It can work if there’s a safer legal alternative. Like theres a black market for moonshine but it’s miniscule compared to the whole alcohol market because most people would rather go to a normal store and buy vodka instead cause they know what they’re getting. Same with tobacco, they aren’t banning all nicotine products, just smoking, so if the options are to smoke this probably contaminated tobacco you get off the black market or vape / chew nicotine products that have some quality assurance most people will choose the latter.

force median or above wage pay

This is already a thing . Raising that wage wouldn’t be bad though.

No one was buying his trump gold card for $1 million to get a visa so he had to up the fee on other visas to make it make sense.

If only we had some sort of deal with Iran to monitor there nuclear program and make sure they can’t make a nuke in exchange for sanctions relief or something…

Nah, we already got el salvador for that. They’re gonna need to open up to all the Palestinians “voluntarily leaving” gaza after netanyahu and co make it uninhabitable.

Yeah, I’m staunchly for legalization of all “vices” but I’m not going to pretend that they’re harmless and aren’t valid reasons to want to get rid of them besides being a kill joy.

There were some in the first gulf war. People forget but iraq had the sixth largest airforce at the time and were able to shoot down a couple American planes before being overwhelmed and fleeing to Iran.

Maybe he wants to court the left block because of the three part hung parliament they’re in right now so he can get more defense spending and Ukraine support passed since the u.s. is backing off Europe.

Maybe he’s trying to fill in the power vacuum in the middle east after the u.s. lost all its soft power supporting this war.

Maybe he’s tired of the houthis attacking shipping and hoping to get a French pass if they recognize palestine.

Maybe he’s just a good guy and is just disgusted by genocide.

Bit of a chicken and egg problem, most people aren’t buying stocks because they have no money, not because they don’t understand them. They have no money because the stock holders of the companies choose to put there profits into dividends and stock buybacks rather than increasing wages.

Class antagonism cannot be solved by just giving workers stock, because the worse off workers will just sell it due to economic pressure. Some may be able to hold it but they will have there interests ruptured with the stockless workers. So the capitalists will just raise the wages on those classes of workers with significant ownership , eg. The managers and professionals, and continue to ignore the rest, which is about where we’re at right now.

In order to have mass ownership of stocks there would have to be a mass social safety net so the people aren’t forced to sell there stocks to make ends meet. At that point then stocks stop becoming a source of security for the workers since they already feel secure from that safety net. Then they just become a voting mechanism for production that is still heavily skewed towards the rich. That would be better handled by the government or unions which have an equitable voting system.

Yeah the problem isn’t in our government structure, in this case, but in the republican cult of personality.

It sucks but the Republicans won a very narrow victory in the house senate and president. No matter what system you have, if it’s at all democratic that party makes all the decisions. The problem is there making the decision to standby and watch as a demented oaf flushes the country down the toilet

And deport all the PHDs who criticize it. That’ll get us back in the top spot academically.

And the fed probably won’t let the government dump money into the system because there gonna be afraid of these tarriffs causing inflation.

You’re just mad trump discovered an infinite money glitch for government revenues. Sell someone a visa for $5 mil, kick them out for no reason because you can, make them pay another $5 mil to come back, rinse and repeat.

Why would they pick Dutch, it has all the complexity of English with non of the native speakers.

Spanish should probably be the top of the list if we’re throwing English out.

What? This isn’t ancient history blaming Clinton or Carter for this. It’s only been 6 months since Biden shit the bed on the debate stage and less than a year since he could’ve seen the many polls that said generic democrat was doing far better then him, dropped out and let the party have a primary.

Are you guys allergic to blaming anyone in the democratic establishment for the shit situation were in?

I mean it sort of is, if Biden had dropped out earlier / never entered the race we could’ve had a primary and gotten a decent candidate who could’ve campaigned for more than 3 months.

Never forget that it was biden’s hubris and stubbornness that got us into this mess.