The last World Cup used slave labor to build their stadium in the desert, in a country that banned beer/alcohol consumption - the latter of which was relaxed eventually due to heavy lobbying (and possibly corruption.)
Can you imagine someone willing to do those things because of some reason other than monetary gain, as it would be in OP's world?
How many people currently stuck in Jobs would work toward accomplishing these things with the idea of ending world hunger, because they _want_ to do it, instead of having to do it because they have student loans and bills to pay?
I don't think there's anyone out there working on solving world hunger because they have loans and bills to pay. It isn't a monetarily profitable endeavor.
People have to have the buying power to support the chain you describe. If the buying power of a population vanishes, such as by being made superfluous, they get a large population reduction whether they like it or not.
With so many recent leadership hires / acquire hires with Facebook Growth Team backgrounds, ya’ll are naive if you think OpenAI _isn’t_ using this business data for their own means…and/or intends to lean more heavily into this direction
Ex: if you’re a Statsig user, OpenAI now knows every feature you are releasing, content you produce, telemetry, etc.
“… FTC when it challenged Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a convoluted process that didn't formally end until May of 2025—almost two years after the deal closed.”
This process needs to be faster for these types of challenges to be more successful - both in the market and in consumer opinion. Markets move too fast, and the answer can’t be “FTC needs more of my money to hire more people.”
This reminds me of the fascinating story of how Shakespeare's first folio was assembled, in that many of the plays were assembled from folks who had copies that were annotated - either as reading notes or with random family musings like todo lists.
No, boomers and NGO's who raided the coffers blew it and left us with $36 trillion in debt, along with $1.2 trillion on _just the interest payments_ - which is more than the US spends on Defense.
Now we can't build anything, and the other side is still holding out hope that eventually we'll be able to fix by just taxing more - despite the fact that Congress won't even vote to prevent themselves from insider trading...which means the middle class will continue to bear the downward pressure.
Yeah, this isn't due to the debt. Most infrastructure projects in the US are disasters (usually due to layers of outsourcing, tons of consultants, corruption, lack of competence) that cost multiple times their equivalents elsewhere in developed countries.
It's exactly like in healthcare - the US spends more to get less than similarly developed countries. The amounts available to spend aren't the issue here, the terrible use is.
As far as I understand, however, there's not much of a path between the current tariff measures and reducing the US debt. Especially not with the tax cuts or if war with China is still in the books.
You do realize this "debt" is denominated in the currency that the US itself controls, and can create and destroy at will, right? You cannot analyze this with the logic of household finances. The debt owed to bond holders is our and other countries continuing to buy into the American system. And the "debt" owed to other government agencies (including the Fed) is nothing more than a political martingale, to support the Republicans' kayfabe "fiscal responsibility" of the past forty years, where they sabotaged investments in our society so they could give away the wealth to banksters instead.
These tend to work through in stages: fastest ones to accept were already looking, and next up are those that are on the fence, and so on...
The 8-month buyout offer is significantly better than the one-time offer from Clinton in the 90's [1], even adjusting for inflation, so I'd expect that there's a large group of individuals & families that are just taking the time to evaluate the decision.
Well, except that Clinton went to Congress for authorization to make those offers and got a law passed, and didn't do a blanket offer to every employee they could blast out an email to, and did them as actual buyouts rather than extended no-work leave.
>But at the same time we -- meaning Trump and the GOP Senate -- just appointed the least qualified candidate in the history of the US...
I'm old enough to remember when Biden nominated someone with no aviation experience to lead the head of the FAA, and also had corruption charges while acting as head of the LA transit system....AND Democrats were in _favor_ of that lack of experience:
"Democrats...spinning his lack of direct involvement with aviation as a positive, theoretically making him less likely to be aligned or swayed by any of the many interest groups or companies in the industry."[1]
I'm also old enough to remember when Pete Buttigieg was appointed Transportation Secretary, despite having virtually no experience in mass transit (no, a McKinsey deck doesn't count) and whose highest office was mayor of a small Indiana town.[2]
So can we stop with the hyperbole? Yes there are many good candidates, but the US could do much worse than a guy with experience in Iraq/Afghanistan/Guantanamo + 2 Bronze Stars + Joint Commendation + 2 Army Commendations + Expert Infantryman Badge + degrees from Harvard & Princeton.[3]
Dude, none of that has _anything_ to do with being able to run a huge organization. Nothing. It’s undeniable that Hegseth, even if you ignore all of the white supremacist shit, is completely unqualified to run a large organization. Noting other folks that aren’t super qualified doesn’t change that one bit, and it’s insulting to others’ intelligence to suggest it does.
We would call those qualifications to be a Sr. Principal Engineer or higher even ... not an SVP in charge of 1M+ people. Hegseth is way out of his league.
I love how people think managing 1M people and 100 people are different. In both cases it's all delegation. You can't oversee more than 10 people in any realistic sense.
Relax.