• buttnugget@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    Kind of like the new ICE budget. I remember seeing a tweet from some right wing lunatic saying they didn’t care if it costs a trillion dollars, deport every single undocumented immigrant. They’ve always had an endless budget for things like war and terror.

  • gointhefridge@lemmy.zip
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    23 hours ago

    What would happen if we just fixed stuff. Like, the wealthy can still have it all, but then stuff wouldn’t be broken. Just like, fix things. When is someone going to step up and just pay to fix stuff?

    • buttnugget@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      And herein lies the problem with capitalism. It creates the greed that undermines the very system that allows it to exist. This cannot be escaped because it’s systemic.

      To a rational person, there is such a concept as “enough”, but not to the capitalist.

    • Dogiedog64@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      Never, because once you get to the levels of obscenely wealthy that the modern elite inhabit, the actual amount stops mattering, but the drive to maintain and increase it gets far stronger. Thus, they spend insane amounts on political lobbying to ensure that the government doesn’t collect any money from them in taxes. As for paying for things like infrastructure, they’ll never do that because spending money on that doesn’t IMMEDIATELY net them returns, even if it would in the long run (better schools directly correlate to smarter, more productive workers; better Healthcare means people spend less time sick and are back on the job sooner; improved transportation means workers are early or on time, so production isn’t held back as much).

      Furthermore, the Elite (as it were) literally don’t see the rest of us as people worthy of compassion or respect, let alone any money. Pretty sure that some studies have been done showing that, over a certain level of wealth, your brain and personality shift noticeably towards sociopathy. It’s not exactly a particularly high number either, from what I recall; only a few millions of dollars.

      Billionaires and other rich people will never fix society’s problems unless we literally force them to at threat of life and limb, and there’s little point in believing otherwise.

      • HubertManne@piefed.social
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        22 hours ago

        This. Why would trump who is so old and in poor health want the us to not research cancer treatments like mrna. It works directly against his own interest. Instead he works to make himsef richer when at his age if he devoted himself full time to spending his wealth he would not be able to. The draw of the points just are to much. He is living the real life version of a crappy phone game.

    • radiofreebc@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      For the wealthy to feel like they’ve won at life…people have to lose. If everyone was okay, then the wealthy couldn’t feel superior to us.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    24 hours ago

    Entirely unsurprising. But invading a blue city is the kind of thing that gives those with the authoritarian mental illness rock-hard erections.

    Helping people? Fuck that noise. We want to brandish our penis compensation devices and bust some heads! Time to own the libz!

  • x0x7@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I agree with the general point of this post. But FYI any city that has put serious money into housing the homeless has found the homeless didn’t get housed. No amount of money ends famine in Africa and no amount of money eliminates homelessness.

    So yes, having national guards stand on street corners all day is a very stupid waste of money. But you can’t compare it to a fictional amount of money someone just made up on the spot. Because anytime someone has made up a similar figure, and then gotten it, that number didn’t do the thing they said it would. So I don’t think anyone has shown they know how to estimate that number.

    • SulaymanF@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      What a cynical take. European cities with proper social safety nets have addressed the problem very well, and while homelessness is at non-zero levels, it’s insignificant compared to what we see in the US. “We’ll never solve it completely” doesn’t justify not trying.

    • Hanrahan@slrpnk.net
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      1 day ago

      Sure, if you half ass it but if you’re serious it’s a a soluble issue. For example

      https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/02/how-finland-solved-homelessness/

      The Finns have turned the traditional approach to homelessness on its head.

      There can be a number of reasons as to why someone ends up homeless, including sudden job loss or family breakdown, severe substance abuse or mental health problems. But most homelessness policies work on the premise that the homeless person has to sort those problems out first before they can get permanent accommodation.

      Finland does the opposite - it gives them a home first.

  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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    2 days ago

    president “epstein” trying very hard to shift public focus away from himself, and the fact that ghislaine being on work release isnt gaining more attention is something.

  • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I don’t want to be the contrarian but:

    Two U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said it cost about $530 per Guard member, per day to be deployed.

    How?! How could sending people that are already on the payroll to a different city cost this much? And you are really going to push such a claim, with the source being “some guys said so” and pretend to be a news organization we should take seriously?

    • tree_frog_and_rain@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Because they are taking the entire cost of the operation, and dividing it by the number of folks deployed.

      So that includes logistics, housing, food, equipment maintenance. Including those big expensive fucking trucks, etc etc. And of course, the MIC gets a big cut too.

      Payroll is probably a small portion of that $530.

    • Englishgrinn@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      First, I’m going to heavily qualify this statement. Like, a lot. I have never served in any military capacity and I’m repeating something a member of the Canadian military told me, which could easily be wrong for 20 reasons.

      National Guardsman are similar to our “reservists” and are not paid when inactive. If additional troops who were already trained but not active, we’re then activated, that would account for additional costs.

      So yeah, massive grain of salt but you asked and someone gave me a reasonable answer that seemed to fit. I have done no fact checking, though.

  • inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Sure but helping the homeless would make them actual Christians following the teachings of Christ and we know that now what Republican Christians do.

  • andallthat@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    “Showy? Useless? Expensive? Hurts poor people? Sounds pretty good but are you sure there is no way to put a yuge golden TRUMP sign on it?”

    Trump (probably)

  • MehBlah@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    They don’t want to help people. They want to surpress people. To those people it hurts to help but they feel pleasure from harm. Those types are everywhere in our society but they have found a common home in maga.