The continuing American embargo on Cuba after the Cold War has always been toddler tantrum level of pettiness.

I thought Obama had finally closed that chapter, but I was wrong.

Also, having been on the other side of such a situation: it’s not cool to pressure or guilt trip your guests. Either be hospitable and let them do whatever they want, or don’t invite them.

If people aren’t hungry, then they aren’t hungry. Maybe they are on a diet, maybe they misunderstood OP’s intention and ate beforehand. Maybe they are recovering from something and don’t want to eat too much.

And as for the two that did not showed up. It’s a good practice to reconfirm the night before. Sometimes people forget. Sometimes life gets in the way.

If they did reconfirm and still didn’t show up and did not have a good excuse, then I would start looking for better friends.

Hope OP has better success next time. I do understand that the situation sucks.

But it’s also a situation that, in my opinion, is preventable.

Exactly. Every time the UN does something, people say “they can’t enforce it”.

Well, that’s the whole point of the UN. To resolve things without using force.

It’s a good design, designed by people who learned from the horrors of WW2.

It’s sad to see how many people nowadays forget those lessons and are itching for global war.

Yep, all the electrical engineers who have chimed in say it looks more like explosives.

A battery would get hot and start a fire. It wouldn’t instantly explode like this.

Look, I wouldn’t trust the GOP with my shit stained underwear.

Of course they don’t have a better plan.

But voters who vote for them are still voters.

And falling for a false narrative doesn’t make them hypocrites.

In their mind, they are voting for the party that will fix it.

You may disagree, as do I, but that’s what they think.

To be fair, it’s a flawed argument.

You can be against Google and Apple and still use a smartphone.

You can be against a genocide being sponsored with your tax dollars and still work and pay tax.

And yes, you can use the healthcare system that exists today and still want a different one tomorrow.

Or do you think that advocates of universal healthcare are also hypocrites for using Obamacare?

He should have said almost every.

But thanks for pointing out the mathematical truth ☝️

For one, you can’t transfer a 401K to your kids.

You have to first cash it out, pay income tax and then you can transfer what remains.

Yep, but nowadays they are losing popularity. I don’t even know if you can still find them.

Then you’ll need to educate yourself beyond what the government tells you.

Look up the ProPublica leaks. Someone is serving a very long jail time for leaking that out. It clearly shows how billionaires have very low taxable income, probably lower than yours.

To then say that you are upper class and Jeff Bezos is middle class is… Absurd.

The top 10% of income is not upper class. The error that people make, including you, is to focus on income.

People like Elon Musk have incomes smaller than $100K.

Upper class are the people who do not need to work and who live off of capital.

We need to shift our focus on wealth equality.

Look, the economy needs capital. If we want to be less dependent on the capital of rich people, then middle class people need to take over that role.

The people making $100-300K per year are key, because they can provide an alternative source of capital if their tax burden is lowered.

The people making $50K will not be able to provide large amounts of capital.

Yes, I fully agree.

So we need to find the right messaging.

I don’t know about Germany, but here in the Netherlands most people identify as middle class.

So “stop taxing the middle class” and “let the billionaires pay more” is a message that should resonate.

I’m optimistic and I believe we will get there. The level of equality we have today would be unfathomable for somebody living before 1945.

Which is why the tax system needs to be reformed.

The political right actually has one good point that we on the left don’t always appreciate: taxes on middle class people should be lower.

Specifically, very liberal tax exemptions on things like 401Ks, including the ability to transfer wealth across generations.

Combine that with higher taxes on the wealthy, and it will be possible to shift power to the middle class.

Consider the total market cap of the S&P 500, rounded up it’s about 50 trillion. Divide that among 130 million households and each household should own about $400K in stock on average.

Full equality is neither achievable nor desired by most people, so a good scheme would be to let every household hold up to $1M in wealth, tax exempt.

And then progressively tax everything above that.

Why doesn’t the USA or Europe just accept the Jews and let the Palestinians have the land?

Jordan especially has a ton of Palestinians. More than half of Palestinians already live outside of Palestine.

Your question actually boils down to, why don’t they take all the Palestinians so Israel can have the land?

And the answer is: they don’t want to be complicit in ethnic cleansing.

Totally with you here.

How did I end up on a timeline where I am vibing with Erdogan.

Interesting that this map does have Palestine (presumably the West Bank and east Jerusalem) but doesn’t consider Gaza part of Palestine.

That’s quite a unique combination.

Edit: looking at Azerbaijan, I think they just focus on the biggest landmass and ignore exclaves.

Edit2: the fine print actually says that they ignore exclaves, except for Malaysia.

No more billionaires, but everyone can be a millionaire.

The shortest path to equality is to greatly reduce taxes on the middle class and increase them on the wealthy.

It puzzles me why leftist parties don’t all embrace lower taxes for the middle class.

The humiliation of losing to a black woman.

The past months the mood in America has been: not these two old geezers again.

I am honestly optimistic that it’s going to be a landslide for the Democrats without Biden. Americans are just sick of Trump and they didn’t want Biden to run again.

So the Democrats are giving the people what they want, while the Republicans are trying to force feed them something they don’t want.

Let’s see how this plays out.

Israel only bombs terrorists, not civilians.

Your German nationality will now be revoked for thinking the wrong thought.