So the government can decide what rights are? If the Republicans get a 2/3 majority and amends the Constitution to say that LGBT+ people can be killed at any moment, does that make it right?
Also, let’s assume your proposal happens. What specific policies do you mean by “sane gun control”?
How do you propose we lower the number of guns in our society in a way that disarms criminals and doesn’t violate people’s right to self defense?
It would still be cheaper to drive.
They do make inhalers that are longer-lasting and intended to prevent asthma attacks, but I haven’t tried them yet. If I ever get a house that will let me keep more than one bicycle so I can have a non-ebike (those omafiets look pretty sweet but I’d need adjustable gears for the slopes around here), I might consider it.
I do, yes, but in every single gym class I’ve been in I would have to stop what I was doing completely and use my inhaler. The school tried having me use it before the exercise, but that did nothing.
I’m 99% sure that they’re joking.
That would require people to keep living with their family until they’re ready to buy a house. That isn’t always feasible. Nor is it an easy option in areas where big businesses are buying up real estate to turn the houses into rental properties, or areas with zoning laws that make new construction excessively difficult. I don’t want to do away with landlords either, necessarily, but telling people to “stop renting” isn’t too far removed from telling people who complain about excessive food prices to “stop eating.” We need places to live, at the end of the day.
It would take me about 45 minutes one way. It could work, assuming it never rained or snowed (both will absolutely happen here in upstate NY) and my exercise-induced asthma didn’t prevent me physically from doing so. Don’t get me wrong, I love my ebike for quick zips around town, but it’s no replacement for my car at this point. It can’t function in the rain or snow and, even if it could, I don’t want to risk injuring myself by riding on un-shoveled sidewalks or the slurry of death that accumulates on the sides of the road from the snow plows. Plus I have to keep my work laptop dry, and I’d be much less safe against the US’s notoriously brutal cyclist ignorance.
In my city, if I want to arrive at my office at 8AM, I need to leave my apartment by car at 7:45. If I want to be within a block or so of my office by that same time, I need to leave my apartment at 6:15 to find a bus stop and ride on three different buses. Getting home by bus after ending my shift at 5:30 (I work 9 hour shifts and get every other Friday off), I would get home about 7:15.
Consider that I’m paid roughly $35 an hour pre-tax. If I do this every day for a month, the time this costs me would be equivalent to more than a two week paycheck.
Why would I take the bus?
That would explain a lot, actually.
I mean, I get that the “forming a terrorist group” charge is probably excessive, but you’re only going to make people hate you (and by extension, your cause) by blocking highways. People literally need those, particularly ambulances and other emergency services.
Blocking airport runways and vandalizing priceless pieces of history will also make people hate you. Just Stop Oil is Big Oil’s dream activist group.
They do, but the fact remains that you can’t effectively incentivize people to work more for you personally when they’re already soul-crushingly overworked doing things for everyone else in their rotation. Trying to get more out of nurses who are in the industry already would be trying to squeeze blood from a stone. Also, you don’t go to college for several years to be a server. If people realize they’re going to have to beg for tips from their patients, then that won’t bode well for the profession.
See, there’s a crucial difference in the two professions. A server is someone who brings your food, takes your check, and generally doesn’t do much else. A nurse, on the other hand, needs to balance the life-saving care of dozens of patients at once while dealing with administrative bullcrap the whole time. People tip servers well to incentivize them to spend less time on their phones and dropping plates, and more time carrying food and recording orders accurately. You can’t do that with nurses because they can’t possibly give any more of their time. 91% of nurses experienced high levels of burnout in 2023,, and I’m dead certain that a lot of that is the insane workload. Twelve hour shifts working with uncaring staff and pissed-off patients must be soul-crushing. Then for your employer to try and disguise your looming pay cuts as “a way to give your healthcare heroes a special thank you” would probably cause an exodus from the profession; people can see through that stuff pretty easily.
You’re still assuming this is going to be an immediate industry-wide thing, too. Like I said, people will see through the corporate bs, and they’ll learn at some point that they can go to another hospital, not be expected to beg for tips from their suffering patients, and get paid more than the place that was lowballing them. Word of mouth is powerful. There’s an entire cottage industry of Canadian nurses who cross the border into America for work because they’re so dissatisfied with the Canadian system. Your scenario only works in a setting where there is only one nationwide hospital system that decides the market rate for nursing, and that people wouldn’t decide not to become nurses after seeing that they’re expected to tip them. We already see a nursing shortage because they’re being treated so poorly; trying to make it a tipped industry would only make it worse.
As for the “would you?” thing, I can speak from a degree of personal experience here. I was in the psych ward in May and I was waiting for over ten hours in there to see a psychiatrist. I was tired, hungry, bored, and scared of what might happen to me. I was in no way equipped to make financial decisions at that point, and I get the feeling that the medical field would consider taking tips from someone who was in such an emotionally frail state to be unethical at best. (Oh yeah, and they took away my wallet. Couldn’t give them cash if I wanted to.) My insurance made the cost of going there “reasonable,” (mostly because I wasn’t actually admitted,) but if the hospital expected me to tip the staff there, it would be nonsensical. How would you determine what the tip should be based on? The pre-insurance amount? That’s like $5,000 there if I’m lucky, and 20% of that is $1,000 on a bill I only paid like $275 for. One word: No. The post-insurance amount? That’s $27.50. A pittance compared to how much time and effort went into taking care of me, including the time it took to become a nurse to begin with. Furthermore, I would be so removed from the process of sending the tip that by the time the money reached the nurse(s) who helped me, they would only know me as a name on a bill at best. And again, would insurance be willing to cover the cost of a tip?
What makes you think people will go from tipping $10 on a $40-50 meal, to tipping, say, $100 on a $400-500 medical bill? Or $1,000 on a $4,000-5,000 one? Or even more? Do you think that insurance is going to cover tips for nurses? Do you think every nurse in a given hospital is going to stay there instead of getting a job somewhere else that doesn’t expect them to take tips, especially when they realize that nobody is tipping them?
This reminds me of that chart showing gun deaths over a few years that showed the line going down the more deaths there were. That made sense graphically, they colored it in to look like blood dripping down, but this is just dumb.
If a hospital in the US started paying their nurses the same minimum wage that a server gets, that hospital would suddenly be without nurses and it would be entirely the hospital’s fault.
That’s what I was thinking too. I wonder if the thumbnail activated the same part of my brain that’s trained to detect snakes in the grass.
The fact that this is now apparently a bipartisan effort means either it’s a good idea or a terrible idea. I’m leaning towards “good.”
There may be something to your sister’s claims, then. This screams of paranoia. I’m not sure there’s much you can do for your mom where you are now, but know that this isn’t something you deserve. I’m sorry this had all happened to you.
Also, I’m Catholic, and the only “anima” I’m familiar with or can find online is the Anima Christi prayer, which is a pretty standard prayer. I’m not sure what they’re talking about.
I hope you can find some peace. Whatever the case, this abuse wasn’t your fault.
Do you believe that Nazi Germany was justified in killing 11 million people? Because that’s the logical conclusion of your belief.