“But his advice for Dems to give into compromise perhaps more reflects a cynicism stemming from having his efforts blocked at every turn for a few decades”

Who said it was debatable? I said it’s more complicated than that one sentence you just regurgitated again.

“Readers are understandably irritated by articles like these”

Whether or not wages are keeping pace is more complicated than some people make it out to be. It’s also relevant for people to stop repeating that statement as if it applies to all workers as opposed to the middle fifth of the working population aka “average” workers.

“I know tons of people that lost all their money when the market tanked!”

Federal contractors are hardly comparable to gig workers. In fact most contractors are hardly comparable to gig workers.

How many times has Splinter complained that spineless Democrats weren’t willing to escalate to shutdown for <insert_issue_of_the_month>? You can’t advocate for shutdown tactics and then crow when you see the result.

“Do you suggest that every expert who has examined the open source signal app is in on a conspiracy to obscure security holes?”

How well did the BSD license protect OpenSSL from Heartbleed again? Oh wait that vulnerability existed for years before it was disclosed/addressed and was found not by some random community member but private security researchers.

“No one - except you - is discussing the coding literacy of the general public.”

Actually it’s more like if you have no idea what the fuck anthrax is whether you baked the anthrax cookies or I baked them and gave them to you makes no difference.

“That could be said about any piece of software.”

“Stop talking if you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

What about the possibility that the sectors that are struggling are in the process of dying a death they deserve to die? Warehouse workers? Does anyone really think that’s a role that’s going to continue to exist in perpetuity? Manual labor is in trouble. Menial white collar labor is in trouble. Not because people are…

“Beyond that: 401Ks (socialism for capitalists!) are the only real methods many Americans can currently enjoy as a way to retire, and even those are wildly going back and forth with no sign of stability.”

Oh my god is a corporation profiting from the misery of the people? Burn it down!

“Signal is open source.”

“And you’re all over the place with your single argument that SALT and other deductions are somehow short changing the federal government.”

The image is obviously a comparison between single filers and married filers with two children and would change a bit if you took out the children but it illustrates the point.

I completely understand your position. Your position is that a married couple, despite operating on a combined income, despite the fact that two people in general consume more of everything including government compared to one, should be taxed as though they have individual incomes. You want the benefit of a combined…