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re: Veteran Suicide

Posted by mmmmmbeeer on 5/13/25 at 2:55 pm
Sabotaging your life ain't going to bring him back, man. Dude had made up his mind and it really didn't matter whether you were available or not....it was inevitable.

Go see a shrink. You're depressed. Take a med if you have to to help you get past what is clearly deep grief.

ETA: The VA has a ton of resources available to you and there's NO ONE who knows more about veteran suicide than the VA. If you've shut them out, you're making a tragic mistake.
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This conversation feels pointless.


Just let 'em keep white knighting. They've been brainwashed by right wing, supply side bullshite their entire adult lives, slurping up every bit of it until it makes up their entire being. They're dirt poor in relation to the top 1% but, in some perverse manner, believe everyone will think they're rich, too, being they stand up for the wealthiest people in the world. There is no fact-based argument to be had with people who don't think for themselves...parrots can talk, doesn't mean they can reason.
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punished for it.


Taxes aren't punishment. Taxes are the bill you pay to live in our country and become wildly successful. These folks couldn't have done it without us.

I also believe that, yes, there is such a thing as too much wealth being held by a single individual. These people should be ashamed of themselves to hold wealth like that. Props to people like Buffet and Gates who at least recognize they've been given an incredible gift and have, or will, give away the vast majority of their wealth.

I go back to my example from earlier. I believe you're an IT/tech guy...not sure what your wife does but let's ballpark it and say your household income is about $200k/yr. Pretty solid and puts you in the top 20% of American households.

To reach just $1B in wealth at your current income level, you would have to work every year since 2975 fricking BC. 5000 years at $200k year and you'd reach your first billy.

So what about reaching the wealth of a guy like Elon Musk, currently estimated net worth of $400,000,000,000. At your current income level, that's 2 million years, dude. 2 million. You know what was happening on Earth 2 million years ago? HomoSapiens first appeared 2.8 million years ago.....so you'd basically have to work since the dawn of mankind until now to be worth what Elon Musk is worth.

No man, no matter what the frick they do or have done, should be worth that much money. It's unethical, unfair, and a fricking embarrassment to our capitalist beliefs.
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You, on the other hand, see a billionaire and automatically assume they got all that money by shady, unjust means.


No one makes generates billions in wealth without stepping on people to get there. That's capitalism....for every winner there's a loser. As the other guy has already explained, these people are NOTHING without the American government and their fellow taxpayers. There's a reason America turns out billionaires like they're going out of style and other countries don't....it's our infrastructure, our workforce, our technologies, our freedoms, and our staggering investments, by the government, in R&D.

Sam Walton? WalMart, who pays their people so shitty and keep them part time so they can't get health insurance, forcing them all onto government assistance paid for by all of us? That Sam Walton? Rockefeller and Carnegie? Ruthless businessmen who used child labor? A guy in Carnegie who fired on striking workers and burned down their encampments, killing kids in the process? These are your examples of greatness?!

I love capitalism as long as it has appropriate safeguards in place to not let it run awry and ruin our country. Reasonable regulations, a fair and progressive tax system, strong antitrust efforts, watchdogs to prevent corruption, etc....these aren't big asks. They sure as hell aren't Marxist or communist or whichever other label you sheep use these days.

Government has done a hell of a lot more for Americans than any clown arse billionaire, I can tell you that.
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Can we talk about 50% of Americans paying effectively 0% in income taxes? It's pretty impossible for any tax cuts to benefit people that don't pay any


They own 2.5% of American wealth. They don't matter, frankly. 67,000,000 households essentially shut out of the wealth generated by the American economy.
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Yes, it is called the laffer curve.


Laffer is a joke of an "economist", no pun intended. Few mainstream economists agree with his premise that cutting taxes leads to increased tax receipts. History itself disagrees with his premise.


Serious question, why do some folks white knight for fricking billionaires? I just don't get it. You'll never be one of them. They don't give two shits about you and, in fact, look down on you. These people feast at the taxpayer troughs (Musk got $6B in fed money last year alone) and yet you defend? Why? Is it pride fricking with you?
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Friendly reminder that america has the most progressive income tax system in the western world


Keep moving that goal post.
The argument has merit if he were working within precedent. Unfortunately, the admins economic and trade policies are changing weekly, sometimes daily. No one knows what the impacts will be in a month, 3 months, or a year. We suspect tariffs will be inflationary, but as inflation rises demand lessens leading to job losses. What if companies do eat a good bit of tariff costs (just for the sake of argument)? The government becomes flush with cash and jams through a huge tax cut, spurring the economy into overdrive…cut rates in that environment?

Trump appointed Powell. Trump is putting Powell in an unwinnable position. If he doesn’t like the results, maybe he shouldn’t have hired him.
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This is one of the dumbest things I’ve read on here. Putting aside the fact that numerous nations have tried wealth taxes and they failed, your 3% wealth tax plan would be a great way to crash the stock market.


Oh really? During the boom of the US economy after WWII until 1970ish, what were the top marginal rates, Mr. Dumbest?
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People making over 400k a year are paying over 43% in taxes after federal, state, and all the other bs.


On a small portion of their income, not all their income. 400k married filing jointly pays 24% federal up to $390k AGI, then 32% on the other $10k of their AGI.

Billionaires should be paying an ungodly tax on every dollar they make over $1B/year. Like 90% kind of ungodly. Those people at that level don't give a single frick about the money itself, it's nothing more than a game at that point. frick 'em.

We wanna talk about a family making $400k? You'd have to work 2,500 years making $400k/yr to make a billion dollars. 475BC until now, all those generations, making pretty damn good money, and your total earning would STILL be dwarfed by many of the richest in the country.

Again, frick em.

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Milley, Tillerson, Pompeo, Wray


Wow. We definitely aren't going to agree.
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In 2017, Trump was a different person in terms of WashDC experience. The result was his momentum was stunted right off the bat. He was hamstrung with Russiagate. He chose advisors based on recommendations, rather than loyalty and personal experience. That turned out to be a mistake as many of those with their own ambitions, turned on him creating chaos.


Has it crossed your mind that he was reelected precisely because he had sane people around him who kept his worst impulses in check during his first term?
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beers would be a piece of cake, hot dogs not so much


With the pitch timer, games are now only like 2-2.5hrs long. 150 mins. 9 beers. One beer every 17 minutes. That's not easy, especially while downing hot dogs. The beer will bloat your gut drinking them that fast and then the hot dogs!?

I would fail horribly.
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This will be to start a cook off team for a high school in Texas


That is incredible. Love it.
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These are considered to be malware, as they’re designed to disable a target system by crashing it. However, Diallo has flipped the script and is now using zip bombs as a way to defend against malware attacks.


Some mutually assured destruction shite.
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How much of Tesla does Musk own/control at this point?


He owns the board, which is why this report was laughable to begin with. That board gave up on their fiduciary duties years ago...they sure as shite aren't going to start now.
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The thought was that American farmers were going to be hurt worst by reciprocal tariffs as Trump fought to level the playing field/return industry to America. So yes, some people would be paying more so that some others would regain the lost industrial jobs.

This might come as a shock to you, but always selling out your fellow man on the global market place in return for marginally cheaper products out of the third world results in all but the massive multi-nationals being reduced to peasant status. These are the sacrifices that must be made to rebuild our nation.


Specifics, dude.

What industrial jobs are we bringing back? Which industries? Who is going to work there and for what wages? Can we compete with Chinese wages? Are you saying Americans should accept 35%, 45%, 55% inflationary pressures so we can have a fricking steel plant up the road?

In the real world, unlike the political world, facts, numbers, forecasting, and pragmatism matter. This pie-in-the-sky bullshite doesn't fly.

re: Gdp report

Posted by mmmmmbeeer on 4/30/25 at 11:00 am
Down from +2.4 growth in Q4. Inflation was awful but the economy was healthy until there was a complete 180 on strategy.

Anyone think we’ll have positive growth this quarter? Hello, recession.
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With HHS cutting its budget by over 1/3rd a lot of that targets tax credits and subsidies which rural hospitals and health care centers rely on as they basically operate in the red without the fed gov.


USAID spent $2B last year buying food from our farmers to ship to poor nations. Needless to say, that program is long gone.


So we're going to take "income" from these tariffs and turn right around and send it to American farmers losing money because of the tariffs? And Americans will pay more in the process?

WTF are we doing here?
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He had already moved on mentally once he got hurt as he knew he needed a year of good stats



He moved on a hell of a long time before the injury. A guy who had a year like he had last year to suddenly NEVER scramble and consistently throw off his back foot for fear of taking hits is a guy who was not giving it his all. He was worried about getting drafted and UGA was nothing more than a vehicle to help him get there. He thought he could get by by doing just enough but, turns out, that wasn't true.

Remember, I think it was the Tenner game, when he actually scrambled, took a hit, got up and showed more fire than he had all season? Whether it was his decision or someone else's, that was a kid who had read enough bad press and realized his draft stock was plummeting. He finally said, frick it, I'm going to play. Suddenly, the interceptions stopped and he began running a lot more. Crazy how that works.