Reality:

Prices go up for imported goods driving down demand for all goods both domestic and imported.

Retaliatory tariffs, increased cost of resources, and most destructively changes to purchasing behaviors drive down exports and kill domestic production further. These are long term effects as well. As competitive countries fill the niche left from the fucking idiot country who decided to shit on their own market.

Well, without cheap labor from immigrants, companies are either going to have to pay living wages or go under. I am okay with both.

No that never happens /S

I used to work with a supplier that hired a former Monsanto executive as their CEO. When his first agenda came out I told their sales team he was an idiot and to have fun looking for a new job a few months.

The CEO bailed after 2 years to start his own “consulting business.”

1 year later the company lost 75% of their market share and was laying off people left and right. They are still afloat barely.

After a couple years “consulting”, the CEO went to another company in 2023. He didn’t bounce fast enough and got caught on this one. He was fired 2 weeks ago and the company shut their doors except for a handful of staff to facilitate the firesale of the companies assets.

Relatively easy to do with strawberries. Look up pictures of greenhouse cultivation of strawberries. You’ll see that the fruit all hang over the edge of the beds/trays.

All you need is a robotic pickers with a color sensor on it.

The court’s decision also introduced the concept of systemic failure, which holds providers liable when they fail to adopt preventive measures or remove illegal content. Now, platforms will be expected to establish self-regulation policies, ensure transparency in their procedures, and adopt standardized practices.

Pretty sure this would cover Lemmy and most traditional forums as long as they have a written policy and standards that are consistently enforced.

Capitalism exploits cheap labor everywhere around the world. It’s a feature of the system.

Mexico and Canada have been investing in agricultural infrastructure for decades now. The only reason that the U.S. farmer can compete is due to shenanigans in import requirements. Imports are held to a much higher standard than domestic production. It’s why the majority of foodborne outbreaks are from American production.

American farmers have been conditioned to rely on cheap labor and expensive equipment. There’s been only been minor infrastructure investment since the 1970’s.

Without government subsidies and cheap labor, the majority of the farmers business models in the us is not sustainable.

Good dishwashers have a heating element on the bottom. . It turns on and dries the dishes in a cloud of steam. There is also a button on mine that’s for high heat (sanitize) that I leave on. This ensures that the dishes get completely dry.

In 2025 it would be anything above 3.6 million. It’s a ton of money but here’s a list of a few people that hit it.

https://aflcio.org/paywatch/highest-paid-ceos

Now if they added in a progressive tax rate for corporate taxes as well… Say anything over 500 million in net profit is taxed at a 90+% rate. That would solve all sorts of issues. Suddenly investors of all these mega corps would be pushing hard to divide up the companies into smaller entities.

Wealth tax in the modern age could be an inheritance tax. Anything over the median life earnings of individuals could be taxed at 100%. So median earnings in my area is $65K * 45 years (20-65k) = $2.93 million.

Taxes can go either way. It depends on how they were written.

The tax code after the Great Depression allowed for massive expansion of public projects in the U.S. It was 63% for the top earners. During WW2 the top tax bracket was at 94%.

When the boomers were all born the tax bracket was above 70% for the top earners. This high tax bracket is what fueled the creation of a large middle class, public infrastructure, schools, research, space exploration, and the massive military buildup and wars. It also acted as an effective anti-minopoly/oligarchy system because the tax system discouraged it.

Then in the 80’s Reagan slashed the taxes for the top earners down to 28%. its never gotten above 40% since then. Most high earning companies have so many exeptions today that the real tax rate is often 0%.

Because of it the infrastructure built during the 50’s-70’s is degrading and falling apart. Public services are declining and the middle class is shrinking as people become more impoverished.

Now I want to see human population density compared to birthrate 25 years later for regions with a current sub-replacement birthrate.

“Losing the social skills required to mate” sounds like many people I know.

They get a big hefty fine. The fine is then reduced down to nothing after they claim they had no idea they were not legal to work in the country.

Next they reduce the amount of money they pay the other employees who they have no idea are not legal to work because of the fine they did not pay.

A C-section will run you $60K easy. With the 80:20 insurance thats $12K owed by the parents. . With the federal out of pocket maximum being $9,450 for the mother. The baby also has a $9,450 out of pocket maximum. So the family will likely owe at least $12k before leaving the hospital

$5K handout is seriously ignorant. It will cost a hell of a lot more to reverse the trend

In order to increase the birthrate above replacement level here are a few things that need to happen.

1. Free universal healthcare including dental.

2. Rent control for all apartments locked to single income minimum wage.

3. Ban on investment properties for single family homes. If the house is classified as single family, you can’t rent it out. It must be sold.

4. Free childcare.

5. Free education from pre-K to Graduate levels.

6. Open immigration policies for countries with higher birthrates.

7. Increase minimum wage to make it a livable wage.

8. To pay for it all - Increase corporate taxes to 95% for more than $100million income. Increase personal taxes to 95% for more than 1 million in income.

I had like $9.22 remaining credit from some international calls back in 2002 I was going to use…eventually.

I drove over 7K miles last month. I would much rather see traffic enforcement cameras than police cars sitting on the side of the road.

Traffic cameras attempt to document actual behavior with real evidence in an impartial manner.

Most cops are dumb, undertrained, and overpayed parasites on society who have violent and agressive behaviors. Then they sit on the side of the road being bored out of their minds all day. When an accident does occur they mostly stand around directing traffic while the paramedics, firefighters, and wreckers do all the work. Hell the most useful thing I have seen them do is remove debris from the road with a broom and dustpan.

City I lived in had a serious issue with people running red lights at a few intersections. Many fatal accidents and pedestrian injuries happened because of it. They put in a red light light cameras on the worst intersection. The first month it generated over $350K in fines at $125 each. Around 2,800 drivers ran that intersection. Within 3 months the number of tickets dropped to under 20 per month. The number of accidents dropped respectively as well.

Ehh… As somebody who is old enough to remember before the standardization and consolidation of software, I disagree with you.

A workforce that are trained in more software options makes them more valuable to the company. It pushes for constant innovation. It’s not efficient, but innovative processes almost never are. It also increases the difficulty to replacing experienced employees.

The widespread adoption of Photoshop as the standard has depressed wages and increased job insecurity. I also suspect that the trend of simplification in designs is the direct result of this. Mediocre talented designers are selling boring easy to create designs to artistically blind CEO’s.

Ah the good ol’ days when farmers had 10+ kids.

Only 5 made it to adulthood due to diseases like measles, mumps, influenza, whooping cough etc. , poor and dangerous working conditions, and no healthcare. Of those 5 remaining, 1 of them died in childbirth, and 1 died in a random war and 3 went on to have kids of their own.

Fucking hell, I understood that. I have slipped and fallen into the dark side. Learn from my mistakes and turn back before you get to this point. There is no hope for me now.

Its referred to as barriers to entry. These are anything that prevents new startups from occuring. These can be natural or contrived.

As somebody who finally started their own business after 25 years of effort and a lot of luck I know these well.

The largest barrier is usually initial capital. Banks don’t give out loans to startups without assets. So if you have overall negative personal assets like large student loans, renting, car loans, etc you are fucked in getting a bank to fund your startup. I can’t get a line of credit for at least a year, probably 2. At least not one at a reasonable interest rate that doesn’t eatup all of my profit. I ended up taking a draw against expected revenue from a vendor who believes in me.

Health insurance (U.S), literally the reason I didn’t start my business 10 years ago & 5 years ago when I had 2 opportunities.

Business insurance: it took me 5 months to find somebody that would cover me.

Laws and regulations that create barriers to entry. These can be minor annoyance like fees and paperwork or major regulatory hurdles depending on the industry and country.

Infrastructure to conduct the business. I need highly specialized warehousing for 4 months of the year. I ended up renting from a company that is in a similar business as me that runs on a different cycle (they are empty when I need space). Building my own would require a loan… See above.

Available resources: Do competitors limit your available resources by market manipulation and anti-competative behavior. This is a huge one in industries dominated by oligarchies.

There are many more of these that are around.

Most of these can be alleviated by a fair sharing of revenue. 10 years ago I increased the companies net profit from $500K to $10million. They gave me 5% pay raise and $10k bonus out of a “Theoretical” $200K max.

That’s okay, we can reschedule the 1 of the 60 TFCV meetings about theupcoming 5 TPS meetings, that so we can be prepared for the 2 SMR meetings in 3 and 4 months, which is needed for the the BRM meeting in 6 months. Then we’ll see if anything is decided at the BRM meeting. If not we’ll repeat the meeting schedule for the foreseeable future.