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[McTraveller]

Wow, I used to drive that stretch of road quite often.

[Frumple]

At this rate it seems likely that we will have some gun-related questions in the upcoming presidential debate, and the stances of the respective candidates may become an influential factor in the election.

It'll be interesting to see if we do... there's been a few in the news lately, but mass shootings are like, what, twice a week on average or something like that? It's also entirely possible it doesn't get brought up just due to how much it's kinda' sunk into background noise for a lot of folks.

[Robot Parade Leader]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/vance-says-school-shootings-fact-083224755.html
The guy gives speeches behind bulletproof glass saying school shootings are just a fact of life. They didn't used to be.
I'm not sure when the world turned upside down, but wow.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/pro-trump-media-firm-abruptly-174924105.html
It is all just lies? Wow it just folds once it's found out. Jesus.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/incoherent-word-salad-trump-stumbles-184135505.html

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

“Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down. You know, I was somebody — we had, Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka, was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue.

"But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about — that, because look, child care is child care, couldn’t — you know, there’s something — you have to have it in this country. You have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers, compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to. But they’ll get used to it very quickly. And it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us. But they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take care. We’re going to have — I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country.

"Because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care. But those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just — that I just told you about. We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars. And as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers will be taking in.

"We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people. And then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people. But we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about make America great again. We have to do it because right now, we’re a failing nation. So we’ll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question. Thank you.”

What the heck did I just read? This isn't any kind of answer. The guy is all over the place. "Numbers," but he doesn't give any. Then he talks about taxing "foreign nationals," vaguely. Then something about numbers without giving any numbers but "no deficits," and whatever this is, "It’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers will be taking in."

Daycare is way too expensive  but somehow the people working in daycare are broke. This just isn't an answer and "the market" has failed and this doesn't address any part of it. Didn't everyone want Biden out of the race for this sorta thing?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-latest-fury-trump-reposts-142829470.html
"Trump vows ‘long term prison sentences’ for people he falsely claims ‘CHEATED’ in the 2020 election" (basically a news article trying to summarize his many recent ... posts? I guess. It's hard to keep up with the ... messed up stuff he's saying.

He recently admitted he lost 2020 https://news.yahoo.com/news/trump-admits-lost-2020-election-005509746.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
So what does he even mean?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The former president vowed in a post shared to X on Saturday night to seek political retribution “when” he retakes the White House for Democrats who, Trump baselessly claimed, committed “rampant cheating and Skullduggery” during the 2020 election.

Despite Trump’s insistence and his team’s legal challenges to the election results across the country, no court has supported these fraud claims,

People keep showing up to hear him talk. Why? All he seems to do is lie and threaten people for stuff he has 0 proof about at all. He doesn't have an answer. He just wants to hurt his political enemies? The only thing close to a policy idea he's thrown out recently was lowering corporate tax rates even lower and even he's said that would be hard to do with multiple republicans cautioning him about it.

I don't even know anymore. The magic answer just can't be rich people pay no taxes or if not no taxes just incredibly low and that solves everything. I am really hoping this whole debate coming up clears up some of this nonsense for everyone.


I just hesitate to even post anything

[McTraveller]

The magic decoder ring for Trump on child care appears to be "we'll use the revenue from import tariffs to somehow offset the cost for child care, and because we will get trillions from the import tariffs and the cost of child care is way less than trillions, it will all work out."

This fails to pass several tests though, such as you won't get trillions in tariffs and it's hilarious because in order to get those trillions to pay for child care, isn't that "socialism"?  Aside from not even talking about how those trillions would be distributed.

(To be fair, I think he's confusing "trillions over a decade" versus in a single year. I love how political economic analysts always pick decades or two to talk about the billions or trillions some policy will cost - I think it's just to inflate the numbers...)

Spoiler: daycare cost (click to show/hide)

Also think about how much day care costs - is it really that expensive? Yes, but it's not outrageous; I don't know how you could get it less expensive to be honest.

Consider if you have a staff of 5 people running a daycare. Say you want to pay them a mere $50k/year in salary (amounts to about $75k/year payroll cost). So you need 5 x $75k = $375k annual revenue, just for payroll.  Say rent and other stuff is $5k/month, so now you're up to needing $435k/year.  You're probably only open on weekdays, so 260 days a year.  So this means you need about $1675 per day in revenue.  With a staff of 5, you might be able to safely care for 50 kids, tops.  So this is $33.50/day revenue per child.  So for a single kid for a month, this is going to be like $725/month per "full time" child ($435k/12mo/50kids).

That is indeed quite a lot, and barely pays the employees a full-time rate ($50k is not much) for high-stress care of kids.

I don't actually know how you'd get the price down; maybe if you had more caretakers per overhead staff that would help some, but not by huge margins (in the above analysis, I had 2 overhead and 3 caretakers, each caretaker handling about 16 kids, which is still a ton but works for "older" kids; if there are infants, expect maybe 5 kids per caretaker, not 16... which makes the price per child dramatically higher).

It's like people that talk about high costs don't actually think about what it costs to run businesses.

[Frumple]

It's like people that talk about high costs don't actually think about what it costs to run businesses.

I mean... they generally don't think about that too hard, no, because it's of very little relevance to the decision making involved or impression received on their end? They don't look at 700+* a month and think "Shit, we're already underpaying the folks at that price", they think "this is more expensive than any other expense I have except maybe rent/mortgage/debt payments" and entirely reasonably consider that to be "high". Because it is high. If the rent is too damn high, and the rent is too damn high, then childcare costs are too damn high, too, heh.

Does suggest reasonably priced (from the prospective of parents/guardians, anyway) childcare just isn't commercially possible, though. It's probably never going to be anything but high unless subsidies or somethin' get involved.**

*Google says you were close for some states with that back of napkin estimate, incidentally; the florida average is around 770!

... the national average is closer to 1.2k.

E: ** Which, with some degree of fairness, the country broadly agrees with... just not for toddlers, pre-k aged kids. We just balked at extending that to kids that are too young to be particularly amiable to being taught something, heh. That might change at some point in the future, who knows. public schooling creche expansion when

[wobbly]

In a way it makes sense, with a single income family, the non-worker still is essentially working similar to an 8 hour day. Arguably with daycare it shouldn't add up to that second wage/salay because of economies of scale, but you also need to add in the businesses profit line, insurance costs, legal liabilities, if daycare workers are paid close to what you'd get in a professional career, you are losing that 2nd income in extra costs.

[Robot Parade Leader]

The ones near me don't make 50K but still. I guess it depends where you are.
Teachers have like 30 kids in one classroom. Yeah, that ratio sucks and depends on age but still. It ain't 1 to 1 or even 1 to 3.
700 per month is like 8400 per year. 1200 per month is like 14400 per year. Having a baby is like 15 to 30K.

This is fixable but the ones in charge like billing lots of money for things. This ain't the practice of medicine or law or engineering here. It's literally taking care of babies. Yes, that's not always easy, but it isn't rocket science.

One caregiver at $75K total cost divided by 15 kids is $5,000 a head/year. That's like $416/month which is like a little above half the lower end cost of $700. You get taxes to pay for that on a progressive income tax basis and the cost all but disappears when we have the rich people pay for it. Nationalizing and socialism is the answer. It can't be worse than what we do with public schools but preschools and nurseries. Instead, let's bill parents several more thousand dollars we don't need to, because capitalism!

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/trump-says-hell-ask-elon-musk-lead-government-efficiency-commission-he-wins-election

The guy who ruined twitter is gonna ruin everything else.

Trump and Musk are the billionaire "coastal elites" his followers say are the problem. Even a good deal of the other republicans are voting for his opponent in public, because they see he's nuts, but he still demands everyone agree he will win by a blowout landslide (when his own party can't fully unite behind him). Mexico didn't pay for a "The Wall," he's been found guilty by a state jury in a state he lived in for decades, all the bigoted or stupid crap he says, and the promises he makes that just CAN'T come true and haven't. He botched the whole COVID response thing but blames everyone else for it. He admitted he lost 2020 "by a whisker" but he went off and is still going off about somehow being "cheated" with 0 evidence of anything and threatening just everyone he can. Everyone impeached Clinton over the whole Monica Lewinsky thing but Trump and Stormy Daniels is just peachy? This is bullshit because if any other politician before now did half the crap he did, they'd never be elected anything ever again. They love to say "both sides," but holy crap can you imagine if Obama did any of the things Trump did? Clinton? Even Bush or another historical republican? That just wouldn't fly at all. Why? Why is this man God or whatever? These people who love him are still gonna show up and pretend what he's saying isn't a word salad unhinged rant. What do people see in this guy?

[anewaname]

When there isn't enough food for everyone, who gets less? When there is a surplus of food, who gets more? Those questions are the reason political speech seeks to "lessen" some people and "promote" others.

Trump talks to groups or individuals in this way, "you should get more, you should get less, they should get more, they should get less, they are deserving of more, they are deserving of less". His policies are framed to carry the subtexts of what the hierarchy will be in times of scarcity or surplus. His supporters hear the subtext, not the text. They want to be included in this new hierarchy, because it gives them a "better" place in that hierarchy, and for some, it ensures the authorization to enact coercion, grift, and persecution upon a sub-group.

[McTraveller]

Yup. The Trump presidency basically normalized "do for yourself, screw the others."  This is why he was so detrimental, not any bad policies, though the policies didn't help much either.

The reason is it's much easier to mitigate bad policy; it's much harder to mitigate "hey if the President says we should just do what's best for us, screw the others, then yeah!"

[eerr]

The scary part is that if the world goes south enough, 'enough people' would start listening to him.

[Duuvian]

I have a question. Are jorts cool now? I've worn jorts for a really long time. What has happened? Is it a trick that somehow makes me uncool? America, we both don't want me in sweatpants. CarlBrutananadilewski.jpg

Spoiler: why I like jorts (click to show/hide)

I like jorts because they are neither too long, nor too short. If you wear socks, you can pull them up to have almost-pants when you sleep or go through grass, or pull them down to have almost-shorts.

[hector13]

Well, the Beeb and CBS seem to think Harris won, and she at the very least showed how easily manipulated Donald Trump is.

Taylor Swift endorsed Harris (no surprise there) and Harris’ campaign is demanding another debate.

[McTraveller]

In Springfield they are eating their dogs and cats! [The immigrants] are eating the pets of the people that live there!

EDIT: I recall the great Babbage quote: "I cannot rightly comprehend the confusion of ideas which would provoke such a [statement]."

EDIT2: It also reminded me of that old video, "They comin' for your wives, they comin' for your... they snatchin' all your people up!"

[anewaname]

Millions of Swifties with pitchforks and torches, and millions of Swifty Dads with pitchforks and torches, promoting healthy families and protecting their own.

... compared to ...

Mike Johnson's "porn watch" (only with sons), "purity pledge" (decisively with daughters), and "women belong on a pedestal" concept; that twisted vision of women objectified and labelled according to their sexual-purpose (wife/mother/nun), or a life of exile in "the other world" where Epstein's flying-Ferry makes travel stops at Trump's business site to carry "the ripe cherries" to Epstein's Fantasy Island Meat Market.

Did anyone ever ask Mike Johnson if he could have been a strong enough parent, if he could have pulled up the courage, to do a "porn monitoring" thing with his daughter if his daughter was having problems? Or would he have resorted to the "old tools" of isolating, drugging, and beating the daughter until she broke or was coerced? What if his unwed daughter came to him singing, Papa Don't Preach?

I wouldn't recognize any of Swift's songs, but it sounds like she has been giving kids a pathway out of the "saint or slut"/"madonna-whore complex" that society is still attempting to brand them with. And until that societal model is held up as a perversion rather than a "correct thing", the system of coercion and abuse will continue.

[hector13]

Trump has said on his social media platform that there will not be a third debate, ‘cause he so clearly won.