America - The Official Thread

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UKMikey
I've seen politicians trying to instigate culture wars before but never a cultured milk war. According to @Keef I'm supposed to be "facsinated" with US cheese consumption for a foreigner so I'm not surprised a Wisconsinite is treating their dairy product nomenclature overly seriously.
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It's not cultured, it's pasteurized.

Anyways, I feel like every time a British person visits America for television they always quip about how Americans put cheese on everything, but not in a tasteful Italian sort of way, more like a "wow, they must have caves full of cheese" sort of way. Apparently we do.
 
UKMikey
I've seen politicians trying to instigate culture wars before but never a cultured milk war. According to @Keef I'm supposed to be "facsinated" with US cheese consumption for a foreigner so I'm not surprised a Wisconsinite is treating their dairy product nomenclature overly seriously.
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Wisconsin takes three things seriously. The Green Bay Packers, alcohol, and dairy. The Packers are currently trash and beer isn't being "attacked" right now, so to stay relevant they need to do something involving dairy.
 
Generalisation is bad, especially when it's done by those guys with "UK" in their username who just act like typical Brits all the time, right? Also, evidently I should've used "uncultured milk war" to make the culture war pun.

Expects flak for spelling generalization "wrong"
 
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UKMikey
Generalisation is bad, especially when it's done by those guys with "UK" in their username who just act like typical Brits all the time, right? Also, evidently I should've used "uncultured milk war" to make the culture war pun.

Expects flak for spelling generalization "wrong"
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I literally read that word with an s sound like "sensation". I wonder if the s and z propaganda is buried somewhere within those milk laws.
 
Keef
I wonder if the s and z propaganda is buried somewhere within those milk laws.
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Please, I raise you a few teasing words to tackle those grammatical questions.

Oh.. and don't forget the diesel. You wouldn't want to get a disease from some funny business.
 
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Joey D
That's peak Wisconsin.
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Wisconsin: come smell our dairy air!

My family drinks a lot of milk, but I'm more of a cheese hog. The only reason I care about Earth's conservation is because it's the only planet with cheese and ice cream/custard and if that goes, I'm outta here.
 
GranTurNismo
And yet again we're beat by Cuba. Wow, I totally can't possibly imagine why that is!
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COVID-19 is the reason.

The life expectancy always gets into a discussion of infant mortality, which weighs on those statistics. Infant mortality gets weird as some countries report some infant deaths as lost pregnancy rather than death. To some extent, further medical technology allows for more attempts at keeping premature births alive, and can end up making infant mortality look worse depending on how it gets classified. Higher infant mortality results in reduced life expectancy.
 
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Danoff
Higher infant mortality results in reduced life expectancy.
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Unless I am mistaken, it is also where the misconception about life expectancy in the 1500s comes from and jokes about dying at 30; many people lived well into their 60s and even their 70s but the infant mortality rate was so high it brought the average down so much and people just assume the average was the factual reality. Once you got past the most dangerous phase early in life, you could live to what we would call a normal age.
 
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www.wfla.com

Florida bill would require bloggers who write about governor to register with the state

Florida Sen. Jason Brodeur (R-Lake Mary) wants bloggers who write about Gov. Ron DeSantis, Attorney General Ashley Moody, and other members of the Florida executive cabinet or legislature to regist…
www.wfla.com www.wfla.com

I know this is performative nonsense specifically targeted at turning Desantis' base against any courts that he hasn't already packed in his favor, but...


Failure to file these disclosures or register with state officials, if the bill passes, would lead to daily fines for the bloggers, with a maximum amount per report, not per writer, of $2,500. The per-day fine is $25 per report for each day it’s late.
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This is about an effective of a threat to the hundreds of millions of people who clown on DeSantis who don't live in Florida as the pathetic fines levied against the empty shell company that Google abandoned in Russia are.
 
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Tornado
www.bbc.com

Tucker Carlson said he hates Trump 'passionately', lawsuit reveals

The text messages sent by the Fox News host were released as part of a 2020 election lawsuit.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com

Speaking of
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Seinfeld Reaction GIF by MOODMAN


I was looking for the that's unfortunate, but this will do.
 

“The first thing you do is you change the retirement age of the young people coming up so that we can try and have some sort of system for them, “You reform the entitlements, but you do it in a way that you don’t take anything away from seniors or people who are getting ready to retire. You focus on the new generation, you focus on what’s next,”

The former South Carolina governor criticized a new proposal that is set to be part of Biden’s 2024 budget that would shore up a key Medicare trust fund by raising taxes on those earning more than $400,000 a year and by allowing Medicare to negotiate prices for even more drugs. The proposal is expected to run into a wall in the Republican-controlled House.

Sounds fair: reduce benefits for upcoming generations, but DON'T touch them for the Boomer (GOP voting) generation .. and certainly DON'T increase taxes on wealthy Boomers who have benefited from decades of asset appreciation.
 
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Biggles

“The first thing you do is you change the retirement age of the young people coming up so that we can try and have some sort of system for them, “You reform the entitlements, but you do it in a way that you don’t take anything away from seniors or people who are getting ready to retire. You focus on the new generation, you focus on what’s next,”

The former South Carolina governor criticized a new proposal that is set to be part of Biden’s 2024 budget that would shore up a key Medicare trust fund by raising taxes on those earning more than $400,000 a year and by allowing Medicare to negotiate prices for even more drugs. The proposal is expected to run into a wall in the Republican-controlled House.

Sounds fair: reduce benefits for upcoming generations, but DON'T touch them for the Boomer (GOP voting) generation .. and certainly DON'T increase taxes on wealthy Boomers who have benefited from decades of asset appreciation.
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I'm not a Haley fan.

I do understand the concept here, which is to reduce benefits for people that have the most time to prepare for it rather than those who have the least. I'm not a big fan of the message though, which is "we're taxing you now so that your parents can retire earlier, but you'll have to work longer".

If we're raising taxes, let's talk about making long term bringing capital gains regular income. If we're raising taxes even further, let's tax capital gains beyond work income.
 
Biggles

“The first thing you do is you change the retirement age of the young people coming up so that we can try and have some sort of system for them, “You reform the entitlements, but you do it in a way that you don’t take anything away from seniors or people who are getting ready to retire. You focus on the new generation, you focus on what’s next,”

The former South Carolina governor criticized a new proposal that is set to be part of Biden’s 2024 budget that would shore up a key Medicare trust fund by raising taxes on those earning more than $400,000 a year and by allowing Medicare to negotiate prices for even more drugs. The proposal is expected to run into a wall in the Republican-controlled House.

Sounds fair: reduce benefits for upcoming generations, but DON'T touch them for the Boomer (GOP voting) generation .. and certainly DON'T increase taxes on wealthy Boomers who have benefited from decades of asset appreciation.
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Quote me if I'm being a hypocrite but the whole $400k rule has always struck me as too low. There are plenty of hard-working "regular" people who make $400k a year and they don't deserve to carry this burden. In fact, due to inflation and industry turmoil, there are about to be a fair number of senior airline pilots making over $400k a year and frankly they deserve every dollar for the amount of responsibility in their hands. They're working people, not rich assholes who are skeezing the tax system and sucking resources. There are actually a couple pilots at my company making that much...oh god, am I evolving into a well-paid conservative boomer?!?!

I would rather see a tax that graduates to an extreme degree on extreme incomes, like the numbers from pro athletes and CEOs on up to business leading billionaries. Tax rates so high that it levels the playing field on net incomes, and/or that it convinces corporations to simply stop paying that much and instead reinvest those millions back into the company. Of course, most of these very high income earners are older people as well. Anybody who dares absorb so much wealth from the rest of society should absolutely be paying for the privilege. Meanwhile, us working folk can continue to work to achieve incomes that the upper crust laugh at.
 
Keef
Quote me if I'm being a hypocrite but the whole $400k rule has always struck me as too low.
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Usually when $400k is tossed out it's a tax that starts on the first dollar over $400k rather than hitting everything up to that point. So if you make somewhere in the 400s you're paying the higher tax on less than 100k. Maybe you completely understood that and didn't need to hear that.
Keef
They're working people, not rich assholes
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Ignoring the class warfare here for a second, I think one of the things you're poking at is the difference between capital gains and "regular" income, which is why I made the suggestion I did.
 
Danoff
Usually when $400k is tossed out it's a tax that starts on the first dollar over $400k rather than hitting everything up to that point. So if you make somewhere in the 400s you're paying the higher tax on less than 100k. Maybe you completely understood that and didn't need to hear that.

Ignoring the class warfare here for a second, I think one of the things you're poking at is the difference between capital gains and "regular" income, which is why I made the suggestion I did.
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I do understand the bracket system and agree with your post. I didn't actually read it before I quoted Biggles.

On income specifically, I really think we need to expand the bracket system back to the way it used to be in say the 1940s and 50s, when there were about 15 brackets if I recall. They increased slowly and really took off on the last few. And it just so happened to be one of America's most prosperous eras - this is only one factor in why income distribution made more sense back then than it does today. The same thing could be applied to capital gains as it seems today that the tax burden on small business is relatively extreme compared to corporations where all the vast majority of revenue is concentrated. Walmart vs Mom and Pop is the classic example. Weirdly the opposite is happening in the beer industry specifically as local businesses seem to be growing rapidly and are heavily favored over the classic corps. Surely there's more to that than local pride.
 

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