In the context of modern times, women are six times more likely to be abandoned by their spouse after receiving a devastating medical diagnosis like cancer than men are.
Chetzemoka
joined 2 years ago
Well, it better have some kind of mechanism in place to keep the grocery stores full or it's going to fail on its face.
Our institutions are not the problem, our policies are the problem. I want to see a transition to UBI, but a dramatic overhaul that dismantled WIC and SNAP before we got UBI in place would be an unmitigated disaster for the very people we were intending to help.
It's not the reform that I'm skeptical of. It's the lust for revolutionary destruction as a path to reform that I'm skeptical of. It's emotionally satisfying without regard to its actual efficacy in accomplishing the proposed reforms. Because history does not show us evidence that this works out well in the short nor the long run.
Please show me where I said to do nothing. Why don't you try imagining new ways of improving things rather than repeating the mistakes of the past? Of the revolutions in the 18th-20th centuries, I think only the American revolution accomplished anything close to what it was intending. And that's because it didn't destroy all the existing institutions while in the process of implementing new ones.
(Not that I agree with what the American revolution was intending, but we did get mostly what they set out to do without thousands of poor civilians starving to death in the process.)
All revolutions have hurt poor people the most.
The rail strike would have had major economy-wide side effects, including people in other industries being laid off and inflation being exacerbated by shortages in basic food, water, gas.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/looming-rail-strike-would-take-a-major-toll-on-u-s-economy
After averting the strike, the Biden administration continued to pressure and negotiate with rail companies to get the paid sick days that were the sticking point. But there's been almost no news coverage about that fact.
"Negotiations with the other labor coalition unions continued toward a Sept. 15 deadline, but when it became obvious that the bargaining parties would not reach consensus by then, Biden asked then-Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh to assemble the sides and reach an acceptable agreement that would head off a national freight rail strike.
On deadline day, the parties reached an agreement on an updated contract that included the biggest wage increases in 47 years. Over the next several weeks, while acknowledging that the agreement was less than perfect, the IBEW and several of its fellow coalition unions voted to ratify the agreement. A handful of others, however, did not, instead threatening a December freight rail strike.
Biden, citing the potential economic impact of a national freight rail strike during the winter holidays, on Nov. 28 called on Congress to impose the emergency board’s agreement.
Since then, several other railroad-related unions have also seen success in negotiating for similar sick-day benefits. These 12 unions represent more than 105,000 railroad workers. (emphasis mine)
“Biden deserves a lot of the credit for achieving this goal for us,” Russo said. “He and his team continued to work behind the scenes to get all of rail labor a fair agreement for paid sick leave.”
https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid
A much, much larger question is this: If that rail infrastructure is THIS critical to the basic functioning of our economy, why are we allowing it to be held hostage by private for-profit corporations? This shit should be nationalized and those should be government jobs.
Yeah, working on yourself makes you resilient, but it definitely doesn't make you unstoppable. Like Picard said, "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose."