Most recent social security trustees report says the trust fund will run out in 2035. What happens in 2035? Benefits are still funded at 83% in perpetuity. By the way, last year it was going to run out in 2033, and the year before that it was going to run out in 2031. And also by the way, the trust fund was specifically set up because they knew the baby boomers were going to stress the system, so it’s supposed to get depleted as the boomers use it.

Everything is working mostly as intended, and yet there’s all this anxiety around Social Security. Why? Because Republicans want you to think Social Security is fucked all on its own so that you don’t question it when they ratfuck it. That and they want to constantly frame the conversation as such so that the conversation doesn’t turn to “how do we make social security more robust and generous?” or some other radical socialist nonsense.

It was the naval ensign of Massachusetts up to 1971, and I guess still is, just with the words removed. As a proud Swamp Yankee, I say to anyone using it to support a fascist coup attempt, and especially anyone from New Jersey - fuck right off.

IF PEOPLE EVELEVEVOD FROM MONKEYS WHYARE THEREA STILL MONKEYS!?!?!

CHECKMEAT ATHEASTS

Straight white Christian men sit at the bottom, almost buried beneath the pyramid

Like a Pharaoh? Buried with concubines and unimaginable riches and feasts in an elaborate sarcophagus? Under a monument built on the backs of thousands of slaves and their suffering and death? Yeah, okay, that tracks.

If you read the full article, it seems as if the Saudi religious establishment was infiltrated by Egyptian extremists fleeing a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood following the assassination of Sadat. Their ideology meshed with Wahhabism and Bin Laden’s religious vendetta against the United States. The Saudi state apparatus did not have effective oversight over the religious establishment and so this all happened under the House of Saud’s nose. The countries in red are (at the time) places with either US puppet regimes or some form of Arab Revolt descended, nominally secular/socialist regimes. The religious extremists pushing Islamic rule operated in these countries under various militias and terrorist groups, notably Al Qaeda, backed by the newly radicalized Saudi Wahhabi establishment, and of course, Iran.

From that perspective, the US was waging war against militias and terrorist groups with roots and support in Saudi Arabia, but the House of Saud was not considered to be complicit. The article goes on to say…

Astonishingly, the attacks of 9/11 had little effect on the Saudi approach to religious extremism, as diplomats and intelligence officials have attested. What finally changed royal minds was the experience of suffering an attack on Saudi soil. In May 2003, gunmen and suicide bombers struck three residential compounds in Riyadh, killing 39 people. The authorities attributed the attacks to al-Qaeda, and cooperation with the U.S. improved quickly and dramatically.

Interesting stuff, to be sure.

In the US, there are positive and negative stereotypes, too. German efficiency and Japanese perfectionism and perseverance are among them. Jewish intelligence and commitment to education, too. These things have a basis in reality, of course, but they shouldn’t be mistaken for reality itself. It seems to me these things appearing in your textbooks were probably attempts by your own government to get its people to emulate what it sees as positive traits in other cultures, rather than an attempt by foreign adversaries to paint Chinese people as inferior. Of course, when the message was a little too unclear or negative as in the “toxic textbooks” incident, your government deflected blame.

Without even reading it.

A Windows update broke my wife’s install earlier this week. Her laptop has Manjaro on it now.

“I love the poorly educated”

He’s like the opposite of Jesus. Some kind of “anti-Jesus.”

I wonder if the bible has anything to say about that…

Being an actual moron isn’t a “gaffe” lol.

/u/OpenStars@startrek.website:

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Also /u/OpenStars@startrek.website:

This guy actually has a picture of Hitler so close at hand, he can post it within the same minute as the comment he’s responding to.

but they’re school teachers, so they definitely like kids

Oh, you sweet summer child.

Mostly true, but also the excessive use of antibiotics in animals reduces the efficacy of antibiotics in humans over time via resistance. So, kind of a distinction without a difference. I’m not a vegan, by the way, or even a vegetarian, but I do try to limit my meat intake for a number of reasons - ethical, environmental, nutritional, and medical.

To be fair, both bikes and fences are made of pipes. What else is made of pipes?

Pipe bombs.

It’s not a Ponzi scheme because withdrawals and deposits are scheduled and mandatory. You don’t get into a situation where investors lose faith and ask for money that you don’t have because that’s not allowed. You get your money when you reach the requisite age. You also don’t get into a situation where you run out of investors because it’s a mandatory payroll tax.

Essentially the only issue facing social security is the fact that since 1974, wage growth has become decoupled from productivity gains, meaning the payroll tax that funds social security captures a smaller proportion of business revenue over time - because businesses spend less of their revenue on payroll than they used to.

Social security doomerism of the type on display here is a tacit acceptance of conservative propaganda on the subject. The government is fully capable of indefinitely maintaining a pension fund, we just have to stop accepting the lie that it isn’t.

Don’t forget Meatball Ron while we’re at it.

Has no one here ever used a debit card?

Or a debit card…