American taxes are fairly complex. If you have an income of $20k, for example, your taxes should be roughly $1k. But if you’ve got a wife and a kid that’ll wipe the taxes you owe out and qualify you for our version of the European Welfare State “refundable tax credits.” If she has income the numbers go all screwy. If…

That sounds like my store. If you come before 8 there’s not a lot of other customers, and the one guy who can help you is generally free, but if you come there betwen 8 AM-7 PM you’re screwed because the whole damn town has had that idea. They aren’t going to pay two $15 an hour people when one will do, so you better…

Strategy changed.

They started people at $15 in the fabled old days of the late 90s/early ‘00s. A year round salary (most construction trades are very seasonal), at $15 an hour in 1995 money, plus decentish benefits, plus heavy labor that’s easier on 50-year-old knees than actual construction work?

Look at their stock price. If it’s up over the past few years they’re doing precisely what Home Depot does. Wall Street describes this particular brand of cluster-fuck as “well-run,” so if they aren’t knee-jerk anti-union/very good at making the paperwork indicate that their labor costs should stay low/etc. their…

As an employee, I have to say the discrimination complaints do not match my experience. Everybody I know who has been promoted to management level in the company is black, and most of them are women, so in career terms it seems to be fine. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not immune to the racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia…

Strictly speaking virtually no speech is actually a crime. Threatening to physically harm people is, saying stupid shit that gets a bunch of people killed/injured is banned, fraud is illegal, and there’s several Civil Causes of Actions based on speech. But most speech, including the vast majority of Hate Speech, is…

In Courts hate crimes are a two-stage process. In the first stage you have to prove that the defendant did something that would be illegal even if you did it to someone you aren’t racist against, then they also have to prove that the motive was because your racist/homophobic/anti-semitic/etc.

So what is the name of hybrid economies like Canada, EU, etc. No snark, I struggle with a description since there are elements of capitalism (private property, markets, etc.) and socialism (single payer, etc.)

Exactly - the GOP has successfully convinced their base, among a large portion of the population, that Socialism = communism. And communism = Stalin and nukes being dropped on school yards and bears and all the terrible things in the world. Drop the socialism label and talk about the policies themselves and pretty…

What amazes me is just how much effort we expend for so few jobs. There are less than 80,000 coal mining jobs in the US. For comparison, there are 158,000 kindergarten teachers. If 80,000 people lose their jobs overnight, the economy doesn’t even notice. It’s wouldn’t even register as a .1% increase in unemployment.…

Dude, don’t be ridiculous. Cali is in the 9th circuit. Cali has a greater population all by itself then any other Circuit. All the states in the circuit combined have a population that is almost 20% of the US population. Of course the circuit that has 20% of everything has the most cases overturned when the others max…

Armenian history is kinda complicated. There’s been an Upper Armenia, which was part of Greater Armenia. The current Armenia is a tiny little rump of of the country. The Armenians there survived because the Czars saved them.

As I’m sad but not surprised that the rest of the cast might have enabled or looked the other way from Miller’s behavior, though I would have hoped for better from Kumail

Just about any Lefty mid-20s or over has some very good reasons to hate Lieberman. We would have gotten the best public option ever (Medicare buy-in) for over-55s except Lieberman changed his mind and opposed it at the last minute. Apparently mostly out of spite from that 2006 Senate race. That was 2010.

And a black gossippy woman. African-Americans are very fond of giving their daughters French names, so “Yolanda’s Little Black Book? That, combined with the tone, codes as a very specific African-American archetype in the US.

If William was the King he’d have had no choice. The PM did a stupid thing that seemed like a good idea at the time (inviting Trump), and now it’s the Monarch’s job to make sure that stupid thing is as undisastrous as humanly possible. That’s how Kinging works. Comes with the House.

Phillip makes a lot of ethnic jokes, but there’s a pretty big difference between making cracks about cannibalism in PNG are and making a political career out of calling Mexicans rapists.

He couldn’t have gotten the helmets signed. They’re cowboys merch, not Ezekiel Elliot merch.

State-side what the fuck else you going to do? We don’t have psychiatric hospitals, so the only people you could call who would come are firemen and ambulance guys, and I guarantee you that if they find out that a) the patient is so bad his mom can;t handle him and b) he has a real firearm they’re calling the cops.