As presented at left, Americans love to complain about taxation. Yet most people in the rest of the developed world don’t mind paying taxes, in some cases at higher rates than ours here in the U.S., because they derive significant benefits in terms of free education and healthcare, higher minimum wages, longer paid vacations, maternity/paternity leaves, etc.
I just met a senior executive at HopSkipDrive, an organization with an Uber-like business model, but one that focuses on providing a safe, reliable alternative school transportation solution. My new friend says that the typical schoolchild might be in foster care, or have some disability that would make him ineligible for the “yellow bus.”
He told me that he feels that he’s making a difference by getting kids to school who otherwise would be missing that opportunity. I agreed and added encouragement in that he’s helping to buck the trend in the United States whereby the American educational system becomes less valuable with each passing year.
The meme here may sound damning to some Americans, but keep in mind that the majority of U.S. voters either think that Trump was treated unfairly by the woke elite or never even heard about the indictments.
I have a friend who lives on a steady diet of Fox News, and when I asked her about Jack Smith, she said she didn’t know who he is.
A reader asks: I really wish I could come up with a better adverb than “really” to emphasize or to express enthusiasm, which I really use way too often. But I really can’t think of one that does it better.
I taught my kids to try to find a word that doesn’t need “really” or “very” to communicate exactly what is intended. It’s not “really big”; it’s “gargantuan.”
If we can get through the coming four years without a series of major catastrophes, we should count ourselves lucky beyond belief.
This from 20th Century German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist Erich Fromm.
A smart guy, to be sure, but to his point here, I’m with Socrates, who said famously, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
I’ll also quote myself: “Thought is cheap.” When my kids were younger, I tried to encourage them to be intellectually curious, reminding them that thinking is neither painful or expensive.
Please see this, and donate if you care to. More details on his Wikipedia page.
If I were to run out of gas, I’d rather push my car to the next gas station than fill it at Chevron.
The quote here from 20th Century physicist/mathematician Paul Dirac reminds us of the hundreds of attempts to reconcile faith and reason, religion and science, call it what you will.
This was the life’s work of Thomas Aquinas, btw, using nothing but Aristotelean logic to prove the existence of God. Here we are, 800 years later, still trying to resolve the issue.
Apparently, some people are unaware that U.S. foreign aid is focused on maintaining freedom and stability around the world.
Let’s face facts: Very few Trump supporters are going to throw tantrums when grocery prices fail to fall, or when any other campaign promise doesn’t come to fruition. That’s because the MAGA crowd loves Trump for his other “virtues,” e.g., racism, cruelty to immigrants, etc., while the amoral rich adore him for his trillion-dollar tax breaks; for them, the price of eggs is totally irrelevant.
