I mean, yeah. You have more in common with burger-flippers doing wrong-think than you do with people who own things for a living. “Middle Class” is ultimately a meaningless term that obscures that reality.

unless you make money by owning things, you’re still the same class that you were when you were flipping burgers

just gonna copy this comment from further down the post

A coworker drunkenly made out with my face at a work event and HR tried to send me to a sexually harassment seminar so I could “learn what sexually assault really is”

Another great quote from that meeting: “if you knew she was a sloppy drunk, why were you hanging out with her?”

Very true. It’s one degree removed from calling your pet ideology Correctism

Edna describes her work with supers as “designing for Gods”. Again, this feeds into the underlying subtext through the film that some people are innately better than others, and should not be constrained in the same way normal people are.

The argument I saw is that the film is Randian because a central plot point is government regulation making things worse by forcing exceptional individuals into hiding. Forcing “super” people to be normal. Syndrome’s threat is a foil to this, the same outcome reached through the opposite approach.

His line, “When everyone’s super, no one will be,” even mirrors a scene earlier in the film, where Helen says, “Everyone is special, Dash,” and her son replies sourly, “…which is another way of saying no-one is.”

It comes up twice and nothing in the dialog, events, or general framing suggest the filmmakers want us to see this as anything but a neutral, factual observation. I think you’ve thought through the actual consequences of Syndrome’s threat more that the filmmakers did. Kinda a shame, would have made for a better sequel than the one we got.

me against my wife

me and my wife against her boyfriend

me, my wife, and my wife’s boyfriend against the stranger who just butted in with “Actually…”

A lot of the big evolutionary milestones are cooperative. An impossibly long time ago, a big cell swallowed a little cell and (for whatever reason) did not digest it. Together they accomplish more than either cell could on their own. That symbiosis is the ancestor to practically every multicellular organism you can find. Being multicellular is itself another huge development in cooperative evolution. Predation and competition may make a hide tougher or a tooth longer, but cooperation is what really pushes the boundaries of what is biologically possible.

Democritus also thought they would be different shapes depending on the substance, like that metal atoms would have interlocking hooks, which was supposed to explain why it was so durable.

It’s funny that we tend to start with him. Like, here’s the first person who thought substance had an indivisible component. Imagine the smallest thing you can. Nothing gets smaller. Except forget that immediately, because yes it does.

The issue is the price gouging still exists for everyone who isn’t on Medicare. You have to either be old enough, or prove to the government that you fit their criteria for disabled before you get the reasonable price.

Democrats win by turning out people who otherwise don’t vote. If they aren’t already turned on by republicans talking like this, will those people see this as anything other than Democrats talking down to them?

People recognize when they’re being talked down to, this is a losing strategy.

It’s within the governments power to lock prices. For something as medically necessary as insulin, anything less is a half measure.

they’re not talking about the CTC expiring.

no, just the bit Biden did, the thing that was cited as one of his major accomplishments.

and c’mon; Insulin is cheaper for Medicare recipients. Insulin is cheaper for the elderly. It is, in effect, the same statement. You really quibbling over wording to try and scrape together a point?

You know medicare is primarily for retirees, right?

Edit: since you only read the first sentence I quoted from CBS, here’s the second:

But as the nation struggled to emerge from the pandemic in 2021, lawmakers expanded the $2,000 credit to as much as $3,600.

and the fourth

Once it expired in 2022, the poverty rate for children soared.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/09/politics/inflation-reduction-act-medicare-insulin-cap/index.html

Senior citizens and other Medicare enrollees can now get a break on the cost of their insulin.

They won’t pay more than $35 a month for each insulin prescription that’s covered by their Medicare Part D plan. And they won’t be subject to a deductible for insulin.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-budget-tax-child-tax-credit-ctc-eitc-who-qualifies/

The CTC isn’t a new tax credit — it’s been around since the 1990s. But as the nation struggled to emerge from the pandemic in 2021, lawmakers expanded the $2,000 credit to as much as $3,600. As part of that expansion, families received half of the CTC in monthly checks over six months, providing them with as much as $300 per child for each of those months.

That expanded tax benefit, which proved to be immensely popular with families, also helped lift millions of kids out of poverty. Once it expired in 2022, the poverty rate for children soared.

I think the Democratic Party is more to blame for running a Status Quo candidate when there’s so much dissatisfaction with the state of things. When people are angry, the guy who blows up the system is more appealing than the person trying to maintain it. You gotta actually promise to overhaul things, that’s how Obama won.

the child tax credit only lasted one year, and the cost reduction was only for the elderly

The electoral reforms would certainly help, but you risk the Trudeau effect of a candidate running on them, then getting in office and saying, “Well, it can’t be that broken if I still managed to win.”

part of being an adult is doing the work in front of you that needs doing, regardless of "ought"s "supposed to"s

we all benefit from the next generation learning to treat others properly, regardless of our own parental status