The dark fiber analogy doesn't quite work though, because unused fiber just sits there harmlessly. Nuclear plants have massive decommissioning costs ($280M-600M+ per plant), ongoing waste storage requirements, and if the companies go bust, taxpayers are likely on the hook. The EU alone is underfunded by €118 billion on decommissioning. Meanwhile batteries and solar keep getting cheaper every year without the “who pays to clean this up in 50 years” problem. Seems like a very roundabout way to hope for public benefit.
You can substitute cocoa sources globally, but you can't substitute a house in Charlotte with one in Phoenix.
If cocoa prices spike, you buy less chocolate. If housing prices spike in your job market, your options are: pay more, endure a brutal commute, or uproot your life. The demand is far more inelastic.
That's surprising given the data. Were these transactions recent? Investors focus on entry-level properties, so if you're buying above that tier you'd see less competition. But California overall has high investor activity:
“In 2025’s first half, 36% of purchases statewide were made by investors – up from 31% for all of 2024 and 16% at the recent low in 2020 as coronavirus was scrambling the economy.”
Most people can't build their own home (time, skills, land access, upfront capital for materials). It's like responding to “healthcare is too expensive” with “I just treated my own broken arm”.
A mom and pop landlord with 5 rentals doesn't have pricing power. A firm owning 1 in 5 homes in a neighborhood does. That's why antitrust thresholds exist in other industries.
The national average obscures that institutional investors own 1 in 9 rental homes in Charlotte, 1 in 10 in Tampa, and one-fifth of all houses in some Atlanta neighborhoods. It’s likely to get worse too.
Have you tried buying a home recently? It’s very tough to compete against the all-cash offers from investors.
I think you're conflating the Democratic Party with "left-wing philosophy." Actual left-wing ideology (Marx, Lenin, the socialist tradition) focuses on material conditions for workers: who owns the means of production, labor power, class relations.
From that perspective, the problem isn't that Democrats have the wrong messaging about masculinity. It's that neither major US party offers politics centered on workers' material interests. Both parties abandoned class-based politics in favor of cultural appeals.
If you're a young man struggling economically, being told you have "privilege" feels disconnected from your reality of declining wages and diminished prospects. But the socialist response isn't "better messaging about masculinity," it's organizing workers to gain power over their economic conditions.
Boeing was the prime contractor for the SLS core stage and upper stages, and Northrop Grumman builds the solid rocket boosters. The entire rocket was outsourced to private industry.
Project author here. This project is 4 years old at this point, and now it probably makes more sense to use Mac minis or mini pcs. I also wouldn’t rely on cheap colocation for anything security sensitive or critical. They gave my same block of IPs to another customer at some point and there were issues with IP conflicts (eventually got resolved).
It lasted for about 3 years and the colocation company went bankrupt and got bought by another company, so they returned the hardware. I’m surprised a technical failure didn’t kill it.
GM announced a $10 billion stock buyback in November 2023, literally weeks after claiming they couldn't afford worker raises during the UAW strike that cost them $1.1 billion. Since 2015, GM has authorized $37.7 billion in total buybacks while their new UAW contract costs $9.3 billion over four years. When you can find $10 billion for buybacks immediately after settling a strike, the problem isn't "expensive labor". It's management that chose financial engineering over building competitive manufacturing capabilities.
You're right that Medicaid subsidizes employers who pay poverty wages rely on taxpayers to provide healthcare for their workers instead of paying living wages themselves. But the solution isn't to eliminate Medicaid and leave workers with nothing. The solution is to raise the minimum wage or have universal healthcare so employers actually have to provide real benefits.
Most Medicaid recipients already work. They're not choosing dependency, they're working jobs that don't pay enough to afford healthcare. Taking away their healthcare doesn't suddenly make employers pay more, it just leaves workers desperate, which is exactly what those employers want.
You're essentially arguing we should eliminate the safety net that keeps our low-wage economy functioning. That would either force employers to pay living wages (unlikely) or create mass suffering among workers (more likely). Which outcome are you hoping for? Because right now it sounds like you'd rather have sick, desperate workers than challenge the employers who created this system.
What's the point of making requirements even stricter if they cost more to administer than they save and don't increase employment? The Congressional Budget Office estimates 5.2 million people would lose coverage by 2034, with savings primarily coming from eligible people losing coverage due to paperwork barriers rather than increased employment.[1]
The new bill allows states to verify monthly instead of every three months, so people lose coverage faster. Even working people get tripped up because 43% of workers would fail to meet 80 hours in at least one month due to variable schedules common in low-wage jobs.[2] People with multiple jobs have to submit paystubs from each employer monthly. Seasonal workers and food service workers are especially vulnerable because their hours swing wildly due to factors beyond their control.
You're right that a lot of the NOAA cuts target climate research specifically. But think about who benefits from attacking climate science. Oil companies and existing wealth structures that profit from fossil fuels. Climate research threatens those business models, so gutting it protects those interests.
The cuts go way beyond climate though. They're cutting 107,000 federal jobs across agencies while defense spending increases 13%. Framing this as ideological makes it sound like an abstract battle of ideas, but it's not abstract at all. Real people are losing health insurance, real hospitals are closing, real communities are losing weather warnings. Meanwhile wealthy people get tax cuts and connected companies get business opportunities. It's about material interests, not ideology.
It's not about whether they can work 20 hours. Most already do. Arkansas found 95% of people either met the requirements or qualified for exemptions, but 18,000+ still lost coverage due to the paperwork maze.
The requirements are designed to create barriers through bureaucracy. You have to report every month through a specific online portal, track your hours precisely, navigate exemption processes. Miss one monthly filing deadline and you lose healthcare. It's the most socially acceptable way to kick people off coverage without saying "we don't want poor people to have healthcare."
And it's not just work requirements. The bill also adds income verification twice a year instead of once, more asset checks, and cuts the actual funding. Each new hoop is another chance for eligible people to fall through the cracks. The goal is reducing enrollment through administrative friction, not promoting work.
Why frame it as ideological though? That doesn't explain which agencies get protected and which get cut. The NTSB stays funded because rich people fly on planes too. But Medicaid gets cut because wealthy people don't need it.
Look at weather service cuts. They're gutting the National Weather Service while Trump's appointees have ties to companies like AccuWeather and Satellogic that would profit from privatizing weather data.
It's about class interests. Agencies that serve everyone or that rich people depend on stay funded. Programs that only help poor people get cut, or get privatized to benefit specific wealthy interests. Make the wealthy better off through tax cuts and new business opportunities, make poor people worse off through service cuts.