24 July 2024

Universal Basic Income doesn't work. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that "recipients and their partners work and earn less, with the negative effect on wages and earnings getting worse over time". "Participants’ individual incomes declined $1,500 per year relative to the control group" – yup, they got poorer, despite being given money.  "...participants exhibited more entrepreneurial orientation and intentions” but that “this did not translate into significantly more entrepreneurial activity”.  "Participants spent their extra time on leisure, did not improve their quality of employment, and did not improve human capital investments such as training." So all that money just went to giving them time to be lazy. 

Easy street, I'd love to live on easy street
Nobody works on easy street
Just lie around all day, just sit and play the horses

When opportunity comes knockin'
You just keep on with your rockin'
'Cause you know your fortune's made

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Portland is thinking they might change the standalone "arts tax" to a combined "parks and arts tax".  You can't enjoy the park anymore, and all the art has been defaced and/or sawed off and put into storage. So they want you to pay more taxes to spiff up the places that the criddlers have destroyed. Because it's their homes now.

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Life in the Biden era. Now there's a shortage on blood culture bottles in hospitals.

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Remember that woman in Washington who had TB and was infecting everyone? She got arrested and forcibly treated and has now been rendered non-infectious. This is a conflict between personal liberty and public good. Ends justify the means, I guess.

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We good now, bro? CrowdStrike is offering a $10 gift card for your problems. Thought this was a joke, but it's real.

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Wow, are Indian men that bad? IndiGo airlines is offering flights where women can request not to have to sit with men. What next? From the comments: "Can I please request not to be seated next to anyone who does not look like me or come from my socio-economic class?"

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If you have to ask.  Does ChatGPT have a mind?

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Now there are AI boyfriends for women. What a sad world, we're becoming.

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"To know the face of God is to know madness. I see the universe. I see the patterns."
-- Leoben Conoy
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This is the kind of thinking you see on Reddit all the time:

So when the Democrats make it more expensive to refine and deliver gasoline to consumers, and gas stations have to raise prices to accommodate for this, Republicans get vilified for opposing laws that put a limit on how much they can raise those prices. Business just can't win under Democrat power. And the reddit crowd eats it all up.

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