I’m not a Rush fan. The music is good, and Geddy is a nice guy and all, but I can’t stand the sound of his voice… nails on a chalkboard.
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How dare you hate on Rush? On Neil’s birthday even.
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This would be the thread for it. And I went a lot easier on them than the earlier discussion of the Beatles 
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Anyone else read this as “As a Grand Theft Auto resident…”
Overall, I don’t personally care about sports most of the time, but I also kind of think it’s wrong to be “Eww, sports, let’s mock people for their passions” because I’m currently in a mode where I don’t like to make fun of people for being excited about stuff.
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Yes! That was totally my first thought!
Haha! Well spotted! 
Maybe if you guys (our government) were to drop AA, BEE and all that stuff, get rid of money-guzzling cadres, and appoint people with the right qualifications (and not based on skin colour) then maybe the economy will recover.
Threadus Ressurectus! (Since I’ve been away for a while…)
Agreed, and I wouldn’t (and didn’t) say that to fans. I can get pretty excited over my geeky stuff and, fortunately, the place I’m at now has a lot of geeks and nerds who share my passion.
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3 million taxpayers havening to keep the country of 40-million plus people running?
This quote by Teach from Interesting Times is so apt :
“He who pays the piper gets to choose the tune, but he who holds a knife to the piper’s throat get to write the symphony.”
Unfortunately most people are politically divided and don’t want to see the real problem/threat, and instead of standing together for once, they will squabble over little things and nothing get done.
Sounds like the same thing that’s happening in the USA.
The top 20% here pays 52% of taxes. The top 8% paying all of them seems a bit extreme.
Gotta get reelected somehow. There are way too many politicians, looking at you Bernie, who have been in office for decades and can’t run on their record but only on how horrible the other side is.
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That’s why I left the taxes part out of my quote. We’re as divided as I can remember in my lifetime.
Taxes sucks
Society has been trending toward more freedoms, more individuality, and more permissiveness. I feel that these are all good things.
However, it has made people really fucking stupid. They can’t see past their own selfishness regarding their individual specialness, their freedom from government intervention/oversight, and the need to crack down on certain behaviours/activities. They’re being told to do a couple of things or behave slightly differently, and they’re taking it as an attack on them. They’ve never once heard the word no in their entire lives and say, “It isn’t fair” and stomp their feet hoping to get their way.
I’m the only sane person left in this world. Everyone else can go to hell.
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More freedom necessarily correlates with more responsibility. Too many people want the one without the other.
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Yes, but this is a situation where the freedom was not earned. Those who had to work for it appreciate it. Those who were born into it just want more of it. They have no idea what it was like to be without it. They can’t imagine it. When one tiny fraction of it is taken away or asked to be overlooked for a (hopefully) short period, they see it as something that they have lost and can never regain. This is an insult to them and then we see Auntie Pam sitting down in the Costco entrance because they won’t let her in the store without a mask.
They will not take the responsibility that their freedom deserves.
So, let’s look back at the Summer of '69 and see if we can see where this happened…
In 1950 93% of children lived in a two parent household. in 2017 it was 65%.
For minorities is varies between 35% of black people and 85% of Asians who live in two parent households. I think American society’s willingness to waive the basic responsibility of raising children feeds the rest.
When I think of responsibility I think of my father working out in the rain trying to fix my mother’s car so she could work her job so we could live our life the way they wanted us to. Or my mother coming home from work to cook us dinner because my dad’s job left him too tired after an 18 hour shift to do much of anything, or when she stayed home with me before I was old enough to be left home alone.
It doesn’t even have to be a biological family, or a traditional one. I think single parenting is harmful to society. It causes guilt, blaming the absent party, and it’s much harder to raise a child properly by yourself.
I think single parenting had it’s heyday with gen X and the built up social capital has been spent. My children are considered odd as adults because they do the work and show up on time. We have unfinished adults raising unfinished adults, who are now raising another generation that knows even less about responsibility than the one before.
Stream of consciousness here, not totally put together, but this is what feel is going on.
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Sorry, but this is bull. I know a number of people who have striven to do well, to raise themselves up, because they’ve seen the sacrifices their single mother or single father has made for them. And I’ve seen people who have two parents and have squandered their lives and squandered the opportunities that have been given to them.
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Statistically it’s true. Married couples do better than single individuals. And their children tend to as well. In some studies I’ve seen children of divorced couples do better than ones who don’t have two parents in their lives as well.
This is a hugely complex issue and I don’t think you can point to any one thing and say this is the cause.
I think @Woodman is correct in that two parent families generally do better. But I also think that it’s not an option for some people to have 2 parent families.
My parents stayed together because it wasn’t the done thing to split up, and my mother couldn’t afford to leave my father. But we sure as hell would have been better off without my father in the picture. In situations like that, having the option of being a single parent family is necessary. As @TechnoMistress says, single parent families certainly can produce well rounded children.
It’s also way more of an issue in lower socio-economic areas. That’s where you tend to get the gangs and other influences that are not conducive to stable family relationships. The examples that kids see there are a lot less likely to be positive (certainly not impossible, but less likely), and learning from those examples will just extend the issues.
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