RobAtticus

While true, there is another nuance missing here. The deficit was higher in 2020 & 2021 due to the Covid stimulus spending. Looking at 2017-2019 for Trump and 2022-2024 for Biden probably gives a fairer picture of what happened during both presidencies. It's basically been an upward trend since 2015, excluding the Covid outliers.

>I think it depends on how you describe "wealthy". The life of someone who makes $200k a year isn't hugely different from someone who makes $50k. You still have to drive yourself to work and sit in rush hour traffic with every other peasant, for example.

One of the biggest differences between those salary levels is the housing they enable. 200k salary will allow for owning a home in most places (in the US, at least), while 50k will not. From there flows a lot of other things, like crime/safety, schools (if you have kids), etc, and even can improve your example: 200k can get you a place closer to work with a shorter commute, even if some of it still is spent in rush hour.

After fees is a bit tacky, but, at least in the US, I think it is considered good etiquette to tip on the original amount before discounts. I remember this came up a lot when Groupon was big offering a lot of BOGO deals.

Numerous people (Matt Levine, etc) smarter than me have written about how there was no $1B break up fee. That fee only came into play if something prevented the deal, like regulators blocking it. Him having buyer's remorse was not sufficient to trigger that clause.

Hi! Author here, happy to answer any questions!

>Say what you will, the 27th Amendment passed.

Sure, but the Congress that approved it never felt its consequences because it took another 200 years for it to become ratified. So the first group it affected was definitely not the same group that voted for it.

dragonwriter was talking about the Democratic primary.

It's pretty much on a steady climb upwards though. So a show today probably has more ads per half hour than one 10 years ago, 20 years ago, etc.

You keep talking about Sturgis, which ended on Aug 16. There is known incubation time between contact and testing positive, and even by 10 days later (Aug 26) the rate was at ~1200. Also July -> Aug was a 55% increase in cases as well, even before that, which coincides more with summer.

I'm not going to say definitively what caused what here, but your anecdotal recollection of what happened in SD is not really supported by the numbers.