Lurker > adjl

Heroes don't do that.

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Reigning_King posted...

...and what was it a month ago compared to the beginning of the year or this time last year? Tripeling a small number isn't really that impressive.

The 7-day average on June 22, 2021 was 11,365. On June 22, 2020, it was 28,329. Yesterday (July 21, 2021), it was 41,310, and given that there were 60,000 new cases yesterday, you can expect that today's 7-day average will be even higher once that data has been collected. On July 21, 2021, that average was 66,406, so proportionately, this is actually a larger spike than was seen then (2.34x then vs 3.63x now), especially considering that that wave peaked around mid-late July (that day's case count was 65,277, and being that close to the 7-day average means the case rate had plateaued) and this one is still climbing. This is consistent with extra-virulent variants running amok and so many unvaccinated people giving up on precautions altogether.

If you went from an average of 1 daily case to an average of 3 daily cases, you might have a point (though even then, using the 7-day average instead of individual days corrects for random variations such that any observed trend is much more likely to be an actual trend, even with such small numbers), but these numbers are much, much too large to explain away that trend by blaming random variation. This is a clear, measurable surge in cases, and it's not slowing down.

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I think somebody needs to be introduced to roasting pans.

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Tarrun posted...

I'm so into this.

The first two are so good, maybe if this does well they'll make a new one. A man can dream.

The studio that made the first two was killed by EA, who has generally indicated they have no interest in producing a game like Dead Space because it's not mainstream enough, so I wouldn't hold my breath. This is a cash grab targeting nostalgic fans, knowing that they have nothing comparable to satisfy their desires.

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Categorically refusing to date a given race is racist. Generally not finding a certain race attractive is just having aesthetic preferences. There's a very fine line between the two, and a lot of people in the former camp will claim to be in the latter camp to avoid drawing attention to their racism, but you can legitimately never end up being attracted enough to somebody of a given race to date them.

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Not as often as an actual person does, and the actual person can quit if they want to.

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If anything, I'd actually say having the moogle to carry it when playing solo makes it better than multiplayer, since it means you don't have one person stuck carrying the chalice all the time.

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Clench281 posted...

All days with 50%+ humidity

I wish being above 50% humidity were remarkable around here. Heck, only having 50% humidity is pretty unusual and pleasant. We're currently sitting at 89% after a couple of massive downpours that helped to break the humidity that's been lingering for the past few days, and it feels glorious.

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It's making a comeback right now. The current 7-day average for daily new cases is triple what it was a month ago.

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Reigning_King posted...

Someone can be an anti-natalist and love life, there is no conflict of interest there.

Sure there is. If you enjoy your life, you're personally invalidating the belief that life is something harmful that should not be inflicted upon people by giving birth to them. You are yourself deciding that living is worthwhile because it has been a net positive experience.

Reigning_King posted...

There is a very simple formula that shows I am correct, at least from the moral perspective.

Provided you apply a pretty useless definition of "harm," that's a plausible argument. But the thing about useless definitions is that they're useless, so that doesn't really amount to much. Your first premise is also innately flawed: It's perfectly ethical to harm somebody without their consent, provided they are incapable of deciding for themselves and that harm is necessary to attain a benefit that clearly outweighs it. The "harm" that every human can reasonably be expected to experience is not so bad as to outweigh the positive experiences that one will generally have if one exists, so the whole "technically everyone faces some quantity of suffering" thing does nothing to invalidate the net positive effect of being born.

Now, that's not to say there aren't situations where it's likely that the child will suffer such that their life is a net negative experience. In those cases, reproducing is indeed irresponsible and inconsiderate. Attempting to generalize those circumstances to the population as a whole, however, is just plain silly.

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mooreandrew58 posted...

But there's no I wanna play video games and they wanna snuggle or something.

That's why the Switch is great. With a Joycon in each hand, your arms are free to do all the snuggling you want.

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EclairReturns posted...

What do you usually do when nothing in life seems to matter anymore, the world just feels like white-noise, and you've lost all hope in your ability to find happiness of any sort?

Jerk off, usually.

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Reigning_King posted...

Eating fresh bread is more rewarding than eating stale bread because the brain knows that the fresh bread is "better" in that it is less likely to have any complications like mold spores or being difficult to digest.

So now you're not even citing actual harm, you're relying on the brain subconsciously perceiving harm and thereby assigning greater positive feelings to something that better avoids that.

Reigning_King posted...

So say you have a beggar in some filthy slum in some war torn 3rd world country who is blind and missing both his legs but has been in his position for so long and so many of the people who have been around him his whole life are also in awful positions or even worse ones that he doesn't see his lot as particularly bad... you would say that he honestly wouldn't be better off with his sight, legs, and money?

"Not suffering" and "not having room to improve" are two very, very different things. Winning a million dollars is not suffering, but I'd still be better off if I won $2 million.

The position you're trying to argue seems to amount to "everyone's life sucks and if they think it doesn't it's because their brain has tricked them into enjoying their Sisyphean struggle against their inevitable suffering and death," which is an utterly useless way to look at anything. Yes, you can find measurable harm and negativity in everyone's life if you take a sufficiently vague, high-level approach to it. Nobody cares. Nobody is actually unhappy because sometimes they need to poop. The idea that they ought to be is thoroughly ridiculous.

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I'm happier in my current relationship than I would be if I were single. That's why I'm in it.

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PK_Spam posted...

No, but itll definitely be a hit to Nintendos indie sales.

Potentially, but the higher price point is going to be a bit of a hard sell if somebody's just looking for a portable indie machine. For anyone with a decent existing indie library on Steam that only cares about that, it'll be the better option, but for anyone that cares at all about Nintendo's exclusive lineup, it's a much harder sell. That's especially true given that so many people (especially ones that care about portable indies) already have a Switch, in which case buying a Deck becomes even less reasonable.

Of Valve's attempted forays into pseduo-console gaming, I think this is one of their better ideas. The Link was held back by most home networks struggling to keep up with its bandwidth needs, resulting in input and display lag that made higher-end games pretty miserable to play. Steam Machines were held back by a general disdain for prebuilts among existing PC gamers and a price point higher than console gamers were comfortable with if they wanted to have something that could reliably run everything. This is priced reasonably and offers both portability and easy TV connectivity, which I can see being appealing, but the fact that it won't be able to handle every Steam game (and will likely struggle with higher-end games moving forward, making it mostly a BC/Indie machine) is going to hurt it a lot.

Revelation34 posted...

64 GB only means it won't succeed.

That's twice what the Switch has, natively, and it's doing just fine. Expanding memory as needed isn't particularly difficult.

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Reigning_King posted...

I never used the word misery, negative can refer to any harm no matter how slight. Hunger, thirst, fatigue, sleepiness, bowel and bladder distention, even a mere itch can be seen as negative. Once again I ask you for a list of what you consider intrinsically enjoyable so I can break it down for you.

Consider the difference between eating stale bread and eating a slice of bread so fresh it's still slightly warm. Their ability to stave off hunger is identical, but the latter offers a positive experience that goes well beyond merely preventing hunger. Heck, consider dessert as a fundamental concept: That's food you're eating because it's fun to eat, not to sustain yourself (though the caloric content does help). Similarly, there's a world of difference between dealing with boredom by playing your favourite game and dealing with it by playing Solitaire or Minesweeper.

Again, there's a very substantial range of "good" beyond "this fixes that unpleasantness I felt." Happiness is intrinsically enjoyable.

Reigning_King posted...

Another facet here (not the one about brain states that you've ignored) is that people are known to be bad judges of the quality of their lives because of various psychological mechanisms. One is called Pollyannaism, or the general bent towards optimism humanity has, another is the high adaptability of humanity. People can become accustomed to nearly any situation, things that they might have said they would rather die than go through a few years before finding themselves in such a situation. The point I'm making is that people tend not to realize how much negativity is in their lives to begin with and from that point they still evaluate themselves higher than their peers would. This has to be taken into account when discussing how positive or negative a life is which was the orginal focus of this reply chain.

If you don't care about any of the ways in which your life could be said to measurably suck, is there actually any reason to say that your life sucks? At its most basic definition, "harm" is simply "something I would prefer not to experience." Therefore, somebody who doesn't care enough to have a preference hasn't actually experienced harm. Insisting that they have and should therefore be miserable is profoundly arrogant.

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Reigning_King posted...

I'm not saying desirable states don't exist, only that they are desirable only because of the baseline negative that is life, even life in a well off 1st world country.

That's not remotely true. There's a very substantial range of "good" beyond "I can briefly forget how miserable I am." You don't need to be sad to enjoy happy; happy is intrinsically enjoyable.

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Reigning_King posted...

List off a couple of things you think of as positive and I'll break it down for you since your imagination seems to be limited. I'm not saying that as a jab, it's just that even if you disagree with me you shouldn't really have a problem seeing what I'm saying.

Literally anything fun? Sure, that can be framed as avoiding the negative experience that would be their absence, but that experience can only be defined as negative by identifying them as a desirable state, so you'd be relying on extremely circular logic to do so.

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And poptarts are calzones.

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Kyuubi4269 posted...

Well clearly he had issues, this wouldn't be a surprising revelation.

Not really. The vast majority of criminals aren't child molesters. His prior record does nothing to make pedophilia more believable.

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Reigning_King posted...

Any positive events in life only exist because they are the abatement of or delay negative events.

Uhh, no. Not at all. I have no idea why you would ever think that.

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Reigning_King posted...

thus the cons will always outweigh the pros of the activity for the person born

On what basis are you assuming this?

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Kyuubi4269 posted...

Just say it's stereotyping minorities as poor.

It's a little more than just stereotyping. Anything that specifically affects the poor disproportionately affects (certain) minorities, by virtue of those minorities being over-represented among lower-income communities. That's just the simple reality of the matter.


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mooreandrew58 posted...

I'm against this but ive always wondered why race has anything to do with ability to get an id. I get poor people and I feel IDs should be free since they technically are legally required

Mostly socioeconomic correlations, rather than being directly race-based. Abolishing the fees for ID's would help, but the more significant issue there is accessibility: There often aren't offices in or near lower-income areas that people without cars can readily get to to obtain an ID, plus taking the necessary time off of work to do it isn't an option for people without paid leave and/or enough financial stability to not suffer for losing half a day's work.

Those certainly aren't insurmountable issues, but they nonetheless constitute extra barriers to getting an ID for lower-income populations, which in turn means that voter ID laws make it more difficult for lower-income people to vote.

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Reigning_King posted...

Fine let's start with a simple one. Three questions.
* Would you agree or disagree that it is unethical to cause a person harm without their consent?
* Would you agree or disagree that all human life contains some degree of harm, regardless of quantity or intensity?
* Would you agree or disagree that an unborn person cannot consent to being born?

So your position is literally "nobody should ever procreate because something bad will most likely happen to every person that is born"? That's what we should take away from this?

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IronBornCorps posted...

He generally upholds the status quo in terms of gender roles, and attracted a certain crowd with some pretty extreme views. Instead of denouncing said views, he more or less leaned into the popularity (though never advocating those views) and I think he now generally tells that crowd whatever they want to hear for confirmation bias, to keep making money.

Pretty much. He's like a less extreme version of Trump: In a world where some people are feeling personally attacked because "political correctness" is telling them they need to consider new ideas if they want to be nice to people, anyone publicly saying otherwise is desperately latched on to by those people. It's less that Peterson turns people into drooling morons and more that people that aren't drooling morons don't find him particularly remarkable or interesting.

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Zeus posted...

Imagine the fun you might have when a ISIS supporter, Antifa member, or white supremacist impersonates you online

How is that any more likely with an ID requirement to sign up than it is now?

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LinkPizza posted...

Sounds like the parents know their underage children are watching prom. Because if they werent, they probably wouldnt even know who she was

That, or they were worried that some kids might end up thinking that they can do porn and then still end up functioning as a normal person instead of dying on the streets as a desperate crack whore. These sorts of people generally prefer to control kids through fear, so anyone that makes the "undesirable" outcome seem less terrifying should be hidden away.

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KodyKeir posted...

idk, someone made a decision along the line that Gravity was a percentage based attack,

It kind of makes sense if you think of HP as being proportional to size/weight. Sort of a "the bigger they are, the harder they fall" sort of deal.

Of course, HP very frequently is not particularly correlated with size/weight in these games, so that kind of falls apart almost immediately, but I can understand where the logic comes from.

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Kanatteru posted...

how you gonna give notice about being sick

Simple: You say "I'm going to be sick on this day and need that time off."

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ItsKaljinyuTime posted...

What are the chances of just catching it?

So far? A little over 10% (35 million cases in 328 million people). Again, an oversimplifcation, but it gets the point across well enough. For further context, that's a little less likely than getting Heads in 3 consecutive coin flips (12.5%).

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Something something slappy balls.

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wolfy42 posted...

God dammit!! I thought you couldn't get pregnant from 69!!!!

Well, he was born in May, so his mom actually got pregnant in 68. That's another ball game entirely.

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I believe they're flea bites. They get those blistery-looking things on them.

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SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I have 11 games. Following that is a blank slot which does nothing when selected. What bothers me is if I download an update for the 11th game I have to insert 10 other game cards to get it back into the 11th slot.

If you have 12+, a 13th slot shows up that lets you see all of your games in a grid view. They'll still be in the same order, you can just see more at once so you don't have to scroll for too long if you have a larger library.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I don't think it's just me.

It's not just you, but compulsively needing to maintain the game list in a specific order is definitely not a "normal" issue. The vast majority of people don't feel any need to get that game back into the 11th slot. Moving the most recently used titles to the front of the line is much more useful, since it means minimal scrolling to get to whatever your current interests are.

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We went to the moon in 1969.

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Sycophant posted...

For Trump to say there were fine people on both sides shows his lack of character and pure evilness.

Clearly, he was speaking in terms of size, like a fine mesh. He was just saying both sides had skinny people. Leave it to the tolerant left to blow a perfectly innocent comment out of proportion.

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helIy posted...

https://i.imgur.com/hbI37z4.png

lmao

whens ohjas next account gonna pop up

You've gotta admire his persistence. Not so much his ability to learn from mistakes, given that he keeps getting purg'd within days of coming back for exactly the same reasons every time, but that does take some real tenacity.

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Zeus posted...

In the case of property or stock, you can hold the same property or stock for 50 years and the value can increase a thousandfold. There are people who have vacation homes that they bought for $20k or $30k that are worth millions now because the value on the land has gone it (which, in some cases, has meant that they were forced to sell it because they can't pay for the increased taxes)

Oh hey, you've found precedent for taxing people based on evaluating their assets, rather than their income. Nifty!

Moreover, while I'll give you real estate as an exception, increases in stock value are a reflection of increases in the company's assets, which (except due to real estate holdings) are in turn a consequence of money the company has received. Corporate tax rates are generally very low (thanks, Reagan), which means there's ample room to collect additional tax revenue by targeting that exchange.

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Zeus posted...

Because apparently people don't need medical care if they have homes?

Generally less often than they do on the street, yes. When was the last time you went to the hospital for hypothermia or frostbite? Or any of the myriad diseases that can be largely avoided by washing your hands periodically?

https://www.homelesshub.ca/sites/default/files/attachments/Trust_and_Interactions_with_Police_and_Paramedics%28JUH%29.pdf

That's one study with a relatively limited scope, but 37% of the people surveyed there had interacted with paramedics in the past year. That's really high, and that means a significant use of EMS resources.

Zeus posted...

And the issues that made them homeless in the first place -- such as substance abuse and mental illness (which iirc impacts as much as 68% of the homeless people) -- go away?

adjl posted...

indeed, Medicine Hat's approach is not simply to give people housing, it's also to make sure they have access to the services they need to get out of that situation for good

You literally quoted it. Come on, man.

Furthermore, yeah, they kinda do. Being homeless is really bad for people's mental health. Having some semblance of stability and comfort is all but a prerequisite for treating mental illness, including addictions. In turn, that reduces medical costs associated with those mental health problems, including overdoses and violent injuries. It's certainly not a magic solution to all mental illness (hence the other supports), but it's a massive help.

Zeus posted...

Otherwise, the cost of policing is already a sunk cost. Almost all of their functions that include the homeless would happen anyway if the homeless weren't there.

They would, but they could be scaled down considerably. Referring again to the above citation, 61% of the sample had interacted with the police in the previous year. That's not a small number of people, nor a small quantity of police resources. Quantifying the exact savings is difficult, but it really cannot be argued that eliminating homelessness doesn't have an impact on police resource requirements. That would just be silly.

Zeus posted...

You could argue, "Well, it's cheaper to put them in a home than a jail!", but they aren't going to jails anyway.

https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/103158/alternatives-to-arrests-and-police-responses-to-homelessness.pdf (pages 5/6)

81% of unsheltered people reported spending at least one night in jail, with an average of 7 jail stays in the previous six months (also 21 police contacts, 8 ER visits, and 3 ambulance rides, to support other points). They're not being housed indefinitely in jails, no, but homeless people definitely consume a non-trivial portion of jail resources.

Zeus posted...

Beyond that, shelters are already a thing.

They are, which is very beneficial (see the previous citation for a comparison), but they're often woefully inadequate and nowhere close to being as beneficial as permanent housing is.

Zeus posted...

Then you might want to look up gullible in the dictionary? >_>

I get that the idea of just giving people homes seems radical, but you can look up how things are going in Medicine Hat and see for yourself. It's working, which comes as no surprise to anyone that actually considers the broader costs of homelessness and doesn't get hung up on questions of what people "deserve." Housing first approaches actually fix the problem. Punitive approaches generally just mean you're throwing money at the problem to shuffle it around a bit and make it worse, which makes the people that can't see it anymore happy, but doesn't actually fix anything.

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Kyuubi4269 posted...

It's not taxed because it made jobs for that same middle class.

Yes that is the narrative. Trickle trickle, and whatnot.

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Gaawa_chan posted...

He sounds like a fearmongerer from the 1960s.

He was born in 69, so I guess he literally is a fearmonger from the 60's (though only just).

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Other drivers rarely increase the degree to which I'm happy that anyone is alive, regardless of their sex or choice of vehicle.

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Gaawa_chan posted...

They have pretty much polar opposite strengths and weaknesses so it's more a matter of personal preference than anything else.

Pretty much. SS had excellent dungeons and puzzles, BotW was really weak in that regard. BotW had excellent overworld exploration, SS had a glorified zone selector. There's not much sense in directly comparing them.

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Aculo posted...

first time i've heard this term. what does it mean?

Presumably, somebody that isn't white but looks white enough that (some people assume) they don't get the same treatment that a more visible minority member would.

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IronBornCorps posted...

Imagine thinking Jonas Brother's are the newest hot pop sensation right now, lol.

Are they even around in 2021?

They did make a small comeback, but that was a couple years ago. I realize I couldn't actually tell you just how long because the past year has thrown off my sense of time so much.

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Zeus posted...

That sounds dubious.

I can believe it. Police aren't cheap, jails aren't cheap, cleaning up trash isn't cheap, anti-homeless architecture isn't cheap, ER visits and ambulances aren't cheap (looking further, that figure does include medical, which "policing" doesn't imply)... There are a lot of costs associated with trying to control a homeless population, all of which do absolutely nothing to solve the problem of homelessness. The cost of housing is going to vary by city, obviously, and simply giving people housing isn't enough to completely fix the issue (indeed, Medicine Hat's approach is not simply to give people housing, it's also to make sure they have access to the services they need to get out of that situation for good), but it's still a much, much more effective strategy than indefinitely waging a war against homeless people instead of homelessness itself (to say nothing of being more humane).

Zeus posted...

Is your perception of wealth actually meaningful or based on a fundamental misunderstanding of evaluations?

If net worth increases, it's because money has changed hands. If money is changing hands, that can be taxed. The fact that Bezos can't literally write a $200,000,000,000 cheque doesn't mean there haven't been ample opportunities to tax that figure as he's amassed it (a tax which he'd barely notice, given how utterly meaningless money is at a personal level when you're dealing with those figures). That it hasn't been taxed is a failure of the American tax system, placing an unfair tax burden on the middle class (who are going to notice pretty much any change in their tax rate because money is quite personally meaningful at that scale).

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Pretty much the only use I'd have for this would be to play Steam games on the TV (I've already got a Switch, and there aren't many Steam games I feel the need to play on the go), and I've already got a Steam Link to use (however imperfectly) on the rare occasion I actually want to do that, so I don't see much reason to get one. Nifty idea, just not something I need.

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The_tall_midget posted...

Hey, reminder that the top 1% pay the majority of taxes, no matter how much screaming you regressives are doing.

Do they pay an amount proportional to the amount of wealth they control?

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