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Why the hell is this even still an issue in the USA? All people get the same rights. Period.

Somebody has to drag your court system kicking and screaming into the 1990s...

(12-15-2020, 12:27 PM)robkelk Wrote: [ -> ]Why the hell is this even still an issue in the USA? All people get the same rights. Period.

Somebody has to drag your court system kicking and screaming into the 1990s...

Because the USA lags behind on social issues. It has always lagged behind on social issues.

Well, the GOP hopes that with the new conservative majority, they can drag the court back to 1905 (Lochner era)

> 9-3 majority

Whoa, the court packing has already begun!

I could imagine a circumstance where the government could have a legitimate interest in preventing marriage equality: a population in steep decline. And essentially marriage incentives would make sense only for fertile couples. But, of course, this doesn't reflect anything like our reality, and probably hasn't since the plague hit Europe.

That one's a solved problem: pay people to have children. Just make the payout big enough.

That's socialism, donchaknow. Anything that directs government money to poor people is socialism by definition. It's only if it goes to rich people it's not socialism.

Child benefits payment is an ongoing program, paying 200 to 300 euros every three months (depending on age, mostly) per child.

Dutch population is still shrinking if it wasn't for immigration.

To be real, here, I think what's going on is that the Conservatives that Trump appointed know which way the wind is blowing.  And simply being appointed by Trump has painted them in an unfavorable light.  Thus, they've decided that they DO NOT want to be "Those Guys" who were caught on the wrong side in the history books.

It's one thing to be an absolute douche canoe.  It's another when the history books will remember you forever.  And it seems these guys are now very well aware of the Power of the Internet.  After all, they've used it so effectively against Democrats like Hilary Clinton.  They at least seem to be smart enough to realize that the very same weapons can be used against them as well.

(How?  Yes, I do understand that an appointment to the Bench in the SCOTUS is pretty much the end-all in a career for anyone in a career in the American Judicial System, and the retirement benefits are quite nice... But a criminal act against a retired SCOTUS Justice has nowhere nearly the same weight of consequences as a crime against an actively sitting SCOTUS Justice.  Oh, I'm sure that the penalties in the books are just as bad, either way.  But then, it's a bit like the The Chicks (nee Dixie) song, Goodbye Earl - when you're such an absolute scumbag that everyone hates you, no one is gonna care enough when something bad happens to you.)

(12-15-2020, 05:12 PM)hazard Wrote: [ -> ]Child benefits payment is an ongoing program, paying 200 to 300 euros every three months (depending on age, mostly) per child.

Dutch population is still shrinking if it wasn't for immigration.

Well, then, obviously the payments aren't large enough.

We have the same issue in Canada.

Honestly I think the carrying capacity of Earth is about 3 billion humans, and most places could afford to lose half their population. Not all at once, obviously. No reason to actually kill anyone. But 100 years ago we had all of the stuff that makes up modern society without the rampant environmental damage.

Um, actually, we still had the environmental damage. I think I mentioned before reading in the 70s or 80s an off-handed observation that the "Little Ice Age" of Dickens' time might have been the start of a real ice-age fought back accidentally by the greenhouse gasses already released by the early 19th century.

Also, the environmental damage was, if anything, even more rampant, because environmental regulation is a post WW2 development. Without the devastating smog late in 1952 in London, Great Britain wouldn't have its air quality regulations. People just, generally, didn't care, and so neither did the politicians until thousands died to air pollution in days.

It only seems less rampant because we didn't produce as many resources per capita in those days, even though at the same time production processes were more polluting and/or didn't try to catch pollutants before they ended up in the environment, and it was rarely reported upon.

And yet the carbon dioxide production and oil production and plastic pollution are still rising. Sure, we're not spreading lead like we used to. And it's seeming more likely that 2019 was in fact Peak Oil. But species are still going extinct at a faster rate, due to faster land use change. People just don't care about Palm Oil. Forests are in a substantially worse condition than they were in 1920. Obesity is rising in lab animals, like what's up with that? I mean, for fuck's sake, Greta Thunberg traveled back in time to warn us -- pretending like things are better because the second derivative of pollution is in the right direction is a little optimistic. That is to say, pollution is still getting worse, just less worse than it was.

Lab.  It's not a matter of what the planet is capable of supporting.  It's a matter of what the Human race is capable of doing, and how try-hard we're willing to be to get there.

A little HFY here, but grounded in reality: the simple fact of the matter is that our existence as a race is completely and totally centered on making things that seem impossible very much possible.  Yes, there are very real limits that reality will impose on us.  The Libertarians that tried to turn a small town in New Hampshire into an Objectivist Utopia learned this the hard way.  (Hint: it wasn't the local human residents.)

But when life presents us with a seemingly insurmountable obstacle?  We find a way.  It might mean changing how we think and how we look at things, but we will get around that obstacle, one way or another because we are tenacious like that.

That said...  Things will be bad for a while.  This is going to be the consequence we will all have to suffer through for our lack of action because there will be major population centers that will be under thirty feet of water, and so we'll be dealing with a refugee crisis in our own back yards.  Just imagine it like if Hurricane Katrina happened to every coastal city in the USA all at once.  But once Mother Nature has turned the heat up on us?  Once the Climate Change Deniers no longer have a leg to stand on?  Rest assured, we will start to work the problem as a whole in earnest.  And even then, things are gonna suck for a while.

But they will get better.

Eventually.