And under other circumstances they might worry about the NDP, but as it is, the Conservatives are spiraling off to the far right, the centre is left wide open, and the left wing of their party is too afraid of losing to crazies to undermine that.

That’s actually the original title for the element, for what it’s worth.

I don’t know, the vowels in written words are pretty much random anyway.

albertans

Hey, I use the King’s English, thank you very much!

Yep, that’s my takeaway too. And why I’ve utilised the same, although I draw the line at “gaol”. A Canadian spelling that’s hard to tell from the American one is just a tradition waiting to disappear.

Yeah, the idea that the Native peoples of the Americas are one bloc that would all get along is just a different way to exoticise them. Same story with “all Natives are environmentalists”.

The old hatreds between tribes have more or less died out in the face of irrelevance relative to their troubles with settlers, but every band still has their own culture and internal politics. Because they’re people.

I mean, Rupert’s land is still here and alive, even.

Yeah, maybe. Or maybe that’s at least a part of it. There definitely was rivalry, even if an American communist revolution was never remotely close.

Nice talking to you!

Like everywhere except maybe an uncontacted island we have racism, but I’m not sure what country would have less. Multiculturalism is part of our national ethos.

Rural Canada is all white and full of hate.

Yeah, I’m here. We have minorities (for some reason - you crossed an ocean, why Buttfuck, AB?) and everyone seems to get along at least in public. Not sure how much worse it is than the city on race issues, honestly, although I’m white and it makes it hard to tell. You’ll have a lot more trouble if you’re gay, and I try very hard to hide my politics.

Interestingly, Evangelicalism has been hit especially hard with a demographic shift as their missionary converts come back, and their white members leave.

It offers protection from crackers and cybergangs too, because they always follow laws. /s

Love you too.

Yeah, but usually there’s other ways, right? Blame immigrants or minorities, or let the wealth naturally move away from the poor slowly enough a casual voter won’t notice. That’s what everyone else did the whole time, and the US itself before and after.

Even today, with all the information you need at your fingertips, a lot of the people in the US who want a shift left on wealth issues are actually in the 9% after the 1% (which ironically is the class that owns the most stuff). The real poor lean pretty pro-Trump.

One quote vs. a bunch of hard statistics, sources available on request.

It’s not even a quote that contradicts what I said, when put in context, where it was about tax policy. Warren buffet is well aware of the gradualness of the wealth gap, and that there’s no free lunch for corporations. His whole investment philosophy is built on the latter fact.

Correct, most voters don’t understand enough to demand effective redistribution policies. Speaking from experience, if you get involved in politics this becomes the bane of your existence.

There is some redistribution now, and it’s gone up recently in Canada, although I’m not sure off the top of my head what the global trends have been. It’s just slower than the natural self-accumulation of wealth.

How the New Deal got so much traction in the US is a big mystery, honestly - it really was a unique event. People weren’t smarter or more educated back then, and on the other side of the Atlantic they just elected fascists, who can tell a hell of an emotionally appealing story. (The USSR definitely managed redistribution, although they came straight after a brutal monarchy and a war without a significant liberal democracy phase, and struggled to keep growing over time)

Well, since you’re not OP.

Most stuff in the West, including businesses, is owned by kinda rich but mostly ordinary people - the 9% after the 1%. Furthermore, people have always tried to make money, and while big businesses are a lot more efficient at it today margins are much lower to compensate. There’s no self-contained, small club getting easy money at the public’s expense, which is what OP was implying.

A few things have gotten more expensive relative to wages. Some things are actually less expensive (clothes are a minor expense post-globalisation, a basic TV costs less than a really nice meal now), other things are kinda the same. The real trend has been the split between well paying jobs (like most of Lemmy has) and poorly paying jobs widening; the rest is “everything used to be better”, which people are recorded saying all the way back through Socratese.

I want to argue with this, but it wouldn’t be much of a rant community if it talked back.

Intelligence does seem like the white-collar kind of thing which might be left to fancy degreed officers.

I didn’t know military intelligence had noncoms. How does that work?

Dying naturally tends to be an excruciatingly painful and slow process.

eating, drinking water, moving out of the way of danger, etc.

Not eating and drinking is a definite thing.