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by vlovich123 2y ago
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- SamBam 2y agoExcept it does the opposite, because it disincentives you from raising your income above that line.
- vlovich123 2y agoThe goal isn’t to make it easy for you to escape the system but more difficult under the theory that then you’re more self sufficient. It’s a stupid philosophy of course.
- humanrebar 2y agoStrawmen usually have stupid philosophies, yes. The simpler and more convincing explanation is that lawmakers write bad laws, regulators write bad regulations, and everyone votes on hot button issues like the economy, immigration, and trans athletes in sports. School lunch policy details don't get enough attention.
- apercu 2y ago> everyone votes on hot button issues like the economy, immigration, and trans athletes in sports Everyone votes emotionally on issues they don't even understand (e.g, there is ~1 trans athlete out of 10,000 NCAA athletes right now, so why the hell is it even a minor issue, let alone a national debate?).
- dani__german 2y agoBecause there is only room for 1 gold medal. Only room for 1 silver medal. This is in Pool, which almost a best case scenario for women to beat men and yet, in the UK, its two former men gunning for gold and silver. https://www.newsweek.com/trans-sport-pool-women-harriet-haynes-2056357 https://www.newsweek.com/trans-sport-pool-women-harriet-hayn... If you truly believe transwomen are women, then its great. For anyone who doesn't share that arbitrary idea, it looks like women's sports is basically over, at least at the high end. Might as well get back in the kitchen, huh? Even women's sports is a man's game now.
- aaaja 2y agoSports governing bodies in the UK are rapidly rewriting their policies to stop these men from competing in women's sports, after a recent Supreme Court judgement ruled this amounts to unlawful sex discrimination against women. So hopefully this ongoing insult to all the women who've worked so hard to compete in their sport of choice will soon be over. That said, the ideal outcome would be apologies to every female athlete affected by this, and for these men to be retrospectively disqualified and stripped of any medals or titles, with these instead being awarded to the women who would have won had these men not been competing. I doubt this will happen any time soon, but if those running these competitions had an ounce of integrity and sense of fair play, they would do.
- dani__german 1y agoThis is a morally correct and minimum acceptable response. Leagues must admit they were wrong (probably impossible), and mail out letters and trophies (trivial). These governing bodies need to Do Better. They need to work on themselves.
- apercu 2y agoI'll go back to there is ONE out of TEN THOUSAND so why is this an issue trumping healthcare and the economy?
- dani__german 1y agoIf you put a man into a game of finding the best person out of 10,000 women, you're going to find the man at the championship. This isn't a per capita or population scale thing. Competitions are intensely personal games. Sports are a big part of American culture and smugly ruining them with nonsense makes Americans mad. This is not difficult to understand.
- mrguyorama 1y agoHaving sex the night before a competition can increase your testosterone levels, a known performance enhancing chemical. Should we ban sex for athletes? At a high school level?
- vlovich123 2y agoThe problem is that sharp drop offs instead of gradients are a known and well documented problem as is the desire to get rid of the welfare state by one party. You don’t need to assume best intentions here when the GOP has consistently made it clear where their priorities lie on this topic. Oh and the GOP has constantly taken “starve the beast” and weaponized incompetence approaches to try and kill the programs they don’t like.
- mcphage 2y agoThat’s okay, because “teaches you self-reliance” is just a fig leaf. They don’t care if it actually happens or not, the point is to have something to point to, so when they’re criticized they can hit back with “Why are you against people learning self-reliance? Why do you want them to be dependent on the government?”
- MisterTea 2y agoIf only those people knew the hardships some people face with mental issues which hinder their ability to function normally on a day to day basis. Some people cant pull themselves out of bed let alone their bootstraps.
- Onawa 2y agoThe types of people who are against these social safety nets don't care. Unfortunately, they will only care if it directly affects them. These people hold the mindset that if you are not disabled and don't have any learning disabilities, you should be able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. There isn't any room for nuance with them, they will just call people who are neurodivergent "lazy" and "welfare queens".
- DisruptiveDave 2y ago"never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence"
- mmastrac 2y agoI'm pretty sure this is malice. They know, they don't do anything.
- grimcompanion 2y agoIt's way too simple to categorize behavior like this into good/evil. It's a worthwhile thought experiment (and habit) to assume that everyone is trying to do the right thing, and try to understand how they might come to a different viewpoint than you.
- ryandrake 2y agoSorry, but my imagination is clearly not robust enough to even begin to steelman a policy that puts children into debt over near zero-cost food at school, often publicly humiliating the child at the same time, without just sounding like a cruel cartoon villain.
- mmastrac 2y agoI don't believe any of this, but I'll try. Please note that the below is not my personal belief, just an attempt to understand the "other side": The attempt to steelman the policy probably comes down to encouraging personal responsibility (the libertarian way). Forgiving debts without consequence promote a culture of non-payment, undermining the sustainability of school meal programs. The steelmanned version of why lunches require payment is likely down to sustainability of the program in general (ie: school budgets are already stretched to the limit, so parent contributions are necessary). Now, this could obviously be solved by just budgeting for the entire thing to be included in the overall taxes of the state, but then you've got to surpass the hurdle of tax raises being insanely difficult in the states. Honestly, this exercise kind of makes me see (yet again) how broken the whole USAmerican system is. "I've got mine and I don't want to give any more away for something I don't need"
- potato3732842 2y ago>Because cruelty is the point for some people. It's not the people peddling cruelty, it's the system. Though obviously people who personally are ok with or like that will be better represented in such a system. > Or said in their parlance, it teaches you self reliance or to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Rephrased another way you're basically saying "it's not my team doing that, it's the other team." And this is exactly the kind of divisive garbage that perpetuates the system. What these systems teach in practice is "don't you dare step an inch out of line, no, intent doesn't matter, out of line is out of line and will be punished" which in a perverse way is exactly the kind of thing government schools will wind up teaching because every bit you make those future adults more likely to comply will pay dividends in reduced enforcement over their lives. Support for that sort of crap generally crosses party lines, as does opposition.
- mschuster91 2y ago> It's not the people peddling cruelty, it's the system. The rules of the system are made by people. And yes, for quite some of them the cruelty is the point when making the rules.
- ryandrake 2y agoThat's right. "The system" didn't just appear out of nowhere. It's built by people--increasingly built by people who believe the government should be used as a tool to exact cruelty and humiliation on outgroups they don't like.
- apercu 2y ago> It's not the people peddling cruelty, it's the system. I'd argue that recent elections demonstrate enough of the people _are_ voting cruelty.
- bombcar 2y agoIt's rarely cruelty. It's usually bureaucracy and unintended consequences and trying to be "nice". Often you have a program created, with "free below X, sliding scale until no subsidy at Y" - done right, this is "perfect" in that each marginal dollar is lightly "taxed" (losing a subsidy is the same as a tax, from the worker's perspective). This is great! Though let's say (theoretically) that the end result is a 1% "tax" for our family, so each dollar they increase income costs them a penny of subsidy. They probably have other subsidies besides school lunches, like WIC, or ACA, or whatever. Those are also sliding down at various amounts, which can cause it to start to get annoying. But it works. Then the program is expanded, to be "nice" - even nicer! Now the subsidy is 100% below X, but they're going to also cover 100% up to Y! That's great! Everyone is better off now ... except now you have the situation where at Y + 1, you earned one more dollar, but lost potentially thousands in subsidy. This is NOT ACTUALLY WORSE than before, because at Y + 1 in both scenarios you have no subsidy, but it hurts much more in the second because the subsidy wasn't slowly being drained.
- thomascgalvin 2y agoWhile this is generally true of a certain American political party, you see hard cutoff lines even in states like Massachusetts, where the majority of voters and politicians seem to be actively trying to make things better for people. The real answer is that gradients are hard, and clear lines are easy. A shocking number of Americans don't understand how our income tax brackets work; they believe that if you cross the line into a higher income bracket, your entire income is taxed at that new, higher rate, and you end up losing money overall. Massachusetts, which has the highest percentage of college educated citizens in the entire country, also shot down ranked choice voting last year, because the math was too hard.
- mindslight 2y ago> Massachusetts ... also shot down ranked choice voting last year, because the math was too hard. The math wasn't "hard" - it was wrong. The decision process was to be instant runoff voting, which has significant problems. IRV is basically what people stuck in the two party mindset think they want so they can express support for a third party. But once a third party gains enough traction to become viable, perverse incentives (strategic voting) shows right back up again. What we really need is Ranked Choice ballots with Ranked Pairs decision process. This satisfies Condorcet which means that a winner is preferred by the majority of voters.
- wqaatwt 2y agoOr just multi-member districts with a proportional system like STV..
- mindslight 2y agoI'd definitely take that as well, but it's a much bigger change. Especially of deep government dynamics like how singular executives then get chosen by the representatives.
- vlovich123 2y agoYou’re making the mistake assuming a political party is flawless or that a political party having power somehow obviates the need to be responsive to constituents who might take issue or be swayed to take issue with the policy changes you try to enact. People like the ones I described exist in both parties but I think it’s telling that people assumed I’m talking about one political party because it made those slogans it’s brand. The hard lines vs gradient doesn’t make sense in terms of public because this doesn’t raise to the level of public discourse. Also Massachusetts is a bad example because they enacted free lunches across the board. They may have gradient issues in other welfare programs but school lunches is something they’ve solved for now. As for RCV being shot down, I don’t think it’s an education issue. I personally prefer approval voting as it’s simpler to explain and faster results. Not wanting to switch to RCV (specifically IRV) can have all sorts of reasons and claiming it’s because the electorate is dumb is the wrong take I think.