1. Easy money for far, far, far too long in the US and a complete political unwillingness to take any risk of a recession, no matter the long-term cost required to stave it off. In my mind, this explains the rich-poor gap, the rise of crypto, insane valuations, house-price inflation, the weird delta between US and rest-of-world standard of living/salaries, and probably even the migration crisis.

microprocessor design : Apple Silicon and lately Intel Panther Lake and later?

Hope this helps.

At least "the wall" passes the first smell test: Want fewer people move between A and B: Build wall between A and B. It just falls apart when you fill in the details (visa overstays, tunnels, ladders, etc. etc.)

In contrast, baby-rapist-murderers obviously do not deserve free, very costly surgeries for non-life-threatening[1] conditions that non-murderers don't get subsidies for. For starters, they're baby-rapist-murderers.

But anyway, I just picked one example. I'm sure the Wall costs are thousands of times more than just trans surgeries for prisoners. That doesn't mean there aren't many, many billions wasted on Team Blue boondoggles.

[1] And no, these surgeries don't decrease chances of suicide. Studies don't all agree but some have found that they increase those chances. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38699117/

How about another explanation. Your government is totally opposed to helping citizens for “free” (let’s ignore that most government revenue comes from good ol’ taxpayers) when the alternative is to farm out the provision of expensive services to lobbying corporates.

They’re more than happy to punish people however. For free _and_ for corporate profit.

i think this is also a syndrome not a cause

We can selectively breed astronauts by beating them from early childhood.

People don’t realize how stupid this quote is.

or does this quote refer to Hard Men as in the men who rioted and fought and died for 8 hour work days and basic social services?