You say “maybe” like it’s some unknowable quantity, but we can see what is going on in Hungary and that it’s getting increasingly authoritarian, and we can see Russian attempts to influence western democracies through bot farms and the like. It’s not unknowable; the evidence is there.
There are companies, big companies even, that kill off underperforming projects after less than a year, and most don’t take years to agree projects.
I dunno about the MAGAs, but I think at this point, with COVID very low in the USA, most people are wearing masks because it sends a signal about where they stand on COVID, not for their own protection. Obviously there are some people who are particularly vulnerable, who can’t have the vaccine for example, for whom mask-wearing will remain important forever (and would likely have been beneficial before the pandemic) but I don’t believe that’s the majority.
The reason is that mask wearing in my home country went down to zero after most people were vaccinated and the virus became uncommon. But here mask-wearing was never politicised, so without an anti-mask group to oppose it never became a symbol for those who did wear them.
I can’t quite put my finger on why he might want a corruption investigation into a politician dropped…
Never mind the American planes… these planes if nuclear-armed will be armed with American-owned bombs that will require American authorisation to arm.
The high dependency ratio is going to continue to be a problem for quite a while. The time to solve the aging population problem was decades ago when their could have been policy to create budget surpluses, so that the boomer generation paid for its own care. But that didn’t happen and we can’t go back in time to fix it. All solutions now suck because that opportunity has been lost: you can screw the boomers by leaving them to die covered in bedsores and filth, or you can screw the younger generations by making them pay for care, or some combination.
What if they’re paying their share/most of their share of taxes now, but a change pushes them into not doing so? These things ar enot all-or-nothing.
I don’t think this will affect people’s desire to have children at all (Denmark’s strong social security system has a much stronger, and positive, effect on that).
I am of child-having age and my decision is based around what my life would be like for the next 18 or so years, not would it would be like at retirement. If I were to think about that, possibly having someone around to help me out and let me retire earlier would probably be a very tiny nudge in favour of having children.
And you’re saying this about that bastion of right-wing economic policy… Denmark? Tax-to-GDP ratio in the mid 40s, second highest amongst OECD countries?
No-one here has said that increasing the pension age is the only solution. Indeed, on its own, it probably doesn’t solve the problem. But it’s one part of a plan. Other parts include addressing the other side of the equation - young people, so encouraging immigration and increasing birth rates (but Danish net immigration is already about 1% of its population per year which isn’t low, high levels of immigration are unpopular, and increasing birth rates is difficult and makes the problem worse for at least 18 years). Tax policy is another aspect of it, but you have to realise that having an older population doesn’t mean that working population is willing or able to bear higher tax rates (even if you try to target them at the rich) That is to say, if you have a high average tax rate already, as you do in Denmark, increasing it further to pay for an aging population is likely to start having adverse effects, and it doesn’t matter why you’re increasing taxation.
It’s of benefit to society to reduce the dependency ratio (the ratio of non-working to working people)
If the number of people the government needs to support with state pensions rises, but the working age population doesn’t rise nearly as much, government finances become more and more pinched
That didn’t last long. How long before we hear Trump whingeing that he didn’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for escalatingsolving this war between Israel and Iran?
In the Florida law, yes, if it’s beyond the (impractically low) gestational age threshold.
This is not that surprising given the position of pro-lifers who think that life begins at conception. The UK just progressed an assisted-dying bill which would legalise the ending of the lives of terminally ill people; even with their consent, two written opinions are needed (in the bill, which is not yet law) to do this.
But yes, it’s a lot of hurdles for something that should in general just be available as a medical procedure.
This casts all people who vote for conservative parties as sheep who will blindly agree with whatever their leader says on a given day. For some that’s true, but most people recognise that unexplained U-turns are a sign of bullshit.
An amnesiac media laser-focused on the 24h news cycle lets the cult develop by not reminding people of what they believed the day before yesterday. Most people don’t like being confronted with this even if they can explain it away, and more focus on it would be an improvement.
Florida law allows abortion in the case of ectopic pregnancy or other situations where the mother’s life is in danger. If the events she’s presented are true it’s hard to think other than that the hospital staff were not clear on the law, and no doubt public discourse (which naturally centres around the strictest laws) has had an effect on that.
But it’s also possible that the “reluctance” was just a delay during which her doctors were getting the necessary two written opinions that it was necessary.
You’ve got to wonder about a system which allows a chorus of people saying it would be terrible to become involved in a war in the middle east to do a complete 180. Why aren’t their own words being quoted (by congress, by news) back to them?
No, COVID is very low in the US - just as in the early days when there was little testing available, you can track what the disease is doing by looking at hospital admissions data.
I did mention people who are particularly vulnerable, and if that includes you then the rest of what I said doesn’t apply to you. I find it’s more efficient to talk about the likely case and mention the exception in a single message than to first ask “are you immunocompromised” and then reply separately.