Paul Brownjohn @Paulos_the_fog@qoto.org

@ShredderFeeder

That seems to be a recurrent theme with Republican presidents! Nixon did the same by negotiating with South Vietnam to keep the Vietnam war going so that he got the keys to the white house! LBJ knew about it as they had bugs all over the place in the south Vietnamese administration but he couldn't use the evidence so obtained as doing so would have meant exposing the fact that the US security services were bugging an ostensible ally.

@russellt @DrALJONES

Nah - that would require the invention of artifical cretinism, not artificial intelligence!

@DeliaChristina

To me, billionaires are by definition, sociopaths, otherwise they would never have allowed themselves to accumulate so much wealth without feeling an overwhelming need to help those less fortunate than themselves!

@pensionpython

This is absolutely true, but having spoken about healthcare with even the most lefty Americans and heard them defend the status quo, I don't think the USA wants or even deserves decent healthcare!

@freemo @randahl

I would quote the following so as to keep it nice and simple:

"I need someone to explain to me why it’s always “if you can’t pay rent, buy fewer lattes and avocado toasts” and not “if you can’t pay your employees a living wage, buy fewer yachts and real estate”.

Explain it to me like I’m in kindergarten!

@freemo @randahl

Governments in civilized countries have imposed a statutory minimum salary to avoid exploitative employers from paying starvation wages but I suppose that offends your libertarian principles!

The problem with even the most generous statutory minimum wage is that it is seldom increased to keep up with inflation. The country where live, Luxembourg, is one of the few exceptions, that still indexes the statutory minimum wage (and all pensions, benefits and salaries both public and private) to the rate of inflation. When a 2.5% increase in prices is reached, everyone gets a 2.5% increase in salaries etc.

Welfare is not and never has been what folk want; what they want is decent work with pay that enables them to pay their rent or their mortgage and raise their families if they have one. It's the billionaires who run the world's largest corporations who are amongst the worst offenders for paying starvation wages with Bezos being a fine example!

@freemo @randahl

Paying them a salary that is so low that no one could possibly live on it, is 'exploiting' people or do you have a polite euphemism for paying starvation wages like 'what the market dictates'?

@freemo @randahl

...so are you naïve enough to you think Bezos got rich due to his own "hard work" - of course he didn't! He got rich by exploiting other people's hard work!

The conditions Amazon workers endure are appalling in most countries.

@randahl

Birds of a feather flock together!

@freemo @randahl

'Equitably does not mean equally; it means fairly!

It is nonsense to suggest everyone should have the same amount in their bank account! It is not nonsense to say that everyone in society should receive a fair share of society's earnings and profits.

@freemo @randahl

I would imagine we would agree that one of the ultimate goals if not THE ultimate goal of human life is happiness. That generally comes from living in a society where wealth is equitably distributed not one where the gap between rich and poor is monstrous. The happiest populations in the world are normally adjuged to be in countries where tax rates are amogst the highest in the world and are slanted very much towards enforcing income equality not letting the extremely get richer! The put it bluntly we need cleaners, refuse collecters, nurses, teachers, refuse collectors and others who do relatively menial tasks very much more than we need the entirely parasitic Elon Musks and the Jeff Bezos's of this world. I would therefore tax people with such obscene wealth at 99% once they reached a level of wealth that would leave them comfortably off for the rest of their lives!

@CharlesTannock

So obviously, that's what's happened in Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and all the other numerous countries that have legislated to allow euthanasia for the terminally ill, has it?