That’s a major part, but the key problem IMO is that the USA has shown multiple times that a change in ~~president~~ leadership can be enough to shatter existing promises and expectations.
FTFY
The US is fighting to even pay it's own debts because of the political grabass going on in the Legislative branch and who knows now what the Judicial branch is going to throw up to change. The President is just the most visible change.
Same here!
Lets be honest, my retirement plan is my corpse getting tossed in a dumpster.
Well sure. Only an optimist goes "Wow, this is as bad as it can get."
The pessimistic crowd is of the opinion it can ALWAYS get worse. We may not know how, but it can get worse.
I think it is obvious where I am on the spectrum when I say I don't think we've begun to see how bad it can get.
While... I agree with you on companies like Intuit pulling this is bullshit, depending on the region you're in the trash example used is... not great.
Speaking in the Kansas City region where City of Kansas City trash pickup is literally two bags allowed, no cans used, often late, the bags tear easily, and with this whole freeze thing they're still behind two weeks out. I live outside in one of those 5 (I'm not kidding, one literally started up last year) overlapping truck routes and it is insanely better. That said, previous town I lived in the town did the trash pickup and they did a good job, got the cans that could be auto lifted and even regularly had large item pickup days for free so even better than where I'm at now.
Turbotax, H&R Block, and the other tax companies are massively wealthy companies that actively lobby to push laws to keep them from being simple. There are states that they have managed to bar the same thing from happening in.
There was a lot of build up before, depression got bad. Honestly can't go through absolutely everything that was going on. The final straw was locking myself out of my house and car in a town where everyone I knew was about 100 miles away, and I had a box cutter on me. I had the medical knowledge of how to cut to make sure it'd work. However I knew my dad, a paramedic who would walk away from horrible fatalities without a reaction was deeply bothered when a kid committed suicide, and I am an only child. Called the police on myself, took me to the hospital where the stress literally made it where any light whatsoever was a painful headache. Still comes back on high stress times.
Dad made me promise I wouldn't take my life. The depression hasn't left, it's not as desperately bad as it was then but it's still there. But been alive for about 15 years since.
Big O, it's showtime!
Green River... unless it's the Sprecher Red Apple but that's seasonal which makes me angry lol
Kansas city... what I'd kill for a fast track to Chicago, St Louis, Denver and the like...
I mean fuck, at least we have Amtrak to Chicago and one to St Louis... however only runs once a day, takes as long as driving as long as the priority that goes to freight trains doesn't delay too much.
US here... it has less to do with the 1% being fucking morons and more to do with the only infrastructure we actually pay any attention to is cars. Sure we're having a bit of a bicycle revolution but at least in my area the bikes aren't being used for transport but for fun, but then that's with a metro that's sprawling with a city that's only 100 sq miles smaller than NYC, with 8,000,000 less people in it. Add that the auto companies were allowed to buy out things like the streetcar that was local and able to tear up the tracks to get rid of competition, it really isn't a shocker.
But we're now stuck in a cyclical spiral, of no investment for things like this are happening because it's not seen as profitable enough. Which means a constant problem of using something like a bike for commuting is "But then I have nowhere I can put my bike where it won't get fucked with." so people don't commute with it, which leads to no investment to the infrastructure.
Dunno how to fix it. It just sucks.
I use the shockz (another open ear headset) daily with my job. Work on equipment, a lot of tedious opening up a machine and fixing it. I don't have a singular place but move around a lot. Going from earbuds that I have to take out just to have a conversation if someone comes up and asks questions vs the open ear allows me to be able to know what's happening around me, keeps from annoying those around me with whatever I'm listening to, and I've chewed through so many audiobooks which has kept me from losing my mind.