Profile avatar
mrtpsm.bsky.social
Semi-anonymous profile of UCLA graduate who also has a Master from USC. No shortage of opinions, but I try only to comment on college football or what I read in The Economist.
905 posts 71 followers 178 following
Discussion Master
comment in response to post
I don’t know about Trump fitting in at the Congress of Vienna. He seems much more suited to the Berlin Conference personally.
comment in response to post
100,000 people, I’m told.
comment in response to post
Yeah…far more clever and trenchant than what was picked. Even has subtle notes of cherries, plum, and Orwell… Rest assured, i will never let you down Alex as far being a critical voice of the reader across the Pond, lol.
comment in response to post
It’s a rhetorical question…
comment in response to post
Well I’m glad…it actually looked like a cool event sans the partisan tint…but… …can the Economist confirm the crowd was at least bigger than Trump inauguration in 2017?
comment in response to post
Apparently they had just passed the budget and one of the deceased had voted with the opposition party to close it.
comment in response to post
Ooh, excited to listen.
comment in response to post
You are always so skillful at sliding in the real bombshell at the end (no pun intended). Truth be told, there’s an argument that Taiwan is on safer ground as long as there the wars in Ukraine and Gaza is unresolved. Once those loose ends are tied up is when I would really worry.
comment in response to post
Try the winter, lol. I hear Chicago will feel like Siberia in comparison.
comment in response to post
I mean, it’s happened before but not since they invented the iPhone. In 1992, the National Guard rolled into L.A. to support civilian law enforcement during the Rodney King riots. And in 1877, federal troops broke up a national railroad strike.
comment in response to post
Yes. Too much doing favors for leaking shit and not enough real journalism.
comment in response to post
Except perhaps for explicitly embracing racial segregation and or slavery as a way to “Make America Great Again”…there is probably no better way to dunk on every living person today and every sovereign nation than to crap all over the Allied victory in Europe.
comment in response to post
At least Merz wore a suit…
comment in response to post
At least Merz wore a suit, lol. Vance and Rubio gonna be desperate to find lipstick that will look good on this proverbial pig…
comment in response to post
…right…but that’s just it…Social Security and Medicare pay for your benefits you receive when you are not paying for employer-based healthcare.
comment in response to post
Can you really put a price though on the peace of mind from not having to worry about either being decapitated from the guillotine or dispossessed by Marxist revolutionaries, lol? The welfare state wasn’t sending to help people inasmuch as avoid socialism.
comment in response to post
Classify? The French system I would say is a better version of what America’s health care system imagines itself to be, lol. But that’s largely because practitioners can’t deny you based on medical group/network.
comment in response to post
…if by “flat taxes” you mean what transit authorities collect themselves through things like property and sales taxes that suck up CTA’s operating budget, yes.
comment in response to post
That was true until Medicare Advantage allowed in at-risk capitation managed care plans. Now it’s like car insurance.
comment in response to post
I’d say it was the hallmark of the “Chump-ocracy” effect… …but really we all know that Britons on the left not only carry a sense of self-loathing from being British but also for supporting a proper welfare state.
comment in response to post
Not quite, that provision in the ACA has been trampled over for the last decade…. …but either way…what is mandated to be coverage that looks like Medicaid more than a “Cadillac” plan.
comment in response to post
Well that’s why I asked…because ultimately you can’t understand unions in American without understanding that employer health insurance only survives in the US because it’s a chip in collective bargaining.
comment in response to post
Right, but in the US it’s the opposite as far as financial incentives. So called “Cadillac” health insurance plans allow employees to pay premiums on their pre tax income and thus lower their withholding for federal income tax in the US.
comment in response to post
Not racism, segregation. The Truman Administration was prepared to institute national collective bargaining rights and a UK style National Health Insurance but Southern Democrats blocked it fearing unions would mobilize blacks to overturn Jim Crow.
comment in response to post
So Germany does not have a national health care system?
comment in response to post
Not when the CTA has to pay for pension and health care costs on top of salaries.
comment in response to post
That’s only if your transit board is afraid to offer signing bonuses, lol. As with other public safety jobs, the risk of losing experienced staff far outweighs the ability to recruit people who might jump ship in 3-5 years.
comment in response to post
It’s really just supply and demand. It’s not the ladder’s fault, lol.
comment in response to post
Spoiler alert, there have been very few new industries created since the 1940s. We just use different workers for them and have fancier tools.
comment in response to post
As they should. Wealthy Americans love capitalism until they don’t have a ready-made supply of below-market workers to exploit. Once the lumpenproletariat can hire union reps, authoritarian kleptocracy starts looking better and better for Republicans, lol.
comment in response to post
Those rules were put into place when salaries were not good though and sometimes when there were actual wage and price controls imposed by the federal government. They just look so high because private sector unions are so weak now the real wage in the US hasn’t moved since the Nixon Shock.
comment in response to post
That’s a different issue. Shift preferences is like employer-provided health care: public entities that can’t compete on salary for employee retention offer other things money can’t buy.
comment in response to post
It absolutely is. The seniority system is based on the fact that racial covenants were struck down at the same time that Taft-Hartley was enacted in 1948. There had to be a way to ensure that labor unions did not break into factions by race in urban states, and seniority was it.
comment in response to post
…or as they call it in Sicily, the Mafia, lol.
comment in response to post
What if I told you that other countries don’t have individual states deciding to be right to work as opposed to having a uniform, national standard on collective bargaining, lol?
comment in response to post
It’s like they think that the Attorney General is a constitutionally established office that can’t be abolished by an Act of Congress or something, lol…
comment in response to post
Anti-union propaganda is always about boutique political factions with more money than members getting a better ROI on donations. Getting campaign support from unions is far more labor intensive than getting checks from Silicon Valley oligarchs.
comment in response to post
Remember, it was the UK that had to sell America on NATO originally. It’s easy I think to overlook that when you overlay the post Cold War potential of an EU unified military command.
comment in response to post
The fact that what was found was stank and not dank no doubt caught Rolling Stone as an angle that they could not pass up…lol.
comment in response to post
That’s asking a lot, given that the piece was written by Ross Douthat.
comment in response to post
You may not have intended your column to raise the specter of a Rubio-Noem ticket in 2028 but, uh, well…
comment in response to post
Wait, crowds pushing back on police activity in a downmarket area of Minneapolis just after Memorial Day?
comment in response to post
It’s not tricky, it’s that it has a direct impact on construction cost estimates and design and therefore tends to be treated more like trade secrets than true economic analysis.
comment in response to post
You must be new here, lol. Don’t you know that gentrification isn’t about encouraging density in America? 😉
comment in response to post
Color contrast made it difficult to see that you actually had meat somewhere on the plate.
comment in response to post
A conservative friend recently told me that he isn’t sure what argument I could make that would make him want a Neo-Marxist future.
comment in response to post
By fringe, I just mean they’re unable to hold the majority on their own.
comment in response to post
Careful, America’s biggest apologist for the “broken windows” theory of crime policy is looking for a job these days…
comment in response to post
How in God’s name do you pick who to subscribe to, though?
comment in response to post
“Remember, the UK is where Marx ultimately was buried.”