Do you not remember what happened after the the acquittal of the officers that brutally beat King? The LA riots happened. The video was what catalyzed so many to action even when the truth of police brutality was well known before that.

This is true of Eric Garner which was also caught on video and lead to large demonstrations.

And again with Philando Castile where the video showed Castile totally complying with officer orders, yet was still shot dead by that police officer. Again demonstrations against police brutality.

Its the video that makes people take notice. Sadly, it doesn’t sound like we have video of Ruben Ray Martinez final moments yet.

Pro America programming:

Free and fair elections are a cornerstone of our nation. Acting to disenfranchise citizens from voting with plans from our current administration of jackbooted thugs at polling places is a threat to America.

There are limits to appeals. Each appeal up the chain requires that court to agree to hear the challenge of the appeal. Depending on the jurisdicion, I think the limit would be only 3 or 4 appeals with that last one being the Supreme Court of the United States. If the next higher court declines to hear the appeal, the lower courts ruling stands.

Of course he will. That new approach will be challenged in court, but will take another 12-18 months for there to be a ruling against it, meanwhile trump will keep using tariffs against our friends and allies further alienating and isolating the United State globally.

The challenge is that the counterpoint of Boeing culture change causing things like the Starliner is about as valid when regulatory capture happens.

We’ll its not “regulatory capture” because we’re not talking about regulatory agencies, but you’re right if you’re talking corporate capture.

I know its going to sound counter-intuitive, but Starliner was actually necessary to break corporate capture.

The entrenched interests in Aerospace as well as Congress had almost no desire to change. Aerospace loved their “cost plus” infinite money printing machines paid for by government dollars. Contractors had zero concern for cost overruns/ballooning costs. Congress got to land Aerospace jobs in their districts. NASA got working but VERY EXPENSIVE space vehicles every 10-20 years. Fat cats on all sides were very very happy with this arrangement.

A very small set of politicians concerned about costs (and likely some campaign contributions) along with NASA wanted much cheaper vehicles then they were getting at that time. So they got a proposal to have private companies bid for fixed price contracts for space cargo flights. “UPS for space shipments” essentially. It worked. Law passed It was cheap. It was reliable.

So then with the success of private cargo, questions were raise why we were spending orders of magnitude more on human flights to the International Space Station? There was much clutching of pearls about these new hotshot private space companies and if they could handle human spaceflight. Somehow Boeing, the trusted legacy maker of the Space Shuttle and Apollo, was convinced to bid on human private spaceflight. There was now a company Congress would be confident would deliver a working solution, and they still got to tell their districts they were bringing pork jobs. Those other untrustworthy “newspace” companies could fail, and Boeing would still deliver human spaceflight as they had for decades.

We know now how wrong that was, but without that as a possible future, no human private spaceflight would have happened. If it had just been newspace companies like SpaceX and Sierra Space, Congress never would have passed the legislation to allow Commercial Crew to happen.

So you can see that Starliner needed to exist to break the corporate capture. That had to existed for use to break the corporate capture model that plagued human spaceflight.

I’m not saying nationalizing companies would help, but a government with good oversight (which is more and more of a question under Trump) could also help.

I don’t have much faith in that idea. Look at what NASA was before private spaceflight. I love them for other reasons, but look at what ESA (European Space Agency) is today. Safran is a company that is the Boeing to ESA with all the same problems of Boeing for NASA.

I’m not NASA or BOEING, but I’m going to imagine that before, Nasa would be calling the shots, essentially designing the craft, and overseeing (as in breathing down their necks) what contractors built.

You’re exactly right. This, in the industry, is called a “cost plus” contract. What this means is that NASA can ask for whatever they want no matter how outlandish and the aerospace contractor (such as Boeing in for Space Shuttle) will build it for them. NASA is bill for all of the actual costs of the design and construction PLUS a set percentage which is pure profit for the contractor. Aerospace contractors LOVE “cost plus”!

What frequently happens with big space projects like this is that design objectives change or material limitations are uncovered during construction over the years. NASA may start by saying “we want this to carry 10 Astronauts”. Contractor designs and starts building the main vehicle. Then during a unit test, they find the G forces produced on the angle of the seats is too high for safety, so the angle needs to be changed. All the money spent designing and building the old seats NASA still has to pay, and the contractor still gets their fixed Plus profit. The new design and construction of the safe seats are ALSO paid by NASA as well as a Plus profit for the new seats.

Now NASA goes “I want a thingy that goes up” and the contractor makes the decisions, cuts the corners it wants, and creates mind boggling cost overruns.

You’re exactly WRONG on this one.

Now what was used for private spaceflight companies (SpaceX cargo, Northrop cargo, SpaceX crew, Boeing Crew) is called “fixed price contracts”.

Ideally, NASA writes out the specs of the vehicle they want to exist. The aerospace contractor looks at the specs, determines how much money they would need to design, build, and profit from the exercise and gives NASA a fixed price. They compete with other contractors bidding on the same work. The Commercial Crew program had 3 bidding contractors, Boeing, SpaceX, and Sierra Space. NASA looks at the general designs, considers the contractors, and makes their choice. This is the end of how theory matches reality.

In reality, some of the same problems found during construction come up, or NASA changes their mind halfway through the construction. NASA originally wanted the crew vehicles to carry 6 Astronauts. However during landing tests, they found the G forces were higher than they liked on the humans. To lower the G forces, they had to lean the seats back at a less steep angle. However this means that they now can’t fit 6 seats in, but only 4. In a “cost plus” contract this would be business as usually, and the contractor would simply carry on charging NASA more money, but this is supposed to be Fixed Price. But the contractors didn’t sign up for 4 seats in the contract, and they’ve already done a lot of work they won’t be paid for, so contractors reasonably pushed back saying “no we’re not going to work for free. We built what you asked. Now you say you want something different. You want a change, pay us.”. NASA agree, and there were some additional payments made to the contractors.

So “Fixed Price” isn’t exactly fixed price when NASA changes the specs halfway through. Even with ALL of these challenges, Fixed price SpaceX and Northrop commercial cargo and SpaceX commercial crew have been HUGE cost savings over the old “cost plus” model.

If you want to see how much, check out the costs of the most recent “cost plus” human space vehicle Lockeheed Orion capsule. Your eyes will pop out of your heat.

I’m not sure you understand who makes spacecraft that NASA uses in the past or present. There are not “NASA [built]” spacecraft.

• Orion is built by a private company Lockheed Martin
• The Space Shuttle was built by a private company, Rockwell International, which is now Boeing
• Apollo command module was built by a private company North American Aviation (which was acquired by Rockwell, which is now Boeing)
• The Lunar Lander was built by a private company Grumman Aerospace Corporation, which today is part of Northrop Grumman.

The difference between what you’re calling “private company spacecraft” and “NASA [built]” is just contract terms used on how to pay for it.

You’re also leaving out how (fuck Musk) SpaceX Dragon is also a private company spacecraft and has been wildly successful and saving billions of dollars of tax payer money over running the Space Shuttle in its place.

It’s exactly for these kinds of anachronistic things that when I see someone right now agitating to have some kind of age cutoff for people in office, I have a lot of skepticism.

It’d be ironic for government to put a cap into place for age of 65 (say) and then soon after, humans often start having longer and longer healthspans, extending over 100 and possibly beyond.

I would certainly entertain an age cap on office holders. What we have right now with almost entirely geriatric leaders is the lack of representation of those not in the senior citizen demographic. Its a version of tyranny of the few. This is exacerbated by the voting power being focused in those that don’t have the suffer the consequences of their choices, and instead leave those for younger generations.

I’m open to other ideas about how to address this too, but I don’t dismiss an age cap on office holders immediately.

For that matter, it’d be interesting to see how the Social Security system responds to longer and longer healthspans.

You don’t have to wonder. We’ve experienced this already in the life of Social Security. The original blueprint wasn’t designed to have a large retired population. You were supposed to die before reaching retirement. Social Security was to support the aging survivors that didn’t die yet to keep them out of abject poverty.

Retirement age increase is only one of three or four big levers on how to alter how Social Security operates and is maintainable.

That’s why 401k’s exist and not pensions

Honestly, pensions in the USA today are more risky than 401ks. Pensions require the parent company to still be solvent 30-50 years. A number of formerly bellwether companies with heavy pension burdens have gone under an the the pensioners only receive a fraction of the promised benefits.

Some of the public pensions look very worrisome too. As an example, I have no idea how Detroit is going to manage their pension commitments with its rising costs, declining population, and high number of pension members.

For all its faults, 401k money is the employee’s the moment its paid with no dependency of the employer to be around afterward.

If your salary is high enough, you stop paying into it partway through the year. That’s ass-backwards.

It looks ass-backwards when viewed in isolation and today’s tax policy. When the cap rule was put in place in 1937, the marginal tax rate was 79% and this would be for income over $5million ($115million in 2026 dollars). The cap was in place because the Social Security benefit doesn’t increase above the that income.

We broke the system by removing that large marginal tax, but leaving the Social Security income cap in place.

Social Security would be the easiest thing to fix, and honestly, it’d be hugely popular, too.

Just raise the cap.

I would be “negatively” affected with the raising of the cap. I still support raising the cap.

I don’t like people like your sister. She benefited for her entire lives by people of all ages paying taxes for social local services she consumed growing up, going to public school, driving on maintained city roads, being protected by fire/police services, and using local libraries. The moment its her turn to pay for the younger generation then suddenly that spending she considers wasteful and ducks out of that society.

You correctly pointed out many of the difficulties about old age in rural environments. I hope she doesn’t die because she has a health event, and the closest hospital is an hour away in the closest big city, and the ambulance service may take an additional 45 minutes to arrive.

Reusing names of critical system directories in subdirectories in your home dir.

I appreciate you taking about some general approaches you would like to see for your vision of UBI, but I’m still not seeing much actual application of what would happen for Jim, or his prior employer.

To talk specifics I’m seeing we could do it from one of two periods of time:

• UBI is just being implemented so its all new to everyone
• UBI has been fulling implemented

Each will have their own challenges and problems, so I want you to choose the best situation for your scenario. I’m trying to set you up for success in this conversation, because I want it to work too. However, I have yet to see a complete picture which I can see working.

I’m guessing you’d like to work through this scenario in an example where your version of UBI is fully implemented and how it works for Jim in that siutation. Can we go from there?

I did read the article, and that’s true, but insurance companies have been using that as an excuse to drive up premiums at record rates for years now (and making very healthy profits as a result, no pun intended).

I don’t disagree that health insurance companies (and their business practices) aren’t serving Americans well. However, as the article lays out the couple had the ability and will to pay for insurance premiums. The issue during the 90s was that any gap in coverage would mean health issues found during the gap wouldn’t be covered even when paying new premiums. That was fixed with the ACA. I was commenting on the article and their situation.

In my state, the exchange prices went up an average of 21% this year due to the loss of ACA subsidies. It doesn’t help a lot to know that they are legally required to offer you coverage if you can’t afford to pay for it.

I’m in my early 50s. Over my life, I’ve been very diligent about saving, and I expect to have what I thought would be enough to retire in my 60s. But I’m looking at the cost of health care going forward and I’m very concerned that I won’t be able to afford it.

I agree with everything you said here. Republicans are poisoning that portion of the ACA unrelated to the article. I’m also doing the same math you are about making sure I have healthcare until Medicare kicks in. For many, health coverage will be the defining metric to when we can retire. Some of us are discussing that exact topic in a different Lemmy community.

Except that the Republicans in congress have refused to allocate funding for ACA subsidies, which means this WILL happen again.

If you read the article you’d know the ACA benefits point I mentioned has nothing to do with subsidies on insurance premiums. It has to do with prior to the ACA insurance companies could deny coverage for preexisting conditions.

That would be a separate approach apart from mitigation against automation as @mitram@sopuli.xyz suggested. Its also separate from the UBI approach that scintilla@crust.piefed.social suggested. This third approach of a government jobs guarantee could certainly dive into, but that doesn’t address the two other incomplete approaches provided so far.

Automation, in the case of UBI, would mean that the productivity gain would translate into less hour worked, with a minimum guaranteed revenue every month/year.

That is a typical answer I get to my question. It fully contains the philosophy that automation gains will somehow be funneled into state coffers or UBI initiatives but its completely missing in any substance about how that translates into reality. I’m interested

I gave an example with Jim above. At the end, Jim is out of work, and the organization has gained money because they aren’t paying Jim, and their automation is doing the work now. Does your actual implementation of your philosophy attempt to tax or clawback some of what Jim was being paid? If so, how and against what metrics? Alternatively, do you propose that what pays the UBI is completely divorced from what the organization earns or pays?

Nobody commenting is reading the article.

The headline suggests that medical bills drove them into poverty so much so that he’s had to be driving for Uber at 76. Thats not the case, and the article lays it all out.

It looks like about 25 years after the medical bills wiped them out financially, they recovered financially:

I really didn’t want to retire in my 60s, but we were getting older, and my wife wanted me to be spending more time at home. When I retired, I had some equity in my home and around $300,000 in my IRA. I also started to fund an IRA for my wife, which I built to mid-five figures. This allowed us to travel extensively within the US for the first few years. But a part of me felt like we probably weren’t going to live that long anyway because everybody around us was dying.

We should be celebrating two things:

• the fact that the ACA passed into law and that what happened to this couple in the 1990s can’t happen again under today’s law
• the hard work they did rebuilding financially to have over $350k in savings + home equity and have have a comfortable retirement to be able to afford extensive travel they did in retirement.

The population of NYC is larger than the combined population of the smallest 28 countries in the world.