Bought my first house

[Fife]

Case in point: The lead story on every Nashville news outlet today is the vote by the Historical Commission on whether or not to remove the bust of Bedford Forrest from the second floor of the capitol building.

[DBTrek]

the whole Woke self flagellating quasi religion is only coming about because things are going so well

you don't get this sort of phenomena in hard times

I feel the same way about the homeless.
Only reason we're seeing an "explosion in homelessness" is because we have enough wealth in this society that hundreds of thousands of people who would prefer to drop out and live day-to-day, answering to no one, can finally do it.
Sure, you have the mentally ill who have no say in the matter.
But the non mentally ill ... all the addicts, ex-cons, drifters, and vagrants who truly prefer tent living to "answering to the man" ... well, they can finally do it in 2021 America.

But I don't see a lot of homeless in communist countries - and it's not because they gave them all houses.

[Smitty-48]

this is what it was like in the 1820's with the Second Great Awakening

life had been very harsh in America in the 18th century, war & poverty was the rule

just about the time when Americans were living the good life for the first time in the wake of the revolution

that is when the self flagellating hyper Protestant religiousity swept across the nation

that Puritanical Scots Lowland Protestantism came across on the boat, and it's still torturing itself in America to this day

[Fife]

Bums, addicts, and government employees remind me:

Whatever we subsidize we get more of.

[DBTrek]

"Jeff Bezos caused the homeless crisis in Seattle by bringing in high-paying careers that displaced the locals!"

"No, Bezos caused homelessness by bringing in billions of tax revenue to Seattle, which our Democrat government immediately put in their own pockets while claiming it went to 'homeless programs'. The small portion the bureaucrats didn't steal provided enough services, shelters, and needle exchanges to allow a prodigious homelessness community to take root and thrive in the city"

[Smitty-48]

there's no way I could have afforded this lifestyle back in the good ol days

back in the good ol days, this was a wealthy lifestyle which was unattainable for me

the difference has been technology

the technological deflation of the digital age has made it possible for me to live the lifestyle of the wealthy at middle class prices

this is the promised land, I don't even need a job, I'm living by technological dislocation alone

[SuburbanFarmer]

Grilling steaks, sipping beer next to the fire pit. God Bless Spring.

[Smitty-48]

for me, raised in the 1970s, this is the science fiction future

even my wife, who is basically my sugar momma right now, it's not like she's working at the coalface

she puts in a few hours in the home office, a couple meetings, reviews some documents, and for that she gets paid six figures

that's technology, the utopian future is now

[Smitty-48]

like take the dystopia of Charlton Heston's Soylent Green

because that is set in the now. that is 2020 from the view back in 1970

what's missing ? Why is it a dystopia ?

notice that they don't have the tech, because back then, only Marshall McLuhan could conceive of it, nobody else understood

[Martin Hash]

Nobody said Winston Smith wasn’t physically comfortable. Hell, if comfort & convenience was what I was looking for, traveling around Africa certainly wouldn’t be on the radar.

“Do dogs think their owner’s home is a cage?” - me