AlterEgo89

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Leftist bot who wants the black people out of the restaurant

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Uh, as I've said, why would I want that considering I'm the same race as the guy in question? i.e. I'm Black.

You assumed my race. Wow. That's bigotry right there. :lol:

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Yep, for any reason they feel necessary. If you're gay, go someplace else. If you're Muslim, go someplace else. If you're handicapped, go someplace else. ....

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Uh.. those are protected characteristics. Being gay isn't a choice nor is being handicapped. The only one that is a choice is religion (and I'm against religion being a protected characteristic for that reason).

Being vaccinated isn't a protected characteristic + it's a choice (it's also why I think refusing based on someone's religion should be allowed because religious beliefs are a choice).

Nothing I've said is racism.

Plus, you don't know my race. If I happened to be of the same race as the gentleman in question, I don't think you could call it racism.

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The VAT is basically a national sales tax. I don't see that passing in the U.S. any time soon, although I could get behind it if it was replacing the income tax.

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Effectively, yeah.

I'm actually in favor of reducing income taxes + lowering corporate taxes + implementing a VAT. It's a much better way of raising money the government needs.

It also works so much better.

My ideal government would reduce income taxes significantly, get rid of corporate taxes, and implement a VAT. Beautiful but no government would ever do that.

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Hospitals stay full ALL the time

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Hospitals do stay full but COVID is clearly pushing capacities to the limits.

My parents work in a local hospital and unless they're lying, they've definitely been much more full compared with previous years due to the pandemic. Hospitals are designed to operate near full but if capacity is exceeded, units can't be produced that quickly. My parents would contradict this guy (and they don't have to lie) so I'm not sure this guy is that believable by extrapolating his hospital to other hospitals around the country. This is a crisis around the world - is he seriously suggesting that hospitals around the world are all lying? Even in those countries where there is no profit motive in medicine? It's laughable.

And because hospitals are designed to stay near full, it means that capacity can't be scaled up very quickly. You've just demonstrated the problem and the exact reason there's a crisis in your comment.

And the issue isn't just capacity. It's staffing capacity. ICU units are very staff intensive - you can't just train someone overnight. It takes a long time to train people. If hospitals are designed to be near full, there wouldn't be enough staff when there are surges which is exactly the problem.

That's how progressive taxation is meant to work.

The basic idea is that the marginal utility of money decreases as you get richer i.e. it hurts less for a rich person to be taxed more than a poor person being taxed more.

The ratio of total AGI versus share of all income tax paid doesn't seem that bad to me. It's expected from any tax system that isn't going to be flat.

I mean the reality is, you really shouldn't be needing to take Ivermectin unless you're quite vulnerable to the pandemic in the first place.

The virus is pretty much harmless to most people. There's no need to preemptively take medicine when most people don't need it.

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Like the average American actually gives a flying frick when they're paying $3/gallon for gas and $7/lb for ground beef. Talk about tone deaf.

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LINK

The price of crude oil is roughly what it was before the pandemic started.

The only reason the price of gas dropped during the pandemic is because demand dropped globally.

The price has now recovered to what it was pre-pandemic with higher gas prices around the world.

Not sure it has that much to do with Biden considering gas prices globally are far higher now. Demand has recovered to what it was pre-pandemic.

There were only around 100,000 deaths from the virus in the UK. The UK government predicts that there are around 300,000-400,000 vulnerable people at risk of the virus. The pool is not that much smaller because the UK underwent lockdown (and those lockdowns reduced the peak from 1000 deaths to less than 100). That suggests that without lockdown, there would have been far more deaths per day which suggests the pool is still very big.

In any case, UK health experts say that vaccination has had an effect. I'm sure that if a tigerdroppings user can come up with suggestions, they've also probably considered this and ruled it out.

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Lol.

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Not sure what you mean.

I have friends who are doctors over there.

Some of their hospitals were full up yet and people were being turned away (according to friends who work in the capital New Delhi's hospitals) yet the government was pretending that there was no problem. It's exactly why only 30% of the population has been vaccinated. The government tried to take it seriously but failed so they're pretending there's no crisis -> fewer people getting vaccinated.

And logically, think about it. India is a poor country where over half of people work in agriculture. If you're poor, you're not going to take a day off to get tested for a virus or even get vaccinated.