• 0 Posts
  • 72 Comments
Joined 9 months ago
cake
Cake day: December 16th, 2023

help-circle

  • scoobford@lemmy.ziptoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldWhat. the. hell?
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    2 days ago

    This is all riot control gear. US universities usually have their own police departments, so by extension they usually have their own riot control gear as well.

    You wouldn’t use any of this stuff in war. It isn’t designed to kill people (although it can and will, especially if used improperly).


  • It depends. I think it’s definitely less common here because it just isn’t needed most of the time. Even a working class retiree should have a pension or 401k, social security, and some kind of savings from their life as a working adult.

    To require the support of your children, you’d have to be unable to work, not entitled to substantial amounts of social security, not have paid into a retirement plan, and not have saved any money from when you did work.

    I know a couple of people who support their parents, and they either spend their ENTIRE lives in poverty making sub-minimum wage (which is pretty uncommon), or they just straight up blew all their money because they assumed their kid would take care of them. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the second category.




  • It is true that nobody pays the cartoonishly high bills that you see posted online. It is also true that we spend way more on healthcare than basically anyone else.

    My company offers very good insurance. Anything “in network” is free after the first $3000 every year, and the monthly premium is around ~$330. Note that this is a company that intentionally offers very good health insurance so they can be less competitive when it comes to salary and time off. I’d say in a given year, I spend around $7,000.

    But really, one of the biggest practical issues with our healthcare system is its opacity. Most people are unable to figure out what most things will cost them before they consent to care.





  • I don’t think so. People need homes, but not all people can buy homes. If you can afford to maintain the property to a reasonable level without completely gouging your tenants, I think you’re providing a valuable service to your fellow citizens.

    We don’t get along, but my landlord is an old lady who bought 2-3 blocks of apartments after her husband left her a bunch of oil money. She keeps up the grounds (for the most part) and my rent has been pegged to inflation since I moved in. If people like her didn’t exist, people like me would be stuck renting from a big property company.




  • I don’t get out a lot period, but my friend is black. They live out of state, but we talk on the phone a couple times a week.

    Now, on one hand, its a sample size of 1. On the other hand, that’s a solid 50% of my social circle.

    That being said, “black culture” varies just as much as “white culture”. You’re trying to generalize a massive number of people, and you’d probably be surprised how hard that is. I don’t think you could pin down any single cultural element as being ubiquitous among black Americans.







  • scoobford@lemmy.ziptoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldShaq
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    4 months ago

    Average cost of college is under $150k/person. Warrant Buffet is worth $133,500,000,000 (rounded heavily). Warranty buffet could pay for approximately 890,000 people to go to college.

    However given the fact that is most of a million people, and how much of a racket education in the US, I think the actual figure is much higher, because he could do several things to drastically reduce the overhead involved.