there are plenty of home computers for sale for under $500. i’m on a $700 laptop right now that’s 4 years old.

they just can’t run modern games. i can run 2d games just fine or old games.

the gaming crowd seems to forget that most computers don’t use integrated graphics and a $1000 PC is a luxury purchase.

at that pricepoint it’s just about showing off how much money you have.

typical rich way to backhand brag about how rich you are is to whine about how ‘expensive’ things are that are luxury items.

motherboard prices haven’t inflated too much yet. gaming/consumer motherboards aren’t in demand from the AI industry. the want server hardware

most folks will pay. all my PC gamer friends are just paying $200 per 16GB stick now.

they have to give up their bragging rights if they don’t upgrade their PCs

ai companies don’t care about kids learning.

Where does the constitution prevent that?

It requires congress to declare war. You don’t need to declare war to conduct military operations, assassinations, or other stuff.

the issue is all of assumes Trump is rational. He’s not.

He does everything for his own ego. He was personally mad at Maduro for not sucking his metaphorical dick. Anyone that does, he loves.

And most of his inner circle… are similar nutbags. Very little of what they do has any rational thought, it’s just pure egotistical posturing.

middle class people have fucked over the poor. systematically. middle class people hate the poor more than rich people do. they are the ones who are passing your local town laws that systematically prevent any/all development and trying to keep poor people from moving there by inflating property values and providing no jobs. they are the ones who complain about homeless people and think they shouldn’t exist.

I’m part of the middle class now, and grew up poor. Everyone around me now hates on poor people incessantly as if it’s there hobby. They love nothing more than to brag about how ‘educated’ and ‘successful’ they are and complain about how difficult their lives are because of evil poor people making them have to pay taxes. And if you dare suggest that maybe their ‘downgrade’ of a 3 series BMW from the 5 series they could get if they had less tax, is not that big a deal… they scream in your face what piece of shit asshole you are.

Oh and if they find out you grew up in poverty… they stop talking to you entirely. They don’t want your ‘poverty’ to be anywhere near them.

the middle class are people who do steal and take and are embittered that they can’t steal and take more, like the rich do. They are not people who say ‘i have enough and I am content’.

Totally disagree. Knowledge has never depressed me, ignorance does.

But I’m not a normie, true. Most people think I’m a freak for being interested in how things actually work.

You don’t know how to think like an uneducated person.

that is the step you are missing. and the fact there are more of them than the educated people.

uneducated people see none of those benefits. you as an educated person and voting for more educated people because you see their benefits.

uneducated people don’t see the world this way. they see educated people stealing and hoarding everything for themselves and fucking them over, which frankly, is basically what has happened the past 30 years. all the benefits of modern society are being kept by a small minority of wealthy well-educated folks, and the bottom 90% are seeing their quality of life plummet and their access to the fruits of modern life dwindle.

poor people working in the service industry aren’t benefiting from any of what you are talking about. they are getting shut out of any medical treatment, can’t afford new cars, can’t afford home improvements, higher quality foods, etc. all that stuff is for the rich people.

and normies think you’re an asshole if you try to explain the technology to them, and cling to their ignorance of it basic it’s more ‘fun’ to believe in magic

What society? Much of society does not benefit from any of that, and most of the part of society that does is the rich part. Hence why many people are totally on board with defunding educational institutions to which they would never have any access anyway.

I support free education, but my country doesn’t. I prefer the Canada/European model of education, but the USA doesn’t agree. We have a fundamentally different education system from start to finish and their model tracks students from an early age in a way the USA system does not. in Europe I would have never even been allowed to apply to university… in american I was able to go to an ivy league school on a 80% scholarship from a lower income community.

USA has a fundamentally different culture around education, which is more more deeply rooted than just the economics and politics of it all. Spend most of my life being harassed and maligned for being pro-learning and pro-scholarship. Hell here on lemmy having any scholarly neutrality towards the issues and topics being discussed gets you harassed and threatened, because it’s politics uber alles and and facts in and inconvenient truths that scholarship shows us get in the way of true belief.

Anyway, i have been through the american edu system. I did pretty well, and I paid back my debts. I didn’t regard it as horrible, undue, or terrible. I simple lived lean and prioritized it an got it done. Alas many people I have met don’t do this, and carry around their debt actively refusing to pay it back or piling it up. I’ve had girlfriends who told me it was my ‘duty’ to pay off their debt too, because you know, sexism and all that.

My taxes already help people. But I’m not really sure someone getting 150K of debt relief so they can teach elementary school for 40K a year is really a burden I should be paying. There are plenty of pathways to teaching that don’t require that massive amount of debt to be taken on. It’s not about punishment man, it’s about us collectively paying for other people’s stupid and selfish decisions.

Europe also has a totally different attitude towards medical care. One of the biggest issues with the USA system is that… we are so actively unhealthy. Americans choose unhealth and then blame society for their poor habits. Should we tax people based on how overweight they are? because that would actaully be a far and equitable way of distributing medical costs.

I’m a socialist who understands that socialism isn’t some free magical cure all to problems. It’s just a shifting of the burden and without providing the correct incentive structure it doesn’t really benefit anyone and punishes everyone.

they are highly educated people who believe in meritocracy, such that any/all degrees are superior to those lacking degrees.

people still considered having a law degree to be prestigious. even if it isn’t economically smart, it’s a big status symbol still that impresses people.

my nephew just got into college last month and his parents already want him to go to law school just so they can say he did. they don’t care if he becomes a lawyer, they just want to have a son who has a law degree so they can brag about it to people.

job market for what exactly? what jobs are they trying to find exactly?

job market is great for some professions, shit for others. yeah for entry level tech it’s shit because they massive overhired during the pandemic and are still oversupplied with too many shitty coders because there is a massive oversupply now as everyone chased computer science for quick and easy money. for nursing you can make a killing if you are willing to travel nurse or get yourself into certain specialties. but nursing is hard work and a lot of people don’t want to do it.

the devil is in the details. there is no generalized job market where average joe can just get a 100K job with a English/psych degree from a state college. all those jobs requires specialized degrees, experience, and connections, years of effort to get your foot in the door.

industries come and go and oftentimes you have to move with the times and the geography. my brother has been unemployed for 5 years… but it’s because he’s a stupid ass who refuses to move or take a job he thinks he is ‘below’ him. (less than 300K salary at a big corp) and every employer can see that attitude he has and his inflexible arrogance and why would they want such a person on their team? many people are their own worst enemy when it comes to employment.

having interviewed people over the years… 99% of candidates are eliminated because suck and fuck up the interview process, or are applying for a job they know nothing about. Out of 500 resumes you might get 5-15 that are actually relevant to the position and show the candidate actaully is familiar with the company and the position, of that group maybe 5 get an interview and 1-2 are actually desirable hires.

MBA programs are highly profitable for most universities. they are big money makers.

MBA programs are mostly about joining the MBA cult. they aren’t much for education or learning.

the biggest benefit is the networking you get based on what MBA program you went to.

the worth of a degree is highly correlated to the field of study and the institution of study.

a lot of people get bogus degrees from bogus fields of study and are shocked they can’t get productive high-paying employment…

and republicans are always wrong and bad right? and democrats are what… always good and right?

you realize economics doesn’t care about your political affiliation?

debts don’t magically go away. someone has to pay the piper. you are just saying you’d rather pay it off via your taxes and increased interest rates, than have the debt holders pay it off. you are simple shifting the burden from the individual debt holder to everyone else. I’m glad you are willing to pay off other people’s debts for them, but many people don’t agree with that mentality and that doesn’t make them bad people or republicans.

I’m a socialist democrat myself. but i still believe in personal responsibility and incentives. debt dischargement doesn’t create positive incentives. a huge chunk of people who get their debt discharged will go right back and pile it up again. and most with massive debt loads… would have never had them in the first place had they bad better financial choices, like paying back their debt ASAP rather than letting it grow for years.