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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

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This seems to be a bedrock of how you feel about this topic. How did you first form this opinion,

Taxes

and what keeps you feeling this way?

Shit like this..

I don't really see much difference between Reagan's welfare queen and the Walton family, whose business is only viable because the government enables them to pay below-livable wages with their welfare programs. Both parties simply exploited a bureaucracy.

Yes.

I don't know what to say. I have a visceral disgust reaction towards people who can't even support themselves. Taking my money to give to them, no matter how round about it is, just adds insult to injury.

Sometimes I think of the wisdom of say, giving out free food on Thanksgiving versus all year round. If the food is a one day thing where you get to enjoy a nice meal with some dignity, awesome. If it's a stipend that lets you indulge in the dangerous delusion that you're actually taking care of yourself, or capable to producing dependents, well that's another thing entirely.

But then you started circling the idea of bullshit jobs too, and how much work is actually productive. One man's blue sky research is another man's wasteful spending. Sometimes you get Xerox PARC or Bell Lab's Idea Factory, and sometimes you get whatever the fuck this is, NSFW btw. I might have a bullshit job. I might not. Gun to my head I might just be a bit player on the outskirts of an industry that may or may not generate some ecosystem of products that makes the world marginally better to live in. If I'm lucky. What can I say?