Maybe the plus side is if screens become their encoded reality from a young age, staring at a screen for work because that's the only thing you can do that pays well enough to support a family won't be nearly as depressing and just feel normal.
They just leave them outside in the stroller in someplace like Sweden. It's hilarious how on HN the nordic countries are idolized and leaving strollers outside while the kid stares at the street man smoking fentanyl out of a piece of aluminum foil indicates you are a glorious liberated member of intelligentsia but by god if you put a tablet on to get a moment of peace while you take a shower then you are a hideous sub-human piece of garbage.
Babies. They leave there babies. They do not leave there two years old already fully capable to toddle away and still dumb enough to walk into anything.
Also, not every city has the same massive drug addiction homelessness problem as yours.
In most countries it's illegal to leave any child unattended in a way that puts them at risk which is a vague definition. But if something were to happen to the child while unsupervised any vagueness collapses into negligence.
The public doesn't even have the capacity to support all the babies that are outright abused. A lot of researchers will get more notches on their precious CV but let's be real, if anyone gave a shit about random babies then screen time is so far down the list that they're never going to get there under any rational prioritization of who needs assistance.
In most forms of gambling you could drop your whole paycheck on gambling and still not end up terribly off. You'd be in about the position you would be in if you had to go to a check cashing place to cash your paycheck, although with more volatility. Dropping your entire paycheck worth of volume on slots and you are down what, like 5-10% on average -- most people have that much margin to spend on savings/discretionary/retirement.
Where you get in trouble is where you're cycling through multiples of your paycheck on wagers, recycling your bets. Then you're getting eaten for multiples of the house take on your income.
The problem is your typical slots player doesn't have the discipline to stop after running their roll once. They turn the $100 into $90, then the $90 into $81, then the $81 into...
Bankruptcy won't even discharge the kind of debt many/most of the lower-middle class fall broke upon. Alimony, child support, student loans, "restitution."
This claim is simply false. The cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. has been extensively studied and absolutely none of the criteria you list comes even close to the number 1 reason that people in lower or middle class declare bankruptcy: medical bills.
No, it isn’t that well studied; and I’d be interested to see your source and confirm that it doesn’t trace back to a study that says something more like “A new study from academic researchers found that 66.5 percent of all bankruptcies were tied to medical issues —either because of high costs for care or time out of work”. (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/this-is-the-real-reason-most...)
What? You mean to tell me people file bankruptcy over the kinds of debt they can actually discharge and less so over the kinds of debt they can't?
That doesn't prove anything other than people filing bankruptcy aren't morons.
If the only thing you could discharge were gambling debts, there would be an equally specious claim that people aren't going broke over medical debt because 80% of bankruptcies cite gambling debts as the cause.
Average medical debt per person in 2020 was $430 per [0].
By comparison, in year 2006, there was 2.55B$ in arrears in my state of Arizona when it had ~5.5 million people, or an average of $463 per person. Not even adjusted for inflation. [1]
If you set the bar at medical debt, which you seem to have, it seems to have passed it on child support alone. And that is with a quite uncharitable handicap against me, as I'm comparing the 2006 child arrears numbers I found against 2020 dollars of medical debt.
Bankruptcy won't even discharge the kind of debt many/most of the lower-middle class fall broke upon.
The whole point was that bankruptcy wasn't a remedy discharging these forms of going broke. It's unsurprising the bankruptcy data leans towards a 'cause' that will actually discharge their debt, otherwise the incentive for a broke person to file bankruptcy is lowered.
Bankruptcy at this point is just a way to signal to creditors not to lend more money to this individual. As you said alimony, child support, student loans, restitution are a must so the filing simply is a formal notice that "every penny this person ever earns is already earmarked, heed this warning before lending"
It's quite convenient though that it actually discharges the kind of debts rich people and businesses are more likely to accrue, while not discharging the kind of debts the middle/lower classes are likely to accrue when they're unable to pay them.
The "judicial order" in the first place violates the first amendment, which isn't binding on Greece, but is binding on the nature of any extradition order they wish to seek in the USA.
In the US, AI incarnations of dead kids are used to lobby congress[]. You can resurrect the brutally murdered 10 year old Uzi Garcia, who's hobbies were "football, swimming, and video games" to do his actual secret hobby which is doing the political bidding of adults and talking to congressman. There is literally a button on the page to let this AI resurrected dead relative to talk to congress.
As democratic popular opinion turns against classical liberal economic principles, many theocratic or monarchist hell holes are increasingly becoming the unexpected underdog turned winners in economic freedom. It's been fascinating to watch.
My understanding is that unique historical, cultural, and even geographical factors have led to this outcome for Oman. I would encourage you to read up on the history of the country to understand the nuance here and not paint with such a broad brush.
Everyone has a unique "..." and a nuance here and a nuance there.
UAE has a unique yada yada and also ended up with a surprisingly remarkably free economic index despite being a theocratic monarchy.
As did the monarchy Lichtenstein, British controlled Hong Kong, and the one-party state of Singapore (technically democratic, in practice it functions like a recallable monarchy).
Also of note the three richest countries by GDP PPP per capita are Monaco (hybrid monarchy with monarchist veto powers), Lichtenstein (hybrid monarchy with monarchist veto powers), Singapore (single party state).
> one-party state of Singapore (technically democratic, in practice it functions like a recallable monarchy).
This is untrue. It would be more accurate to say that the same party has been in power since independence from the UK. Each election in the last 30 years has slowly moved the needle -- fewer and fewer of seats held by the majority party (PAP). I guess there will be a non-PAP prime minister in the next 20 years. Sure, it doesn't look like other democracies, but please don't call it one-party. Also: See Japan. Many outsiders just don't understand democracy in Japan and try to impose their worldview on a different type of democratic system.
I'll yield that it isn't a pure one party state. There is some room for difference of opinion whether you want to characterize it as one or not.
But let's not play the bullshit and borderline xenophobic, ad-hominem attack that it's just "outsiders" who "just don't understand." Or try and distinguish that it's people 'imposing their worldview' (something every human does no matter what they are arguing).
But don't take my word for it. Read what Lee Kuan Yew had to say himself[0]:
The PAP represents the broad middle ground in society and attracts the best and brightest people into Government, LKY said last night. He therefore did not see a two- or multi-party system emerging in Singapore soon.
Ah yes, good ol LKY, the outsider who just doesn't understand Singapore, and with such a non-Singaporean 'viewpoint' that he had quite popular support (even if you want to argue it is a minority, it was widespread enough as to be valid enough to be considered one valid and widespread Singaporean point of view). Calling it not a two or multi-party system, leaving quite obviously his assertion is that it's a one-party system.
This and other points, documented by Yeo Lay Hwee (Senior Fellow, Singapore Institute of International Affairs) , who even if she flip flops between suggesting Singapore is a one-party state, lists quite a few reasons why it is a reasoned viewpoint from an understood observer [1].
I'm not sure what the conclusion is from this other than that the wealthy love having an autocratic tax haven microstate to park the money they earned from liberal democracies in.
Luckily china has a litany of 3rd world countries land borders surrounding it with porous borders, and in a great deal of them no one who gives too many shits about some poor chinese villager crossing. Americans on the other hand have Canada which for LEO purposes is basically an extension of the US, and Mexico which due to the drug trade and other unique factors mean anyone getting caught jumping the border in either direction is likely to owe the cartel a massive amount of money or some extremely undesirable favors.
I would definitely rather be a trapped Chinese trying to escape than a trapped American.
Surveillance in the PRC is massive and centralized. There's a reason NK fleeing into the PRC plummeted when the PRC decided to stop turning a blind eye.
A valid point. Although PRC citizens have a little easier time explaining why they are in the PRC than North Koreans, and there are hundreds of miles of sparse Chinese border area where no one even knows where China starts/ends and where Pakistan or India begins. Out of places where there is a known border, Myanmar for instance is infamous for porosity.
The reason why NK have stopped is largely either NK enforcement or being caught while in the PRC without permission to reside in the PRC. Both of which are highly mitigated for PRC citizen (PRC citizens can have issues spending time in cities they're not authorized to live in, but less so with merely "visiting" countryside).
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