Search

Those are very big questions. This Wikipedia Page is a good place to start.

The simple answer is, everything humanity does happens in cycles.
But you can think of it as roller-coaster passing through an infinite series of loops. We keep going forward in the long run. But but the repeating loops take us up and down, even upside down and backwards along the way. In every case, coming down each loop gives us the momentum to reach the next one.

Based on what I've heard about the US's 988, it may rather be negative.

Oh, you're thinking of killing yourself, let us reinforce that by being absolutely rude, or better yet, time to get taken away by cops into a psych ward.

Let's see what's out there with some example (Reddit)
Summary: Person called 988, police showed up 90 minutes later, got taken for mandatory psychological evaluation, forced to stay 2 days in ER, ended up getting billed $6,470.

Notwithstanding the possible typo in the title, I think the question is why USA employers would prefer to offer a pension over a 401k, or vice-versa.

For reference, a pension is also known as a defined benefit plan, since an individual has paid into the plan for the minimum amount will be entitled to some known amount of benefit, usually in the form of a fixed stipend for the remainder of their life, and sometimes also health insurance coverage. USA's Social Security system is also sometimes called the public pension, because it does in-fact pay a stipend in old age and requires a certain amount of payments into the fund during one's working years.

Whereas a 401k is uncreatively named after the tax code section which authorized its existence, initially being a deferred compensation mechanism -- aka a way to spread one's income over more time, to reduce the personal taxes owed in a given year -- and then grew into the tax-advantaged defined contribution plan that it is today. That is, it is a vessel for saving money, encouraged by tax advantages and by employer contributions, if any.

The superficial view is that 401k plans overtook pensions because companies wouldn't have to contribute much (or anything at all), shifting retirement costs entirely onto workers. But this is ahistorical since initial 401k plans offered extremely generous employer contribution rates, some approaching 15% matching. Of course, the reasoning then was that the tax savings for the company would exceed that, and so it was a way to increase compensation for top talent. In the 80s and 90s was when the 401k was only just taking hold as a fringe benefit, so you had to have a fairly cushy job to have access to a 401k plan.

Another popular viewpoint is that workers prefer 401k plans because it's more easily inspectable than a massive pension fund, and history has shown how pension funds can be mismanaged into non-existence. This is somewhat true, if US States' teacher pension funds are any indication, although Ontario Teacher's Pension Plan would be the counterpoint. Also, the 401k plan participants at Enron would have something to complain about, as most of the workers funds were invested in the company itself, delivering a double whammy: no job, and no retirement fund.

So to answer the question directly, it is my opinion that the explosion of 401k plans and participants in such plans -- to the point that some US states are enacting automatic 401k plans for workers whose employers don't offer one -- is due to 1) momentum, since more and more employers keep offering them, 2) but more importantly, because brokers and exchanges love managing them.

This is the crux: only employers can legally operate a 401k plan for their employees to participate in. But unless the employer is already a stock trading platform, they are usually ill-equiped to set up an integrated platform that allows workers to choose from a menu of investments which meet the guidelines from the US DOL, plus all other manner of regulatory requirements. Instead, even the largest employers will partner with a financial services company who has expertise on offering a 401k plan, such as Vanguard, Fidelity, Merrill Edge, etc.

Naturally, they'll take a cut on every trade or somehow get compensated, but because of the volume of 401k investments -- most people auto-invest every paycheck -- even small percentages add up quickly. And so, just like the explosion of retail investment where ordinary people could try their hand at day-trading, it's no surprise that brokerages would want to extend their hand to the high volume business of operating 401k plans.

Whereas, how would they make money off a pension fund? Pension funds are multi-billion dollar funds, so they can afford their own brokers to directly buy a whole company in one-shot, with no repeat business.

It's propaganda. But, it's not just propaganda, it's effective propaganda.

The fact that it's so effective is somewhat new and very concerning. We have to understand why it's effective if there's any hope of eventually stopping it. And, it's effective not just because the propaganda is well crafted, it's effective because there's a whole system that immerses the audience in it and never lets them see an alternative point of view.

In North Korea the only information you get is information specifically selected by the state. The US free market and first amendment was supposed to be a shield against that sort of propaganda. Unfortunately, while people have the right to find other forms of media, a lot of people want the comfort of living inside their own media bubble. Then the propaganda channel tells them that every other source of media is full of lies, and controlled by the jews, and who knows what else, and those people get even more locked in to their propaganda source. Then they're told that scientists are getting rich (ha!) by selling out, so you can't trust scientific papers. So, you can't trust the government, the media, scientists, doctors, schools... you can only trust them.

Then they're told that if they ever do try to do their own research, they're not going to get results because of censorship. Some censorship exists. Sometimes it's formal, sometimes it's informal, like YouTube taking down videos that hurt their bottom line, or cause them headaches. But, the convenient thing about claiming that information is being censored is that it's unprovable or "unfalsifiable". You can't prove that something that doesn't exist was censored because you can't prove it ever existed in the first place. And, of course, when an idiot is told that information on "turbo cancer" is being censored, they search for it and get no results, that just reinforces their belief that the news is being censored.

Add to that that the same group that wants to lock people into a pipeline of disinformation also wants to defund schools and universities. You can't hope that someone can learn the truth from a teacher or a professor if the school no longer exists. You can't hope that the next generation learns critical thinking in high school if the high school is defunded and shut down.

Big tech companies making their platforms extremely engaging is yet another element in this shitty soup. Most of these companies actually employ mostly liberal people, and the culture is at least somewhat left of center. But, they get their money by keeping people engaged, which means feeding them things that are shocking, angering, etc. That keeps people in their bubbles, and keeps them from engaging their critical thinking abilities.

The end result is you get people living in bubbles, listening to, watching and reading news that makes them feel good because it reinforces their existing biases. They cut off people in their lives who have dissenting views because either they're angry about that person's views, or it's just too much of a headache to constantly fight with them. Social media keeps them in a bubble that keeps them engaged, and keeps them seeing the same point of view over and over. And so-on.

Because the whole situation is so complicated, it's not going to be easy to reverse. It's not just a matter of shutting down Fox News, or Newsmax or MSNBC or any other propaganda fountain. It's also going to have to involve breaking up tech monopolies, or at least removing their Section 230 protection for their editorial decisions. It's also going to require major educational system reforms, ensuring that all kids go to schools that teach critical thinking skills, and because this is the US that will involve major fights over property taxes and religious freedom. I honestly don't know if it's going to be possible.

"Conservatism [...] can't be defeated with logic and reasoning"

This is the key point that a lot of people miss.

If you wholeheartedly, or at least performatively, believe that there is a "natural" hierarchy where some people are better than others, then what one might see as equality is seen as oppression by hardline conservatives.

This is why emotion is the key component of Trumpian messaging, regardless of veracity.

The key is to never play the game. Always proactivity act with questions, never "defend" and react with truth; they're not interested in the truth.

It's a racist lie that increased immigration leads to increased crime.

The mythical tie between immigration and crime - a Stanford Study

I've read this article when it was posted before and my impression is it does EXACTLY the thing to non-rural voters as it warns the reader about doing to rural voters. I can quote the bits if you are going to force me to read it again, but I don't see how anyone can fail to see that.

It also doesn't change the fact that the party who might actually make their lives better is NOT the one they are voting for.

Also - racism (and bigotry generally)

and now you need houses for people to live in and people to make the houses, and now there's more people and they invent things, which makes things better and more people come and there's more farming and more people to make more things for more people and now there's business, money, writing, laws, power,

Arch linux user here. Gaming totally works. Sometimes even better than Windows when playing native games. Even Proton works good most of the time. Sometimes I play Brawlhalla with Proton Experimental and it runs better and less laggy in Linux than Windows despite Windows having a native build. Check ProtonDB to find out how well games work on Linux. Linux gamers review games there.

Thanks to Valve, the Steam Deck is getting Linux popular and basically makes devs build their games for Linux as well.

I personally use Sleep as Android which comes with a bunch of options to help ensure you've actually woken up. I utilize the "captcha" option in which when I go to turn off the alarm, it displays a screen full of sheep and all of them but one are sleeping - you have to click the one that is "awake" in order to dismiss the alarm. I guess the process wakes up my brain just enough so that I don't go back to sleep, whereas with a regular alarm that has just a simple dismiss button I'll absolutely either hit dismiss or one of the volume buttons to turn off the alarm before I've fully woken up.

I also have it set to buzz on my watch for 90 seconds before playing a sound on my phone (which escalates in volume) - I've not had a problem waking up with this in the years that I've been using it.

There are other options too, such as answering math questions, scanning a QR code, pressing your phone to an NFC tag, heavily shaking the phone, one called "Say cheese!" that makes you smile as hard as you can and uses the camera to detect it, and one that you have to "laugh out loud".

America is a nation of immigrants so I don't really understand this argument. Cultures don't really integrate that way, plus assimilation is a generational thing.

A 2018 study in the American Sociological Review found that within racial groups, most immigrants to the United States had fully assimilated within a span of 20 years. Immigrants arriving in the United States after 1994 assimilate more rapidly than immigrants who arrived in previous periods.

Measuring assimilation can be difficult due to "ethnic attrition", which refers to when descendants of migrants cease to self-identify with the nationality or ethnicity of their ancestors. This means that successful cases of assimilation will be underestimated. Research shows that ethnic attrition is sizable in Hispanic and Asian immigrant groups in the United States.

By taking ethnic attrition into account, the assimilation rate of Hispanics in the United States improves significantly. A 2016 paper challenges the view that cultural differences are necessarily an obstacle to long-run economic performance of migrants. It finds that "first generation migrants seem to be less likely to success the more culturally distant they are, but this effect vanishes as time spent in the US increases". A 2020 study found that recent immigrants to the United States assimilated at a similar pace as historical immigrants.

• Wiki

Electric shock alarm

Not OP, but just a boiler plate response would be fine for me. "Sorry [insert name here]. You are no longer being considered for this position. (Optional) Good luck on other applications". Could even have it set up to sends those out automatically.

1. metacognitive myopia explained why people didn't/couldn't update their beliefs about the existence of "weapons of mass destruction etc".
2. dogwhistling the threat of sexual revolution "comrade kamala" (i.e., he's implying hypocrisy when he doesn't understand what lenin's use of the term "prostitute" meant).
3. playing the fool until you can't (i.e., making his base feel insightful and "seen" as playfully serious, homophilically/mimetically charismatic; e.g., his base feels like their inference-making is being promoted based on linguistic sympathy through the aura of charisma).
4. from (3) somewhere in his administration they're letting the would-be "fool" base do the grunt-work and creating cover; see "Optimal Team Formation Under Asymmetric Information".

The 19 words: "...because democracy basically meaningless..." (pause) "Government by the people, of the people, for the people... but the people are [fools]."

I'm inserting "fools" cuz I don't wanna use outdated insults.

Yeppers, peppers! 🫑

This video explains it all in 19 words. Democracy relies on intelligent, informed choice. Republican voters typically lack one or both.

Found it! It's almost 3 hrs long, so you know what that means: a glass of wine, your favorite easy chair, and of course, this YouTube video streaming on your home system. So, go on, and indulge yourself. That's right, kick off your shoes, put your feet up, lean back and just enjoy the rational documentary. After all, knowledge soothes even the savage lemming.

We Taught This Chimpanzee to Understand the American Political System and He Hanged Himself

But see how evil he looks...

/s