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My views on this have evolved a lot. Here's where I am now: Wealth inequality is irrelevant. That part I've always believed, but what matters, and what I didn't see before, is how the wealth disparity is produced. I think the people who make things are able to be as rich as possible without much consequence. Think Bill Gates, Bezos, Musk, Carnegie, Walton. Something about our connection to their products and services makes their immense wealth understandable. Plus, the creation of technology or a service that makes humans more productive (even as a second or third order effect) ultimately adds far more to the collective wealth of our society than the millions and billions that accrue to the founders/inventors. But the unleashing of modern banking since the 70's has been altogether different. You should not be able to make billions off financial engineering. At best, loans enable the above innovations, but the banking system has found a way to make as much or more than the industries they enable. Problem is, so much of modern financial markets are simply transfers of wealth between parties. It's gambling. Guess who's better at that game? It ain't you. Nothing demonstrated this better than the nauseatingly-ironically-named Robin Hood. Nothing more than a transfer of wealth from the retail investor (poor) to the banks and private equity managers (rich). And when the retail investor found a hole in the armor with GameStop, they shut it down. Disgusting. The third element is the unstoppable printing of money by the Fed. These made up dollars are vacuumed up by the top .1% of Americans at a stunning rate. So when the inflation hits from boosting the money supply, the already-rich are sitting on a greater share of the money, drastically reducing the impact of inflation on their purchasing power, while the commoners like us get crushed. This wealth is created by political access, favoritism, and shady banking practices. It is this type of wealth inequality that will destroy our society if we don't stop it, yet the pandemic wildly accelerated the problem. But it gets worse. The Republicans are still reflexively defensive of business from the communist movement of the left in the 50's and 60's. They haven't figured out that modern crony capitalism has two sides of business, the makers and the bankers. Until the find a way to escape the bankers, they will be useless. Tucker Carlson is the strongest voice against this new phenomenon, though he flails around the center of the problem at times. The Democrats are equally useless, because they are hell bent on attacking the makers while the bankers fund their campaigns and promote their ESG nonsense. In the war against crony capitalism, the Democrats have decided to attack the capitalists with the help of the cronies. Talk about missing the mark.

Can this internal review help shrink the Air Force’s pilot shortage? “Do all the pilot positions we have on staff actually require a pilot, or does it require someone with operational expertise?” Brown said. Slife the non-combat knife now doing extreme damage to the Air Force Writ large instead of just AFSOC. I know most pilots don't want to go to a staff job, sitting at a desk especially in the five sided wind tunnel can be pure drudgery. HOWEVER, if we don't put pilots, especially seasoned experts who know what it is like in those key staff positions, then the REMFs will make decisions about the equipment you get and how you operate. It is always good to look at resource allocation--especially the expensive ones--but airmanship and the ability to speak like an operational airmen does not come easily. It takes years to develop. The Air Force has evaluated where they needed pilots/operators in the past, and it has been to its severe detriment. Here are some examples: 1. ALOs--We first removed fighter pilots/WSOs from the ASOS communities, then pretended we could advise Army leadership on the best use of Airpower. The result has been an Air Liaison community with no tactical airborne experience, no real weaponeering ability, and an Army that dismisses their advice even more than before. 2. Staffs-- Air Force first used retired pilot/WSO contractors to fill positions, but is now even using engineers, program managers, and others who, while probably competent on many levels, have no business speaking about Airpower capabilities, selling Airpower capabilities, and funding the same. Many decisions are now made by Airmen who have only learned about Airpower through schooling and relative proximity. 3. Inexpensive yet relevant platforms--when we killed all of the Tactical Air Support Squadrons with their OV-10s/O-2, we killed a great pilot absorption capability, a great way to season aviators for pennies. The aircraft's tactical relevance diminished by the day, but their operational/strategic value was immense. Yes, we cut the pilot requirement down, but hurt even more the pilot creation capability. and the overall Airmanship of the Air Force. There is a reason why pilots run the Air Force, why WSOs/CSOs exercise a great operational influence over the direction of the Air Force. Not because of the universal management badge of wings, but because IT IS WHAT THE AIR FORCE DOES. Many have been the companies that have lost their ways as they turned the reigns over to CFOs and Program Managers...Just ask Boeing. Again, I know most of you clowns don't want to do a staff job, it is a necessary evil. If we don't put people who know what it is like to fling themselves into the air in a metal frame full of fuel and munitions and take said crate into combat, then the contracting officer who was CGO of the year for leading the savings bond drive is going to determine your future.

What type of a personality would it take to go into DC and take on the elites? A brash, egotistical billionaire real estate tycoon from NY who doesn’t need the money, power or fame. Anyone else that has tried has been chewed up and spit out for even thinking about it. Look what they have thrown at him for the last 6 years. And he keeps on fighting. Part of his legacy will be the fact that he has highlighted and exposed the deep corruption in DC. Certainly not saying he’s my favorite person on the planet. Just making the observations.

? https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/04/18/trump-releases-digital-trading-cards-again-after-first-batch-of-nfts-sells-out-in-one-day-and-raises-eyebrows/?sh=292b3f791533

The amount of asshattery on staff is astounding, it’s 69,000 worse without pilots holding people accountable, getting shit done, “mentoring” the REMFs on what actually needs to be done and why their ideas are fucking retarded, etc. A better fix is remote staff work, which the ANG is slowly coming around to. Not everyone can be remote, but a lot of pilots wouldn’t mind staff much if they could stay living where they want, still fly regularly, etc. I know a couple guys have done this on AD as well. Loosen the grip on the “it’s always been this way” thought and things would be better.

I've got a lot of thoughts here, but two quick ones: To answer your question about the nuclear family: Anti-family policies surrounding welfare (dads in low income families are incentivized to make children and leave the home), divorces has never been easier so families are split more often, abortion couldn't be more contentious and there is currently no policy that incentivizes men to have accountability in the baby-making process, in several states 'the state' in the form of schools and teachers unions are effectively trying to take over the moral instruction of children...to include the legal prosecution of parents if they 'mis-gender' their own 12 year old, there's a lot more. In short, the federal government should have absolutely no hand inside a family unit, yet they currently do. All of those policies are not tolerated or accepted, but celebrated and in some cases enforced by our current administration. Second: go to your stat source there: https://realtimeinequality.org/ and play around. You'll find that the Times did a wonderful job of zooming in on a very specific data set to tell a story that simply isn't true. Moreover, if you want to compare data, use the same time frame. You compare Jan 2021 to EOY 2022 directly to Trump's entire term. Not an apples to apples comparison. With stats like these, a long view of at least a decade, usually more, is the only way to get a real picture of the impact of policies.

I too can write a caricature about the right and what "they support" and then propose it to folks online asking, "HoW cAn YoU sUpPoRt ThIs???!" My man, I/we disagree with the premise of the things you wrote there. Pride month allows LGBTQ folks to celebrate their struggle for equal rights and the progress that's been made there, no different than other "XX history" months. I'm neither radically in favor of over-the-top celebrating differences but I'm not against people doing that either. Some redistribution of wealth via taxes is a hallmark of an advanced economy & society, we can quibble about how much but I support free & fair market capitalism backed by a robust welfare state to help catch people when they fall. A floor, not a ceiling. I'm not sure what vague "ideologies that will eviscerate the family unit" you mean so you'll have to be more specific. I have a very traditional, conservative-friendly family unit and we're doing just great! Other families I know that are quite different than my own are doing great as well. Some people struggle, as always. I hope the same can be said for you and yours. This I actually agree with, as do some of my gay friends, although not all. Younger people tend to see it all as the same struggle, but LGBTQ people closer to my age or older I know say that the wild explosions of different identities, flags, tiny shredouts of identities is counterproductive and that radical trans activists need to follow the model more or less of plain-ole-gay rights and not try to move so rapidly as to diminish support from a general populace of straight people who don't live and breathe this stuff and just want to go on with their lives. I am straight, so I don't wanna speak for others, but I tend to agree. It's mostly from the right in terms of statistically significant losses of support, but it is concerning either way if you are a fan of gay people having the same human and civil rights as straight people. I'm gonna say this up front and it applies to everything below, you need to update your data / assumptions. Income inequality specifically has declined for the first time in decades in the COVID recovery where there is very robust wage growth specifically among the lower-paid 50% of workers. Depicted below is this metric during the Biden Admin, Jan 2021 to EOY 2022. I would argue that both the broad, world-wide post-COVID economic conditions + the Biden admin's actions + Fed/ECB actions have led to our current tight labor market where workers have more leverage than at anytime during my lifetime to negotiate higher wages, switch jobs, or generally leave shitty, low-paid work for greener pastures. Having a hard time hiring servers at a greasy spoon diner that pays tipped minimum wage isn't a sign of a recession, it's a sign of a strong/tight labor market because those waitresses are working at the other businesses down the road paying $15+ an hour. TBH if you want plentiful low-wage workers, you need to encourage more immigration, as immigrants are often more willing to take low-paid jobs than native-born citizens. This used to be true, if you only counted Jan 2017 through March 2020 Trump admin. If you take the whole time Trump was President, it was never true due to the huge losses during COVID. Understandably there are some asterisks there, and rightfully so. Trump did not cause COVID and the whole world took a beating. BUT, it's no longer true. The Biden admin has set new records for declines in income inequality, low unemployments rates, "black unemployment" as Trump so frequently touts, etc. Trump often says on the stump he had the lowest black unemployment rate ever...which is a good thing and was true! But it's not true anymore. Lowest under Trump was 5.3% in August of 2019, current under Biden is 4.7% in April 2023 and continuing to drop. I support a low unemployment rate for all Americans, and the Biden admin is leading the way on employment. Bottom line: if you wanna debate current events, you have to stay current.

Bus time is bus time! Sent from my iPad using Baseops Network mobile app

Actual conversation with actual gay friends (before someone accuses me of being “hateful”) - they’re concerned the takeover of the pride movement by the extreme left will cause a backlash and big pendulum swing backwards in time when things weren’t so great for them. Enter the new Gallup poll: 7% decline in the last year of Americans who think same sex relationships are morally OK. Now that’s not a “all hell breaking loose” poll, but it does validate their concern is not irrational. This extreme movement will likely galvanize otherwise “keep to themselves” type of people, and it’ll be people like my friends above who suffer from it. It’s simple, keep to yourselves and don’t try to shove things down people’s throats and generally everyone will just move about their day. Go crazy pushing things and enough people are going to get pissed off it’ll backfire.

The President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief is a fucking moron. https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1670168576571965446?s=20https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1670168576571965446?s=20

Perhaps, but we don't have a capitalist system, we have a crony capitalism and therein lies the problem. And socialism/fascism are not the answer. If they were effective, North Korea would be far better off than South Korea. I'd like to see us return to a free market capitalist system but the cronies have DC bought and paid for...

Has anyone else here read the Eden Chronicles by S.M. Anderson? The first book "A Bright Shore" was written in 2018, during the genesis of all this social upheaval. With all the excellent justifications provided by some liberals in government service on this forum concerning the 'correctness' of normalizing what began as 'fringe' and celebrating what was once simply tolerated, that first book is beginning to read like a societal prophesy. Simply look at the social narratives coming from our 'apolitical' politician general officer leadership. Students of history understand exactly what his happening. It happened in Greece, Persia, Rome, China, and several others. Hard times make strong men, who make good times, which makes soft men, who make hard times. Unfortunately, the soft men can make that cycle come to a screeching halt. In historical context, we have gone so soft, for so long, that those with opinions of governance which are rooted in neither integrity, fact, nor history can now set policy, which will result in the collapse of our society. To the liberal ideologs here: If you sincerely think that forcing the celebration (which is exactly what pride month is) of LGTBQ+, redistributing wealth, and enforcing ideologies that will eviscerate the family unit will improve things in our currently domestic and international environment, I request you please put it down in a journal and go re-read that in about 10 years and see how it aged...assuming we make it that long. You are supporting ideology that will destroy our society. History already proves it, we're currently living it, and you're supporting it.

Chasing Missile Shooters Over The Gulf Of Mexico In An F-15

Not entirely gone 👑

GS staff has become the commander by committee. Too many times I've heard the commander won't support anything unless JA, XP, FM etc, signs off on it.

Yes I actually believe that he does. He’s a raging dumpster fire, personality wise, but yeah, I think he has better intentions and ideas that anyone either party is going to put forward. I do believe this, in the face of all propaganda we’ve been fed.

WSEP*

Test #6900000 - does the 9M still suck? Result: Yes it still sucks.

I'm all for capitalism. Its the worst form of good and services management except for all the others Still, sometime you have to see it to appreciate it. Spent a week in St. Thomas enjoying my ill gotten lifestyle due to my Christian male white privilege and was headed out on a sailing charter to do some snorkeling. Also parked at the pier was the Yacht Infinity. Break out the Google and this $300 million boat is owned by Eric Smidt, former Google guy. And this isn't his only boat the picture. See the boat behind the yacht? That's the $40 million toy hauler. It's got speed boats, jet skis, helicopter, etc. and a crane on the deck and follows the yacht around to supply entertainment. And yes, I still had a great time snorkeling despite rough sailing conditions and a rather large whiskey front blowing through the night before. Google people give most of their political money to democrats. Don't think Eric is going to go along with wealth equalizing as long as he can buy influence. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ex-google-chief-built-oligarch-style-empire-influence-ai-biden-white-house-public-policy-report

Some back of the napkin ballpark 4th grade math: A 4% increase in the top 10% income lower threshold of around $14,500 a month = +$580 A 7.5% increase in the bottom 50% upper threshold of about $5800 a month = +$435 Would you say income inequality is increasing or decreasing under Biden? Bills are measured in dollars, not percentages of income.

Exactly. And it's not just DC. Your average socialist wringing their hands over wealth inequality fail to realize they will never defeat cronyism as long as their agendas, ideologies, and movements can easily be purchased and co-opted.

Rogan had RFK on and is now going on the offensive thru twitter against some of the pro-vac 'doctors'. Hah. It's getting good. Up to 250K now for Hotaz to come on JRE and debate RFK.

You have my apologies - Several rounds of bourbon on the rocks last night. If you look I've posted positively about RFKJ and I'm a fan of Gabbard and Manchin. I was more speaking to those who have already assumed the role of President in the past.

From “da libruls”: Trans rights becoming this important is too much emphasis, agreed. I don’t care to overcompensate, and I don’t think the majority of folks actually care. I personally agree that the woke-ness of some of the messaging is terribly annoying and not focused. And we should stop. Also, I agree that the family unit is important, who said it wasn’t? But wealth inequality is an actual problem that needs to be solved. History also shows that the higher wealth inequality goes the worse society gets. And if you look at society from an average 25 year olds eyes, you’d see that American capitalism as is hasnt made much progress since the 1970s when real wages stopped increasing. Wouldn’t recommend you throw totally separate ideals into one set of issues, because it’s harder to find common ground.

The dems should split; create the progressive party and move on (it already exists at the state level). That way “regular” dems can actually vote for rational policies and not be forced into two options of trump or supporting batshit crazy progressive policies and candidates. Unfortunately most will vote along party lines and would rather cast a vote for dipshit 69 than anyone with the opposite party symbol. Bring back dems that I may disagree with on some things, but at least we both still reside in reality and are logical.

I was more getting at what I see as a drastic overreach of power by federal, state, and local authorities in response to COVID. This includes the shameful way many managers within the DoD handled COVID. Lives were ruined and livelihoods destroyed and those responsible for pushing these policies will never be held accountable. Those on here and DoD wide who pushed for a scorched earth policy against anyone who disagreed are counted amongst those responsible.

I know you might very well be too fucking stupid to communicate with, and I say that only because I've had to read what you post here, but I don't need the media to tell me that Trump is a fucking asshole, doesn't give two shits about this country, and has violated every moral clause that most of us consider important. And he does so without having any shred of remorse or regard for other people. There is no one he hasn't betrayed. I still voted for him, because I'm capable of having more than one thought in my head at a time. But he has lost his fucking marbles and demonstrated with absolute inescapable clarity that he will never put anything above his own vanity. The country deserves more than that. Unfortunately, Joe Biden is not better than that. But there are democrats who are, and if by some miracle the Democratic party can find it in themselves to nominate someone who actually loves this country more than they love themselves or enriching themselves, I will vote for that person before I vote for Donald Trump.

This is just another example of the shit that we saw all the time in the Air Force before this trans insanity happened. How many times have you heard about some pilot that was a total bro when he was a captain or major or even a squadron commander and then they become a general and at best standby idly while ridiculous nonsense is imposed upon their subordinates, and at worst, participate? The types of people who are willing to do what is necessary to get to these jobs are not the type of people who often have deep-seated beliefs. And so when the beliefs of those they must rely on for further promotion are insane, they adopt them. Then you see someone on a podium who 20 years ago wouldn't have imagined they'd be spouting the ridiculous nonsense they are, but because it's the present rallying and cry of the cultural elite, all of a sudden they are true believers. It seems unbelievable that so many apparently intelligent people are spouting this nonsense, but that's because you're (not you specifically, M2) operating on the assumption that they put any thought into it at all. They haven't. These people don't have values other than their own progression. Once you accept that, everything they say makes perfect sense. They spent an entire career doing what other people told them to do to get where they are, so it shouldn't be surprising that they will also say what other people tell them to say.

We call that the Texas conundrum.

#Pride Month, I’m still trying to figure out what are they proud of?

The USMNT beat Mexico 3-0 in the CONCACAF Nations League Semi Final last night. There were 4 red cards given. This is the best USMNT we've ever had. If you're curious about soccer, (wink wink SocialD) this is the time to be a USMNT fan.

You attempt to explain away everything. That’s all you do. It doesn’t matter what the topic is. It could be COVID policy, corrupt politicians, the destruction of our major cities or the harm caused by the trans gender movement. Facts are presented but it doesn’t matter. The truth comes out in time, as it has with COVID and many examples of political corruption, but it doesn’t matter. You double down and dig in. Gotta give it to you. You are consistent.

The problem goes all the way back to recruitment. We aren’t getting America’s best…we are getting the best the USAF can/wants to recruit. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

Those team names seem to fit the name of this thread...

It was a little harder getting ATIS in the Huey single pilot. We were so slow, it'd change several times from the time I was 7 miles out to touch down. So much ATIS. I have nightmares about it.

What don't you like about the above @BashiChuni? Open debate is good. Open long form debate is better.

lol you think Trump actually gives two fucks about anything beyond himself