Lurker > BlAcK TuRtLe

I am a big supporter of universal healthcare, and by pretty much every metric a single payer system is better and more efficient than the monstrosity that is the US healthcare system. But we still have freeloaders in Canada, and we have people who stan for UBI despite having no concept of the current welfare systems which are perfectly adequate.

And where is this post with "economic statistics"? I might have missed it

Inviso posted...

At what point did I say anything about people who refuse to work? I'm specifically talking about people who are working a HELL of a lot harder than you and me (since we're sitting around an internet message board in the middle of a work day) and STILL cannot make ends meet because the system is not designed to help them advance or afford basic needs (never mind luxuries).

And we once again circle back to the fact that living within your means is entirely possible with a minimum wage job (again outside of the outlier areas like San Francisco with out of control COL). If you can't afford basic needs in this situation, you are doing something wrong (fiscal negligence, living beyond your means, drugs/alcohol abuse)

And my job is difficult at times, and incredibly quiet at other times. Right now we're in a lull between projects which affords me the opportunity to shitpost on GameFAQs. But this quiet time is something I pay for when we're busy and putting in 12-14 hour days launching a new product, and travelling away from my family, sometimes for 2-3 weeks at a time. I also put a lot of work into building the experience and skillset that I have, specifically getting a degree and paying for it with money I made working minimum wage jobs in high school/college.

Inviso posted...

You've physically said, in this topic, that certain people are BORN incapable of gaining employment beyond unskilled labor. Either because they lack the ability (or more likely, they're born into poverty and that is an extremely difficult hole to dig your way out of, since poverty begets poverty). But because the labor isn't skilled (and keep in mind that the hypothetical we're discussing is a minimum wage worker who is working MULTIPLE full-time jobs in order to fulfill the basic needs of their survival), you're still claiming they didn't "earn" basic human decency. These are people who can barely afford clothing, food and shelter, and you're bitching about how they're lazy and entitled and seeking 70-inch flat screen TVs.

How difficult is YOUR job that you have time in the middle of an average work day to debate economics on an internet message? I've worked retail for minimum wage and I currently work an office job for MUCH more than that, and I can guarantee you that I worked a FUCKTON harder for minimum wage than I do now. And, since this ties into one of your other stupid arguments, the only reason I have my office job is because I went to college and got a degree that has NOTHING to do with what I currently do for a living.

This what I'm talking about. One of the major reasons why I have a well-paying office job (and don't get me wrong, I work extremely hard and went from office assistant to supervisor in an astonishingly short amount of time) instead of being stuck working minimum wage is because I have that college degree. And I have that college degree because I was born into a family that was able to set money aside that allowed me to go to college in the first place. Meanwhile, without that degree, I spent ten years working retail in an extremely thankless position where me working hard full-time got me minimum wage and just a general lack of respect for working a job that SOMEONE has to do in order for society to function.

I just don't get how anyone can be so arrogant as to blame poor people's work ethic when the deck is dramatically stacked against you if you don't have the money needed to invest in yourself.

People who have valid medical issues that prevent them from working get disability cheques, which are more than enough to provide basic human needs. People who don't have valid medical issues get welfare which provides basic human needs. Right now the incentive to work and contribute to society is to be able to afford luxories, seems like the system is working great to me, why do we need to have the people who are already working and paying taxes subsidizing the luxories of the people who refuse to work?

HeroicCrono posted...

Doing nothing all day is boring.

You sir have never lived in a neighbourhood with a large population of welfare cases. They don't do "nothing" per se, they just fill their day with drugs/alcohol/harassing the people that are paying their welfare cheques

red sox 777 posted...

So basically, this idea that how much wealth you end up with is entirely driven by circumstances you have nothing to do with is wrong. Yes, it is mostly driven by the wealth of the family into which you are born - but not entirely. It might be something like 65% birth, 25% luck, 10% your skill and work. But 10% is still not nothing.

"Luck" has way less to do with it than you think. I'd say its probably closer to just 50% family related, and 45% work ethic. Obviously a small part of the population lucks into things, but its incredibly rare, and even in those situations a lot of the time the luck is a result of putting in hard work (think about people who have invented something serindipidously after decades of failures).

As someone who grew up a block away from a very poor government run apartment complex, there is no possible way UBI will work. People who are working and are in the lower middle class will immediately look at the people who do nothing all day making the same money as they are, which will at best breed resentment and unrest, and at worst will result in all of those people just saying "fuck it" and quitting their jobs to live off of the system. It will accelerate the economic issues that we are currently going through (inflation, shrinking labour pool, out of control government spending).

There HAS to be a downside to sitting at home doing nothing all day, otherwise our entire society will just collapse in on itself

RPGlord95 posted...

Except they literally explain why Leia acts like she doesn't know him in the recording.

Explained in the series? Summarize for me, as I couldn't get past episode 3 and have no plans to watch the rest

HanOfTheNekos posted...

I hope you never learn about comic books

This is legitimately one of the main reasons I could never get into comic books. No continuity, no logic, just empty/soulless fanservice, just like what Star Wars has become

xp1337 posted...

SCOTUS strikes down NY's restrictions on concealed carry 6-3.

The law required a person to show they have a special need for self-defense to be able to get a concealed carry permit.

Not surprising, SCOTUS is operating within the confines of the laws that are on the books. Gun restrictions need to be codified by repealing the 2nd amendment to bring the US in line with literally every other developed country in the world, but that will never happen because the culture in the US is one of gun fetishism and worship

masterplum posted...

I feel like the thing that conservatives fundamentally dont understand is rich privilege is not what you are able to do, its how many mistakes you can make and still succeed.

like yes, many people could save $5k a year. You get people who are Dave Ramsey acolytes who eat beans and rice and end up doing it.

But rich people fall ass backwards into it. They start with $40k a year in extra disposable income, blow $35k doing whatever the hell, save $5k a year and go man, I ended up with a million dollars just by saving 5k a year. Why doesnt everyone do it?

So now we get back to "people who have very little money deserve to have luxuries that they didn't in any way earn".

StealThisSheen posted...

You realize the problem with using the average, right

The median is only $228k.

$2 million is not "modest" for the vast majority.

That just means that some people are good at saving for retirement, but the vast majority of the population have no concept of fiscal responsibility

Remove Banjo, DK64 and Pokemon Snap, add in Perfect Dark, MK64 and Star Fox

If you're working "multiple" jobs and not are not able to make ends meet, the only explanation is you are not good with your money. Unless you're talking about multiple part time jobs adding up to roughly what a full time job entails, in which case a full time equivalent job, even at minimum wage is enough to live off of unless you're living in a city with astronomical CoL (i.e. Bay area)

Jakyl25 posted...

Thats not rich to you?

I don't understand the disconnect so many people have with understanding the concept of annual income versus net worth. $2 million net worth for someone who is retired is a pension, a nice house and some investments. It's actually fairly modest, the average net worth of a 65+ American is around $1.2 million

I dont think pointing out that it makes no goddamn sense for 10 year old Princess Leia to be on a fun kidnapping adventure with her new BFF Obi-Wan Kenobi that she apparently completely forgot about 10 years later in ANH

It's crazy to see the polarity of the response to this series. Half the people (including myself) see it as a pile of low-budget trash that shits all over the OT and established canon, yet you have people in this topic saying they were "moved to tears". What is the explanation for people being able to completely ignore the multitude of logic and canon issues this series has to just turn their brains off and "have the feels" as the kids say?

Yet somehow the greatest crime of them all is what they shat out for that Obi-Wan series

Pure trash

Inviso posted...

Like what?

Beyond being born with a great deal of money from rich parents, which allowed him to buy his way into an electric car company, what contributions to society has Elon Musk provided?

Elon Musk wasn't born into extreme wealth, his father was an engineer who owned some shares in an emerald mine. Well off for sure, but certainly not "rich". He's apparantly retired with a net worth of $2million. As far as his contributions, one might say employing thousands of high paying jobs working on innovative technology is a pretty damn big contribution. Between Starlink, Spacex and Tesla, those are 3 companies that are advancing humanity.

Musk is a social media addict, and comes across as an arrogant assclown, but you cannot deny his positive impact on society.

Tell me, what have you done for society lately?

Inviso posted...

I think someone who works two or three full-time jobs deserves to live a life where they're at least comfortable in the 48-88 hours of a 168-hour week that they're not working. They should not be forced to struggle at, or below the poverty line, and rely on social programs that are constantly in danger of being cut because people believe everyone should be punished for the actions of a handful of "welfare queens" who game the system.

By your own words, these are people who for one reason or another, have no other option than to work these low-skill, manual labor jobs. These are jobs we, as a society, want and NEED someone to do. So why should those jobs not afford a basic living wage? Because a couple of anecdotal cases make everyone look bad?

Minimum wage covers that, the only issue is it is not applied based on the cost of living for a specific area, and it is not regularly increased with the rate of inflation. Instead you get these incredibly stupid massive jumps in minimum wage that shock the economy with inflation every 10 or so years.

But let's stop changing the subject. We were talking about how you think unemployed, uneducated people are somehow entitled to the same luxuries as skilled workers. Please elaborate on that for us

Billionaires either contributed greatly to society, or their parents/grandparents did. Say what you will about Elon Musk, but in terms of societal contributions he has outdone every single person on welfare combined

HeroicCrono posted...

What do you think of switching welfare to cash payments only? Then people can decide if they want to spend it on food or a 70 inch TV.

In a perfect world, welfare would be pre budgeted to cover off necessities (food, clothes, shelter) in order to prevent people doing just that. I grew up in a poor neighbourhood, and a lot of families basically already did that (spend welfare/government cheques on electronics, drugs, leasing a brand new car, etc) to the detriment of the health and wellbeing of their kids. Society is in an unfortunately position where a certain subset of society has absolutely no interest in contributing to the running of society. You can't just ignore this group, because then they commit crimes to meet their needs/wants. You can give them carte blanche welfare cheques, but a subset of that group uses the money to buy drugs while their kids go hungry. You can't just give them as much money as they want because that's completely unsustainable and removes any incentive for people to contribute to society.

It's a stupid stupid problem that unfortunately has no clear solution

Kenri posted...

you realize that basic econ classes are mostly philosophy, right?? the thing you constantly say is useless to educate people on?

I have never heard someone compare philosophy to economics before, and I have no idea what you're talking about. And I never once said philosphy is "useless to educate people on", I just said that the people who are signing up for a philosophy degree expecting to translate that into a well paying job are disconnected from reality.

Inviso posted...

Like, do you believe that certain people should just get fucked by our society? Do you believe that it is the price we have to pay as a society, that some people--who might be working as hard as they possibly can (or harder)--should still have no chance whatsoever of succeeding and having a decent life?

You get out of life what you put into it. Noone here is "fucked" by our society, because we have things like welfare and other social programs to make sure that people can cover their necessities. If you ask me whether I think that someone who doesn't work and is living off of welfare deserves to have a giant house and a new car and a 70 inch TV, I would say absolutely not.

Ya, I can agree with that. It's similar to how a lot of popular Reddit communities just outright "ban" discussion or certain types of posts (r/Music being a FANTASTIC example of this where they pretty much ban any post involving pretty much every popular band from the last 70 years) which makes it literally impossible for a new user to engage with the community. Communities should be free to have discussions without interference from moderation/admin telling people what they can and can't post about

Do you not understand how "just pay everybody more" would make already spiraling out of control inflation even worse? Having taken a high school economics course should be a requirement for people to get a license to post their opinions on the internet. The world would be a much better place if people understood the basic fundamentals of how an economy works.

Sure, but none of that explains why an Amazon warehouse worker should be making the same as an electrician, or an engineer. At the end of the day, wages aren't based on how "hard" you work, but are based on the skills and experience you bring to the table.

Kenri posted...

Because it sucks and no one wants to do it? Basic supply and demand shit

Clearly people want to do it, since their warehouses are staffed. Based on what I see in this topic and on the crazier parts of Reddit, it's clear that a lot of millennials that are chronically shitposting on Twitter are either completely sheltered, or willfully ignorant that not everyone is a college educated white collar worker. There seems to be a sentiment that people working at Amazon warehouses are just doing that temporarily, but the truth is that not everyone is born with the skillset/abilities necessary to do skilled work, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Not sure why so many people are opposed to a more traditional fantasy setting. When's the last time we got a mainline FF game with no crazy sci-fi elements? 12 maybe?

abdou posted...

I guess it's the same demographics voting in contests. Man at one point we used to have this "after school vote" thing...we don't have to worry about that any longer hahaha

on a more serious note, GameFAQs/SBAllen have failed horribly. How do you let this site get so old? why aren't we adding new users? there are more gamers now than ever, yet the 13-25 age group doesn't even know this website exist. They're all on reddit and Twitch !
Maybe we should start allowing people to stream games right here..

Trying to chase the GenZ crowd would instantly ruin this site. I think pretty much everyone that regularly, or even just periodically uses GameFAQs is happy with things just as they are. Trying to "copy" the style of Youtube video walk through is a losing battle, as that format inherently sucks for 95% of the situations you would need a guide for. Gen Z kids for the most part aren't playing the type of game you need a walk through for anyways, as most of them are tied up in F2P multiplayer games like Fortnite/Apex/Rocket League/etc. or garbage mobile games.

Whether it's intentional or not, I appreciate Sailor Bacon not messing with the formula of the site too much, as we've seen other longstanding websites utterly ruined by chasing younger audiences that will never engage with them anyways (see the recent fucktastrophe that is Giant Bomb).

Within the context of the 2016 election, you also have to remember that Trump didn't really hang his hat on traditional republican wedge issues. The main message of his campaign was about draining the swamp and cleaning up the operation to remove typical government inefficiencies. Even his stance on immigration I think you would find most of the country would support actually enforcing the immigration laws that are already in place, especially areas near the border that have to deal with all the problems that mass illegal immigration cause. Which if you take both campaign messages at face value, you can definitely see the appeal Trump had.

Now obviously it was a manufactured message that meant nothing and Trump was just as big a crony as the rest of them, and anyone with half a brain would have known that from the get-go.

Lord Ephraim posted...

Amazon switched to "Supercycle" shifts, where employees work 4 10 hour days a week. You might think one extra day off sounds nice, but do this for 3+ years and you will burn out. 10 hour shifts turn into 14-16 hour shifts during peak time and suddenly you feel like you spend half your life at a job that pays peanuts.

If you ever think about working those shifts, don't. Each day you work is a physical and mental grind and the days you have off you spend most of the time dreading the time it's time to go back to work. I've had two good friends commit suicide over working 40+ hours a week at these manual labor warehouse jobs. One of them worked at Amazon and he used to be fun to hang out with and game with but his job tore at his soul and couldn't take it anymore. Fuck Amazon and I haven't order and will never order from them again.

I'm not sure why people expect Amazon warehouse jobs to be "high paying". Aside from fast food restaurants, it's probably the most common job that has literally zero qualifications or requirements to do the work.

A four day weekend for July 4 sounds better than a day here and a day there

Honestly I don't know what the big deal is here. Seems like a situation between 2 consenting adults, with a little hush money to keep it private, unless the board is just using this as an excuse to finally get rid of him. If I was an 80 year old Vince McMahon, I would probably have done the same thing.

Also, apparently the board of directors has known about it for a couple months, definitely prior to Stephanie leaving.

skullbone posted...

If they had just come out and said that FF7R is a sequel from the beginning would people still be mad?

I would have probably never played it because literally every other entrant in the FF7 "series" has been a hot steaming pile of trash. They somehow managed to make a game with the core story/setting/characters that played completely differently, but was still a fantastic action RPG.

The entire point, and appeal, of FF7R is telling the classic story in a modern engine, and for the most part they nailed it. I guess the "writers" that were on the staff weren't happy with that though and just HAD to find a half-baked Kingdom Hearts reject story to shoehorn into it

This is a fucking catastrophe. How can Square be so fucking incompetent as to completely change the story in Remake and try to cram 90% of the game into only 2 more parts?

FF7R was great for the 90% of the game that was faithful to the original, with the ending being almost universally hated. So their response to that is to DOUBLE DOWN on the stupidity and deviate even further from the original. Why is it that every media property that is good (Final Fantasy, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc) has just absolutely gone to fucking SHIT. Have people in creative positions just completely lost any drive and ambition and resorted to phoning literally every project in?

Christ on a fucking cracker

I take 13 over 15 pretty easily. I think 15 was the biggest wet fart of a major series entrant since Skyward Sword

I would say FF14 has pretty comfortably strengthened since the big WoW exodus last summer, and the success of Endwalker earlier this year. Is it enough to get close to FFX? Certainly not, but I'll take it over 12/13/15 easily

This feels like the most telling thing. He proved completely and utterly unable to move his followers unless he says exactly what they want to hear.

Not to defend Trump or anything, but you can pretty much say the same about any politician. Bernie Sanders is only popular because of all the college dropouts that love to hear him talk about "erasing" student debts

It's decent for levelling. I did the same thing in Shadowbringers and it's not as fast as running roulettes, but you get decent exp

It's crazy to think Trump could end up running again. His presidency wasn't a complete disaster, but he absolutely was the laughing stock of the entire world for the better part of those 4 years

To expand a bit on Ulti's post in the last topic:

The alternative is things being way too predictable and contests dying, which goes back to my original point that this is the ultimate goal of the anti-rally people whether they know it or not. They might not actually want these things gone, but it's the end result of "I don't care what other sites think". You probably should welcome them if you want these to stick around.

Stupid rally results are not going to translate into regular users. If anything, it makes this website look like an absolute joke. The contests are a fun way to engage with the existing userbase and drive people who only periodically come to the site to visit more frequently for a few weeks.

It's all eggregious randomness to the people that actually care about the competition aspect of the contests. I think that's where a lot of rally/anti-rally supporters are split. People who hate rallies are people who value the fun analytical side of the contests. People who like rallies are the same people that post on /b/ about how RaNdOm and cOoKy they are

I think this series has put the final nail in the Star Wars coffin for me. There was a glimmer of hope when the Mandalorian S1 washed away a lot of the rancid stench of the sequel movies, but they have slipped right back into nonsense and bad writing with Book of Boba Feet and now this. I saw the absolute abomination that was episode 3, and I now have literally zero interest in watching anything else Star Wars related.

Let's be real here, the percentage of poll voters in 2022 that aren't established users, or not capable of taking the 5 seconds to vote for the other options is probably less than 0.1%

Have they nerfed any of the past relic quests recently? Specifically Eureka Hydatos and the last parts of the Resistance weapons?

I don't understand all the "vote in every poll" whinging. I don't think a typical GameFAQs user would open up the homepage, see the match banner, click to vote for 3 of the characters they saw, then just walk away and say fuck it because they don't know the 2 people in the last match. In that situation they would just pick the cooler looking character and be on their way.

I'd make a comment about how depressing it is to see a constant stream of mass shootings go completely unanswered, but last time I did I got suspended.