throwaway_USD

>And now others are insisting that Apple should not have that control (even when they themselves are doing the same thing).

Exactly Apple organized developers, giving the developers a collective power to rival Apple's unilateral dictatorship...sure Apple could call their bluff like they always do with any one single developer, except if these developers collectively withdraw from the Apple ecosystem in mass, Apple would lose developers/market share/market cap.

Now if only consumers would collectively organize against big tech in the same fashion, big tech wouldn't seem so big, and consumer could begin to dictate how these platforms collect use their data.

Whether it gets repaid or not has no bearing on the fact that taxpayers were robbed and their future taxes were used in large part to prop up an historically overvalued stock market completely detached from traditional P/E ratios.

Plus the working class will be made to suffer as their measly incomes, taxed at significantly higher rates than capital gains, will be worth even less due to devaluation of the dollar and inflation.

>But people who don’t earn much money aren’t going to be responsible for that bill because they pay no (or almost no) income tax.

Maybe, but the devaluation of the dollar as a result of this additional and significant debt is only going to effect the daily lives of people "who don't earn much money."

>You mean to pay for teachers

This is going to be a very interesting and telling litmus test for the future of the Country in the next few months.

If public schools go the route of remote teaching, which I think they will...then I don't see much choice but for State, County and local governments to go to war against the Teachers Unions and lay waste to upwards of 75% of the teacher workforce. Lets ballpark about 3M teachers losing their jobs and the entire educational system reformed where there is very limited public school in person attendance. As bad as losing 3M jobs would be to the economy, there will be untold negative impacts on children and parents that will have to leave their children unsupervised during the day.

Easy Congress put on bandannas and robbed the tax payers of about $18,000 each.

Congress then turned around and gave taxpayers $1,200 each, of their own money, that total amount can be doubled that to account for the temporary unemployment benefits increase. The rest of the taxpayer money went to the FED so they will guarantee the prices of shit stock...the market can't lower because as many rich CEOs and investors cash out their shit stock the FED is there to buy at these artificial prices.

Its not healthy obviously, its just another in a long line of scams on taxpayers who paid for the golden parachutes and will be left holding the bag. There is about $4.2T the FED has to buy stock at artificial prices so it will be sometime before this bubble pops.

My understanding of the evolution of Earth flora is that prior to plants being green, the dominant plant life was red (think of red algae blooms) and that the current dominant green plant life likely evolved to use different photons along the EM spectrum where there was less competition.

Funny enough as I understand visible light and the EMR spectrum there is no "green" (color/wave length/energy) rather the color green is a construct originating not in the light spectrum but in the mind of the observer.

>54% of Americans own stocks, either directly or indirectly.

But its negligible ownership stake, during the pandemic we have seen the multiple single day market swings that more than erase the collective holdings of 80% of investors. Moreover, 1% of investors own more than 33% of the market and the top 10% own >80% of the US stock market, that type of top heavy system is always bound to topple.

>A stock market crash wouldn’t improve the economic situation... Many Americans have retirement and pensions tied to stocks.

Sounds like a free market isn't good for the Free Market. A crashed stock market would create opportunity for new investors to invest during this historic downturn...instead during this historic downturn the market is being artificially supported (at record high prices nonetheless) so no new investors will enter.

Free market economics asides, I could imagine the bourgeois and bourgeoise running around during the French Revolution telling the plebs how revolutions and guillotines aren't good for the economy.

Probably something to do with shallow breathing so you inhale and exhale more often the one should without maximizing oxygen intake per breathe nor efficiently regulating oxygen/co2.

>Why, at the government level, do we not look at best practices worldwide?

Because there is a ruling class and for the rulers it is not about best practices or happiness, it is about maximizing wealth and maintaining power.

Education and healthcare (which should be considered human rights not industries) are very helpful in seeing some of the tools the ruling class uses to maintain power. Both education and healthcare are standardized enough they are rated by Country and while the US spends more on both than any other country the US is not even close to being rated number 1 in either category.

Yet, to your point, when one points to other countries as evidence how well other systems work (with less funding) that person will be demonized as Anti-American. Even in the current pandemic where the numbers speak for themselves, we are subjected to having to hear the ruling class get on TV and tell us how we are #1 and doing better than every other Country and even worse in many cases this ruling class refers to the pandemic in the past tense and proclaim how they defeated it. It is Machiavellianism incarnate.

Coincidentally neuroscientist Andrew D. Huberman was on the JRE podcast yesterday and among the many topics/studies he discussed was one where electrodes were hooked up to brains and the subjects were given complete control over the areas they stimulated.

Contrary to what one might think (or at least the scientists) that the subjects would stimulate areas of sexual response or pleasure, it turns out they elected to stimulate areas of anger and frustration.

Without knowing exactly what "news" you found yourself reading, I think its a fair guess the majority of news now-a-days (or maybe always) triggers this area of the brain and so you are probably just elected to trigger anger and frustration over stimulating your brain with the natural beauty of the world around you (so don't feel bad apparently this is the norm).

As others note you don't need to be a monopoly to violate anti-trust laws. However, as it relates to being defined as a monopoly this ability to leverage your market position to stifle competition is the exact type of behavior that would support a finding of monopoly...most non-monopolies can't leverage their market position to unfairly compete

>It definitely feels scummy, but it didn't sound like GP had access to evidence of a crime.

Violating Anti-trust statues isn't criminal...but it is still illegal. Anti-trust violations also aren't the only potential laws this would violate. It sounds like it would violate unfair trade practices as well (most states has statues/laws/codes on point).

Ever hear of Trump University? Granted he isn't a "mega billionaire"...and turns out it wasn't a University at all, in fact it was shut down and resulted in lawsuits Trump settled for $25M.