https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr...

So if your $16/hr job pops by 30%, the net impact on the household is much lower in many cases. For teen workers, it’s beer money. For single moms, it’s a net loss as costs for daycare and healthcare have increased 50%.

All of this stuff is relative. I’m a tech exec in a large organization, and essentially live the same lifestyle as my parents, who were in “lower end” jobs relatively speaking in the 80s when I was little.

(However, I don't have a pension.)

The biggest difference is housing and healthcare. My healthcare expense is equivalent to their mortgage. My dad family healthcare coverage was $0 until I was in high school. The total cost of my, excellent health insurance is about $35k, which is 90% of the salary of my first professional job in 1999!

Our policy with respect to healthcare is essentially a regressive tax on the working public. Rich people have a limited cost exposure, poor people get limited access to poor care, and everyone else gets increasingly expensive, lower quality care.

And I'm not even sure what this graph is supposed to be showing. The biggest difference is when he 1st quartile stagnates while the 4th quartile loses 4-5%. 95% of $200,000 is still a lot more than even a 100% increase in salary for $40,000. my most generous, lazy interpretation of this chart shows a whopping $15% increase in wages for the first quartile.

It is incredible how Internet armchair technocrats will attempt to reduce human existence to a few equations and wonder why broader populations despise the Ivory Tower.

I'm uncertain if I missed the sarcasm or perhaps more likely my lack of comprehension.

It’s not sarcasm, it’s reality

So done with Americans finally getting into boom times and still feeling like it’s 2008. No one here ever wants to admit that they have it good.

> Since 2016, real (inflation-adjusted) wages have risen quickly for people in the bottom quartile

This "quick" wage growth, as you point out with your image, is on the order of 1 or 2% for the past few years, and was massacred by recent inflation i.e. if raising the minimum wage raised your standard of living, you've almost exactly kept up with inflation.

Meanwhile, wealth amongst people who hold investments, a group that often includes upper-income workers, has massively increased during that time. The S&P has had a 130% adjusted return since 2016. The share of wealth held by the top 10% is as high or higher than it was in 2016.

lol.

The whole point of this discussion is that our metrics are not properly measuring things. The reported inflation number is a joke. See: anything in life that matters like - a house - a car - an education - health care - raising a kid - basically any life-milestone

but TVs and electronic toys have never been cheaper so it's all okay! Hedonic adjustment!

The community college in the area I briefly lived growing up was $17 a credit hour in 1997. Inflation adjusted that's $31.67 a credit hour.

It's now nearly $140 a credit hour. Almost 4.5x more than inflation.

For a community college.

> The former is doing great.

This is at odds with what I've been hearing on HN and in adjacent places. For a year or two now, people have been saying that finding a job in tech has become much harder. Some say that it hasn't been this bad in a decade. Some say it hasn't been this bad since the dotcom bubble burst.

None of this is true for the “underclass” mentioned above who have little to look forward to each day; the labor they provide is in various amounts boring/tedious/demeaning/physical, and doesn’t pay enough to give them the middle class lifestyle they feel entitled to (e.g. home ownership, healthcare, etc).

I and many people I know have gone through job searches over the last 18 months. Yes, it was more work than we’ve come to expect over the last 10 years. But ultimately everyone I know has landed on their feet. As an industry we are still incredibly privileged compared to most.

it's 50/50 in my circle. And I got the losing coin toss. Pretty much everyone in my circle got at least a threat of a lay off at some point except one person (and that company is in a very special situation). some got jobs quickly, to various levels of satisfaction. Some got laid off and then went back to the same company when they happened to secure a new project. I'd mostly prefer some stability over how well off I'll be when I'm 65. I'm not even sure I'll make it there at this rate.

>None of this is true for the “underclass” mentioned above who have little to look forward to each day

it's all relative, which is why this is hard to contain to a long term chart of "tech is still better off". No one wants to be caught off guard, doing interviews as a full time job for a year a income dwindles (so underselling it as "it's more work than we come to expect over the last 10 years" is underselling it). And even for the tech workers willing to work in the "underclass" jobs, it's not that much easier getting a job. Especially in my area that seems to have a higher than usual unemployment rate.

For myself, referrals were a huge part of getting a job somewhat quickly. As more people are looking, the slush pile of resumes gets bigger which causes employers to feel they can be more picky. So if you’re relying on a cold application turning into an interview, that will definitely have a very low success rate.

I know only one person who didn’t get a job for an entire year, one of the smartest people I worked with at my last job, but to be honest it seemed like they were having some mental health / mid-life crisis things going on and not actually applying much if at all. I don’t know you and your situation, and I’m not saying this is the only explanation for a long and fruitless search, but if you think you might be like this person then I’d encourage you to reach out to someone who knows you and get the support you need. Marinating in negative thoughts won’t get you anywhere. This stuff has to be addressed because attitude, emotional state, and overall vibes can bleed into the entire interview performance and undermine what is otherwise a solid showing.

I hope something good comes your way soon.

Yup. I was hit in one layoff, 3 months later thought I went into a studio that looked like it had a stable publisher, and then the publisher was in fact not stable. So 2 layoffs in 6 months. By layoff #2, the layoff trend was in full force and the market was closing in. I believe I'm now on month 10 of the job search (or 9, since I simply didn't bother searching in December and visited family).

>For myself, referrals were a huge part of getting a job somewhat quickly. As more people are looking, the slush pile of resumes gets bigger which causes employers to feel they can be more picky. So if you’re relying on a cold application turning into an interview, that will definitely have a very low success rate.

Well that's the frustrating part. It was super thin on January/February, but by April I was getting plenty of interviews. I have 8-9 years of experience and a well known company on my resume, so I can stand out if I get past the Automated Trash Systems. But the technical interviews have just became a free for all of whatever the interview wants to ask. C++ questions, software engineering questions, specific game engine questions, graphics programming questions (I haven't actually gotten a technical interview for a graphics programming position, but I sure have been asked how to render a triangle, oddly enough), leetcode questions, math questions...

I just simply don't know what to study for these days. I can answer all those questions well, but "well" isn't good enough these days. I need to be absolutely confident on on the top of the ball, but I can't do that for every single aspect of gaming. Too many topics to be a master of all ("master" in the context of an interview). At least if I wasn't getting interviews I could just accept the cold market and focus more on maintaining what I currently have.

>but if you think you might be like this person then I’d encourage you to reach out to someone who knows you and get the support you need. Marinating in negative thoughts won’t get you anywhere. This stuff has to be addressed because attitude, emotional state, and overall vibes can bleed into the entire interview performance and undermine what is otherwise a solid showing.

Well there's a lot to be bitter about in my industry, if we're being frank. Game studios are still shutting down or laying off everyweek, no matter how strongly their teams performed, and games are continuing to squeeze on the industry as they push more and more attempts at monetization without necessarily adding more value. No one is feeling very valued in this current state of affairs: not the customers, not the devs, not even the executives.

On a personal note, I did have 2 studios I went assumedly to the end of the process with (6 stages each + recruiter call), only to have no respose whatsoever after the last interviews. Only thing worse than a no at that level of investment is lingering in purgatory as an assumed no. Those would have been surefire offers had I applied 6 months earlier, but alas. I'm truly hitting all the branches on the way down.

Oh, and did I mention the ghosting? There are so many ghosts these days. I remember being contacted by a recruiter for a call, then the call got delayed 1 week, then 2, then cancelled. Never heard from them at all.

I'm usually one to place too much blame on myself, but these days I really don't know what to evaluate from this experiment. It just feels like a circus and I need to keep putting on the clown makeup and doing stunts until someone picks me up. Nothing really feels like it's evaluating my skills and taking my experiences into account past the HR call, so all I can do is throw the dice until something comes out the crapshoot.

------

That's all to say: Sure, I'm bitter. But I don't really let that linger to the next inerview. Quite the contrary. Just a lot of numbness and apathy when beforehand I'd be excited at all the new tech to potentially work on, and all the creativity flowing. It all just feels so sterile these days. So artiicial. Interviews were always superfical, but it feels like no one even tries to pretend to do the motions anymore.

I still have a somewhat healthy social life, and I know how to play the part (I've done it several times before to success). But I definitely do feel interview burnout. one week I'll have 5 interviews where 2 ghost me (very haunting last years, I'll say) past the HR call and 2 others bomb at the technical test, and the week after I would simply just not take any calls. Interviews are way more exhausting than day to day work.

But what you're probably seeing is a reaction to the end of a period when, assuming at least a pulse and some vague familiarity with computers (and maybe some ability to navigate tech interviews), you could walk out of a job on Friday and have multiple offers within a week.

This was basically never the norm with most professional jobs that could take months of job-hunting with no guarantee of a higher salary or not needing to move. I was very lucky over time and it always depended on professional connections.

A lot of people got accustomed to a period that was nothing like the historical norm. I expect very few of them have taken fast food jobs which absolutely happened in 2001.

This was never really the -norm- in tech either. Yes, a small number of very talented, very well-connected software engineers with well-known schools or companies on their resume, could probably leave a job one week and have multiple offers next week, but come on... This has never really been the experience of the vast majority of tech workers.

Sure, if you survey Stanford graduates, working in a hot domain, in top companies Silicon Valley, you're going to conclude that getting jobs has always been easy "in tech."

It's not the norm for most professional jobs to need to study content unrelated to the actual responsibilities for your role, and going through 3-5+ stages of interviews just to get a thumbs up. no other sector is studying interview questions on the side. they either have a standardized license exam to vet their technical expertise, can do a contract/trial period to show their chops ("contractors" in tech aren't really a "downgrade"/less compensated role like in other industries), or otherwise have testing that closely mirrors their day to day.

>I expect very few of them have taken fast food jobs which absolutely happened in 2001.

I was in elementary for 2001, so I can't comment much on 2001 or 2009. I have indeed heard some of those people consider 2023/4 to be even worse for the market, however. Just "being good at your job" isn't enough these days, where it sounds like that sufficed in 2001, and the study space for 2009 was at least manageable. But that's secondhand accounts.

This is a different world from the one where hundreds of thousands are committing suicide with fentanyl.

fully agree, and also taxation, access to credit and leverage for profitable assets, many legal loopholes..

Pickitty says in-part that rewards are disproportionately moving to capital assets, at the same time devaluing the fundamental components of life and liberty .. food stocks, common labor, political freedoms from taxation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Piketty

Intuition says that increased surveillance by law enforcement to produce convictions that cost money and time are economically crippling to building a middle class from a labor pool and small-holder individuals. A people without hope and progress become mired in common failure and produce a downward spiral of personal life, as described.

We already shovel in far more tax dollars maintaining infrastructure for a handful of remaining occupants even when the economic activity no longer justifies the spend. What further burden, exactly, do you think the rest of the world owes ex-rural communities that have deindustrialized like this?

I’ve been to places like this around here, where mining towns have dried up and there’s only a few early-20th-century dams marking anything at all. You have to drive into unmarked, un-google-mappable state land through the fire roads (the kind of thing that gets people killed-by-GPS out west) to even get there etc, and there used to be a whole town there once for the mines. Serious/honest question, what does the broader public really owe that miner?

America needs to have some hard talks about what to do in these (extremely frequent) situations, because infrastructure can’t be an indefinite commitment once the communities that sustain it wither and shrivel away. And it sucks for the handful of holdouts who don’t want to leave, but the community itself is really already dead. If there are 30 people who don't want to leave their homes, do we keep paving roads and delivering US mail and maintaining hundreds of miles of power lines for the 30 people who won't leave?

That's maybe viable when it's a rare situation, but it's not, anymore - America is folding back inwards after over-expanding during the railroad and industrial eras. There are a lot of "railroad towns" where the trains no longer stop, so to speak. And once "the mine dries up", and those arteries stop pumping, people move on. What do we do about the ones who won't? Society is probably "in the hole" (net economic activity) to the tune of millions of dollars of infrastructure per resident, perhaps tens of millions in some cases, over their lifetime.

A lot of these places literally have population density of sub-1-person-per-sq-mile, there are whole regions with sub-10. It's gauche to say it, but at the end of the day everyone knows there is a number when it's worth it and a number when it's not - just like statistical value of life. And at some point, if the taxpayer is kicking in tens of millions of dollars of artificial subsidy, it's becoming a lifestyle choice that we choose to subsidize. By all means offer them a great deal to buy their property and bulldoze it... but at the end of the day we can't keep paving roads onto mountains just because 10 people don't want to move. That is an economic termite right there - and they would use far less charitable terms to describe the situation, if the tables were reversed.

I feel for people who have to leave their lives behind etc, but infrastructure isn't a suicide pact either. It's not a permanent, lifelong commitment even when the fundamentals on the ground totally change - and not everyone is a legacy homeowner to begin with.

http://travelthemitten.com/landmarks/redridge-steel-dam-an-e...

https://99wfmk.com/redridge-michigan/

> Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

> Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

> The high and lonely hills stretch far away.

(incidentally, this flow over the base of the dam is new, looks like since 2018 (it normally goes through culverts at the base) and the dam likely won't survive much longer, some of the supports have already broken loose and the water flow is eroding the concrete, probably quite rapidly given the age/neglect...)

https://www.mininggazette.com/news/features/2020/08/survivin...

And this is what I don't get about current US politics. MAGA = Republicans. The Republican party is the party of generational wealth transfer. The Republican party is the party of elite businessmen lording over the working class. The Republican party is the party of all the economic forces that are unraveling rural communities and turning them into slums. They're voting for and supporting the very politicians who are "collapsing the world" around themselves. But why? It's not just idle nihilism. They're one of the most actively engaged political demographics in recent memory. Is the Culture War so important/motivating to these people that they are willing to help implement their own economic destruction?

The people who promise modest, incremental improvement are much less appealing in that environment.

> The Republican party is the party of generational wealth transfer.

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. The Republican party is half the country.

"Demographic data compiled in the 2016 and 2020 elections showed that the top 40 percent of income earners preferred the Democratic candidate for president (Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden) over the Republican (Donald Trump), signifying a sizable coalition shift from where the party was in the previous decade."

https://www.newsweek.com/democrats-being-party-rich-could-co...

"Some recent US figures on the distribution of income by party: 65 percent of taxpayer households that earn more than $500,000 per year are now in Democratic districts; 74 percent of the households in Republican districts earn less than $100,00 per year. Add to this what we knew already, namely that the 10 richest congressional districts in the country all have Democratic representatives in Congress. The above numbers incidentally come from the Internal Revenue Service, via Bloomberg, and are likely to be more reliable than if they came from Project Veritas via theblaze.com."

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/democrats-rich-par...

> The Republican party is the party of all the economic forces that are unraveling rural communities and turning them into slums.

All of them?

"For decades, the Republicans were seen as the party of big business. Their support for low taxes and light regulation was manna to executives eager to raise profits and avoid government entanglements, and chief executives and big companies were reliable funders of Republicans up and down the ballot.

"Mr. Trump has frayed those bonds. Four years ago, few major chief executives supported Mr. Trump during his first campaign. And throughout his time in the White House, executives from many of the company’s biggest brands publicly sparred with the president on everything from gun control to climate change to immigration.

"'I can’t remember a time when the business community has spoken out so strongly in opposition to an administration on so many important issues,' said Rich Lesser, chief executive of Boston Consulting Group."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/business/republicans-busi...

> Is the Culture War so important/motivating to these people that they are willing to help implement their own economic destruction?

This is the culture war. You're doing it right now.

>I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean.

They oppose estate or "death" taxes in general. That is what they mean.

>The Republican party is half the country.

They're half of voters. They haven't won the popular vote in how many years? 40? They're an obnoxiously loud minority.

>All of them?

Probably not all, but nearly all. The maga tariffs and then subsequent bailouts of farmers harmed comes to mind. reagan's austerity is another easy example.

>>Is the Culture War so important/motivating to these people that they are willing to help implement their own economic destruction? This is the culture war.

>You're doing it right now.

No, they aren't. The republicans bemoaning the 1% of people who identify as trans to distract their uneducated voters while banning books and attacking public education funding, libraries, women's rights, etc, are.

Don't fall in to the bothersider ism trap. Look at republican policy in a red state like texas[0] to see why the comment you replied to is the truth.

[0] https://www.chron.com/politics/article/texas-gop-2024-priori...

“Generational wealth” is generally a myth. The second and third generations burn through any inheritance and sprint back to middle class rather quickly.

Ref? That was definitely not my impression from listening to "Capital in the 21st Century".

In reality, wealth tends to cluster around people who are good stewards of it. They allocate capital efficiently and we are all better off.

The government is NOT a good steward of wealth. They allocate inefficiently (because no accountability) so we should minimize what we give them.

Here is a quick and dirty reference discussing how lazy kids of rich people blow it: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/generational-wealth-curse-cau...

I look at it differently: His ideas are so weak and removed from reality that they can’t even stand up to a Yahoo Finance article.

We should be careful taking policy advice from people who have never had real jobs.

>selling socialism with hand waving

Lol, more like selling it with award winning, best selling, taught in colleges books? If you're convinced that's "hand waving" you're beyond lost

Have you ever actually looked at how large companies allocate wealth, and how much actual accountability there is there? I can't tell you how many billions of dollars the company I currently work for burned with acquisitions whose products they shut down and teams they laid off two years later; and they're definitely not worse than normal, as far as I can tell. How many products has Microsoft attempted and then killed? How big is the Killed By Google graveyard? And in many cases people who make catastrophic decisions are rewarded -- "failing up" with golden parachutes and higher more influential posts.

In my experience, people who say things like this have a double standard. If you judge the government and corporations by the same standards, they come out about the same -- a bit of really good, a bit of really bad, lots of mediocre. The difference is that the government is at least nominally trying to work for the voters, whereas corporations are explicitly only working for their shareholders.

The only evidence presented is assertions by companies selling wealth management services:

> "The “third generation curse” indicates that 90% of wealthy families are likely to lose their [money](404 ERROR) by the third generation, according to AMG National."

The only link to further evidence results in a 404; and the only advice is, "Train your kids not to be stupid", and "Use one of these wealth management services".

I think I'd actually seen that exact article before I listened to Piketty's book; but Pikkety actually provides evidence across many different countries, sometimes going back to the 1700s. Absent other evidence (which again you simply assert without giving a reference to), I'd trust an academic more than a company who has a vested interest in drumming up business by scaring people.

ETA: Even supposing we take the article at face value (which I definitely have doubts about), it makes two claims:

1. Of "wealthy" families, 90% will lose it within 3 generations

2. This can be prevented if children are taught money management skills growing up

Even supposing those are true it doesn't support the statement that "generational wealth is generally a myth".

Why? Because % families != % wealth. It's perfectly possible that 10% of wealthy families who consistently teach good money management to their children control 90% of the wealth.

They're reacting to policy overreach by progressives. There's no good reason why everything that's been set up for women now has to include any male who says he's a woman. Yet this is what's happened in recent years.

Yes it's unfortunate that it has to be the Republicans pushing back against this in terms of introducing actual policy, but at least they're fixing the problem.

You earnestly believe the party voting for children to work longer hours, more dangerous jobs, the party ensuring rape victims and children give birth to their rapists' child and in general remove women's medical autonomy, on religious grounds in a constitutionally secular democracy, are the ones 'defending women'? Shocking position.

They are encouraging ignorance and harassment. They are inspiring people like you to think there is any issue with trans people in the first place.

You have been tricked in to thinking trans people are anything more than a mostly invisible minority.

They lost the "gays and gay marriage is the devil" line and now have simply regressed to even weaker bigotry, the 1% or less I forget the exact % of people who are trans.

They do not, nor has anyone, "demanded everything that's been set up for women now has to include any male who says he's a woman".

These labels, man and woman, are flexible social labels, not the rigorous biological category they've convinced simpletons to believe in as some sort of personal axiom.

> They do not, nor has anyone, "demanded everything that's been set up for women now has to include any male who says he's a woman".

Sorry but you have been misinformed, this is the currently the actual progressive position. And it has led to horrifying outcomes when enacted into law, such as SB132 in California which allows imprisoned men to transfer to the women's prisons if they claim to be women: https://4w.pub/male-inmate-charged-with-raping-woman-inside-...

> These labels, man and woman, are flexible social labels, not the rigorous biological category they've convinced simpletons to believe in as some sort of personal axiom.

No, what you're describing is a sexist redefinition of woman and man. There's really no need for it. It just reifies sex-role stereotypes.

You said "everything". "Everything" is what I'm challenging. No serious effort is made to force women to make any concessions, except by the party that is restricting their medical autonomy. And I guess prisoners? You've certainly got me there, but I don't think I've ever stated a good word about the correctional system.

What you link is a specific law covering a pretty specific category of people, ones already in jail. Not exactly "demanding everything women have be man's"...

You're not going to hear anyone who holds progressive political beliefs tout our countries approach to criminal correction. We house like 20% of the world's prisoners with 4% of the population. Of course prisons are rife with horrible stuff.

>No, what you're describing is a sexist redefinition of woman and man. There's really no need for it. It just reifies sex-role stereotypes

By saying the definitions are flexible I'm somehow reinforcing rigorous gender role stereotypes? That's about as non sequitor as it gets.

At the dr, in prisons, sure, get all biological. But for the rest of us normal people, it does not matter which genitals the person shitting in the stall next to me has. And it never will.

Why do you think that law was passed in the first place? It's because the current progressive position is that any male who says he's a woman should be allowed to access any service or space that was created solely for women.

This isn't just limited to prisons. Another recent instance: Title IX is being redefined in this way, which according to the UN will discriminate against and disadvantage women and girls in educational settings: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/04/united-state...

> By saying the definitions are flexible I'm somehow reinforcing rigorous gender role stereotypes?

Yes. If you remove the female body from the definition of woman, what else remains besides sexist stereotypes? When a male says he identifies as a woman, what exactly is he identifying with? You can't identify with a body you don't have, so what could he actually be identifying with, if not these stereotypes?

Because misogynist and patriarchal (agree with you there) dumbass dems over correct when they finally pick an issue to do something about? See also: latinx.

It's dumb and bad, but the other side is still way worse.

>If you remove the female body from the definition of woman, what else remains besides sexist stereotypes?

Oh idk, maybe who they are as an individual? What they stand for? What they like and dislike?? such a debate brained take

Your question put another way:

"If the female body isn't what defines a person as a woman, what is left but sexist stereotypes?"

That's you brother, not us. That's what YOU think remains when you take biological categorization out of the picture.

Which is why people caught by the "omg trans people exist and want to be protected too" panic like yourself end up at this weird need for rigid binary gender when intersex and trans people been existing for a long time before you lot were taught to hate/fear them by fox news

Yes, so you agree with me then. As I said in my first comment, this is policy overreach by progressives. They've ended up pushing policy that enables any male who says he's a woman to access any space that was intended to be only for women. This harms women and girls.

> > If you remove the female body from the definition of woman, what else remains besides sexist stereotypes?

> Oh idk, maybe who they are as an individual? What they stand for? What they like and dislike??

I think you misunderstood the question.

At least, I hope it's not your view that likes and dislikes are what distinguish women as a class from men as a class, and vice versa, because that wouldn't make any sense at all.

Yeah, obviously the prison shit is fucked up. And as I've said since the start, democrats are servants of capital, same as the right. But they're not wholly the same.

I also recognize project 2025, red state policy goals (read my link to texas GOP platform in another comment in this thread to see their openly fascist aims) and that red states force victims to sexual crime give birth to the attackers child because of "dur, abortion kills babies". Like nah, some over reach on a small issue that affects 1% of the population is nowhere near worth getting worked up about. We have much much bigger fish to fry. Ergo "culture war distraction"

So while we agree in some aspects I disagree giving trans people basic protections legally a slippery slope like you portray. If anything the trail of progress has been one step forward .9 steps back at best.

I also stand behind pragmatism and voting for the least shitty option we have. Which is obvious to anyone serious.

I'll take over correction to protect a marginalized group over a group that pardoned a man who drove a truck through a crowd of protestors, got out and shot one, because he shot and plowed through the group capital wanted him to. And that's the least of their evils. Gerrymandering, anti education, anti birth control, anti lgbt, buying the supreme court, the list goes on.

I'll take those dumb ass latinx idiots any day of the week, and grind my teeth while i fill in my ballot, but don't mistake my words for "i loooove democrats they're perfect.

> I hope it's not your view that likes and dislikes are what distinguish women as a class from men as a class

This is another place we fundamentally disagree.

The thing I was trying to get across was unless I'm a doctor, or a sports association, or correctional facility, what 'class' you fall in to, by your definition or mine, is moot.

Someone claiming a different gender identify than they "present" as - the real stereotypes btw but i don't got it in me to get at all the disagreements - to be has no bearing on anything to me. So why would any normal human say "uhm akshully due to your penis/chromosomes it's clear you were born this or that gender. I truly could not care.

Therefore, yes, my principle is I respect whatever gender presentation they want to display. I'll call them whatever they want to be called as long as they treat me with respect.

So yes, whether someone likes or dislikes presenting as one or the other label, man or woman, is the sole factor that determines what abstract category I put you in for our conversation.

The only other time I can think of where there is any need for such arbitrary rigidity with categorization is when you're like dating.

Then whatever your views on trans people are wholly and justly on you to define.

BUT, in the public, professional world, I think it's ridiculous to act like it matters which gender you present as outside of very narrow ranges of tasks. The rest of the time I consider it all fluid, because it's immaterial to issues like climate change and pandemics and nukes and real shit. The fact we're even talking at length about this nonsense should demonstrate the artificial push it's gotten from regressive politicians who never even wanted gay marriage.

For serious matters where the biological categorization is necessary, I'll cede to a medical biologist or the sports governing body. that's their choice. But just out in normal every day life? Yeah I stick by my fluid definitions of the social categories "man" and "woman"

I wouldn't vote for the Republicans either. What I'd like instead is Democrats to understood how regressive and corrosive to women's rights this type of policy is. It's so disappointing that they have such a misogynistic blind spot on sex and gender issues, yet can recognize the importance of women's rights in areas like reproductive choice.

This thread is dead at this point but I just wanted to point out that you can't really separate them anymore. They have nominated a MAGA candidate for the top office in the country, three times in a row. The vast majority of their electorate will vote for the MAGA candidate. The party -is- MAGA for all practical discussion.