of them is going to sign up for American health care once they look at the medical bills we get for routine shit.

                • @[email protected]
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                  -1111 months ago

                  So strange that while the Healthcare is free that it takes months on a waiting list to get basic surgery. That most of it can’t be done there. Almost like the hospitals don’t have the time or money to treat everyone. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

                  • FlashMobOfOne
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                    11 months ago

                    Repeating bumper sticker slogans doesn’t change facts.

                    If Europeans wanted American-style health care, every European country would have it. They don’t. They’d rather not mortgage their homes for health care like we do.

                    There’s a reason why the rest of the world doesn’t do health care the way they do. They don’t want to be left for dead when they can’t pay a price-gouged medical bill.

              • Cosmic Cleric
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                011 months ago

                You and I both know that the odds are stacked, between the haves, and have nots. And for the halves to tell the have nots to suck it up and just pull up on their bootstraps doesn’t always work.

                The first group of people (aka haves) getting into power forceify their power base so that only they and their friends benefit from it.

                Democracy is supposed to prevent that, but it’s only as good at preventing that as it is the people you elect to office.

                • @[email protected]
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                  -211 months ago

                  I wasn’t born with a silver spoon up my ass. I worked my ass off and used any resources that I could find. It took time and hard work. I didn’t sit around waiting for a handout and being upset at the world for not getting it.

                  • Cosmic Cleric
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                    111 months ago

                    I did as well, and was successful in doing so, but it definately wasn’t a fair/equal field to walk through, which goes to my point.

          • @[email protected]
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            1211 months ago

            That’s boomer talk there. Always worried about everyone else rather than themselves. "you shouldn’t have a good life because I worked my ass of for 6 hours a day in a factory job that afforded me a nice a house and two car payments with money to spare on steak everyday. The same job now that you’d need a roommate to live in a one bedroom apartment and ride a bike to work while eating shit food. Get over yourself.

            • Cosmic Cleric
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              111 months ago

              That’s boomer talk there. Always worried about everyone else rather than themselves.

              Please don’t be Ageist. It’s not an age thing, it’s how you were raised thing.

              Some of us “Boomers” (I’m actually first gen Gen-X but keep getting called a Boomer) actually do care about others, especially the generations coming up behind us, and want to strive for a win-win scenario for everyone.

              • @[email protected]
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                311 months ago

                It becomes an age thing when someone is talking shit about a younger generation not wanting to work or anything like that because as I said, back in their day a shit factory job was enough income to afford a house and two cars.

                The “how you were raised” is a bunch of shit too. It’s who you decided to become.

                • Cosmic Cleric
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                  111 months ago

                  It becomes an age thing when someone is talking shit about a younger generation not wanting to work or anything like that because as I said, back in their day a shit factory job was enough income to afford a house and two cars.

                  But that’s not automatic based just on the biological timestamp of the people expressing the opinions. And not everyone in that classification agrees with each other.

                  Yes, different generations have different living conditions, but don’t say they’re wrong just because they are a Boomer (which is usually used to signal that they are automatically out of touch and should be ignored), you say its based on the times/society they lived in instead which formed their opinion, and not their physical age.

                  The “how you were raised” is a bunch of shit too. It’s who you decided to become.

                  And you decide who you want to become based on the society you live in at the point of time you’re growing up and living in it, as its society which forces the rules to live by.

                  As time goes by and newer generations show up over the decades, they revise the rules of society and then yes at that point you’re supposed to change with them (but only if you agree with them; free will is a bitch), but you also have a hard coded base of beliefs already and rules that you’ve lived your life by that you’ve learned from earlier days.

                  You can’t hand wave that away no matter how much you want to. People do get set in their ways based on the society time frame they grew up in, and not their biological timestamp. If you want to change their minds you have to understand that fact and work with it.

                  I’m not saying overall you’re wrong, older generations are supposed to update their belief systems to match the times they’re living in now. But to ignore the fact that humans don’t like change won’t solve any problems.

            • @[email protected]
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              -711 months ago

              I’m not a boomer and it isn’t a boomer mentality to think people should work for the things they want. If you really think that 6 hours is a long shift, just wait until you actually get a job. It is hard if you get an easy job. That’s a choice. So is getting a low yield degrees. Those are choices. If you choose the easy way now, don’t complain about the outcome later.

              • wanderingmagus
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                811 months ago

                Hi, US Navy submariner here with an “actual job” that can last 16+ hours a day regardless of rank when underway. I think it’s bullshit civilians are forced to work 5 day weeks and 9 to 5 jobs in the 21st century when automation is literally right there and other first world countries already have free Healthcare and college. I am certainly not complaining about Tricare that I receive as a servicemember, or the job security, or the government provided housing I could ask for at any time if I needed it, or the tuition assistance I can use to go to college. I think all citizens should get these same privileges.

                • @[email protected]
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                  -111 months ago

                  Was it Scotland that did free college and what happened? People got bullshit degrees and complained that they didn’t get them anywhere. Countries with free Healthcare not being able to take care of people in a timely manner forcing them to spend huge amounts of money going to other countries. While still getting taxes for Healthcare. Free doesn’t mean free. Governments don’t make money. They take money from their people and use that.

              • @[email protected]
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                511 months ago

                I see people who work 50-70 hours a week, and even with all that overtime they cannot afford their medical expenses, or they’re being forced out of their rental due to the landlord selling the property and now they have to cope with a move to a more expensive place that no longer fits their budget, they also have $60k in student debt on a degree that didn’t get them the job they have (despite being told by “experts” that you get a bachelors/masters or you’re useless, all to enter a saturated field that wasn’t saturated 2-4 years ago), and they can’t afford a reliable vehicle.

                It must be nice to have that silver spoon you were gifted with, but there are many more who work hard but still have fallen off the edge of our system with no safety net. This isn’t about working for things you want, this is about people having the means to take care of their needs.

                Quite frankly your view is narrow and outdated, hence the people that think you’re a boomer. If it’s so easy, then by all means tell us what the hundreds of millions of people should be doing without the canard advice of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, because that is a chickenshit weak argument by privileged fuckheads who have no clue.

                • @[email protected]
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                  -211 months ago

                  You can’t blame a landlord for doing what’s best for them. They can’t take the hit for people just cause it is hard for them. What experts are you talking about? If people didn’t research before hand, they are the only ones to blame. Yes the automotive market sucks, yes the housing market sucks. That doesn’t mean crying about it and waiting for a handout will fix anything. I didn’t have any spoons. When was going to college I realized I couldn’t afford it and the degree I wanted wasn’t going to work for me, got a job, worked my ass off hopping from job to job trying to find something. When my car broke down, I didn’t get the car I want, I got a car that works and can get me places. Slowly moved up while finishing up a degree that can actually do something, found a stable job and now going back for a bs in something that might not be what I wanted to do with my life, but something that can help me lead the life I want. I’ve been trying to buy a house for years and instead of jumping into the first opportunity that looks good, I’m waiting and researching to make sure I don’t put myself in a worse position. You are your safety net. You shouldn’t expect someone else to pick up after you when you make mistakes unless you are a child. People like you confuse want and need. You want a nice fancy car, but you don’t need it. You want a huge house, but then you are setting yourself up for failure. I’ve know people that didn’t have the best start to their lives and made the best of it and found resources that could help. The people around them that just sat around complaining without doing anything about it are still doing just that. All you can do is call my argument names and complain that you should have shit handed to you. What’s your argument? What’s your way to fix things that doesn’t include bitching on the internet?

                  • @[email protected]
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                    011 months ago

                    What experts are you talking about?

                    So you don’t believe that for the past 40 years, the prevalent career advice given to the youth is to go to college? The experts range from professors, politicians, executives, economists, K-12 schools, to pretty much anybody that chimes in on what everyone should do after high school. If you’re unaware of the advice given for half a century to young adults, then its no surprise you’re a completely out of touch moron.

                    If people didn’t research before hand, they are the only ones to blame. Yes the automotive market sucks, yes the housing market sucks. That doesn’t mean crying about it and waiting for a handout will fix anything.

                    You’re absolutely right, which is why its important to recognize the problem and then support the policies that fix it, because the free rigged market’s only been making it worse.

                    I didn’t have any spoons. When was going to college I realized I couldn’t afford it and the degree I wanted wasn’t going to work for me, got a job, worked my ass off hopping from job to job trying to find something. When my car broke down, I didn’t get the car I want, I got a car that works and can get me places.

                    That you had the means, indicates you had a privilege the majority of people don’t have. Luck got you through all that, not your hard work. Contribution bias is a bitch, and it’s time you recognize it. Refusing to acknowledge the role luck played for you is exactly what makes you an asshole.

                    You are your safety net. You shouldn’t expect someone else to pick up after you when you make mistakes unless you are a child.

                    So by your own logic, we should abolish the ADA, disability, and social security, along with public highways, streetlights, and EMTALA. We should just all be our own safety nets, and fall over dead because of bad luck. It seems like you’re all about luck that favors you, while discounting the misfortunes that happen to others. Sounds like a typical conservative, privatize your profits but subsidize your losses eh?

                    People like you confuse want and need.

                    EMTALA passed a real long time ago because we as a country decided that life should take value over “muh profits”. I should remind you, EMTALA was signed into law by Reagan. People need a home, access to healthcare, and a way to get to work. Since public transit is unpopular in most of North America, cars are the option available. Funny how you twist my words around to assume when I say “and they can’t afford a reliable vehicle” you infer that I meant a “fancy car”. Same for the allegory of a place to live. People are expected to pay thousands per month for shitty housing infected with bed bugs, roaches, or have faulty heating and electrical.

                    Judging by the terrible grammar, I’ll bet you’ve been working on your degree for a very long time, and will continue to do so. I’m convinced you’re lying, and that you actually are an ignorant 50+ year old dumbass boomer. You’re so full of shit or you’re so out of touch, your idiotic and flaccid opinions may as well be scrawled in shit on the side of some dank subway tunnel, with flies buzzing around it.

                    Enjoy extinction, you’re a dinosaur.

            • @[email protected]
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              -611 months ago

              There is options for people of they can’t afford Healthcare. That’s like complaining that you don’t have a 401k when you are the only person to blame. If we are throwing out star wars quotes, “There is no ignorance, there is knowledge”. People choose to be ignorant about their options because it is easier to complain and wait for something to fall into their laps.

                • @[email protected]
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                  011 months ago

                  Look, not every opinion that you don’t agree with is a troll. >go back to reddit. Says the person that joined 3 weeks ago. Nice. How about you go back if all you want is a echo chamber. Reddit was perfect for that. The prefect place to pretend your the smartest person because you could report and ban everyone that didn’t agree with your narrow minded viewpoint.