The government choose to use data that it had to further the interests of those in power in the government? Color me shocked, absolutley shocked, at least this doesn't happen in America where politicians keep their pinky promises and only use untapped sources of wealth and power for things they promised they would. I mean I rest easy knowing my government is keeping my social security money safe for me so it will be there when I retire.
I know this is sort of nitpicking but social security is not some sort of government sponsored savings account.
It’s a social welfare program like any other. So if politicians are “stealing” social security money, it’s not yours, it’s the beneficiaries. Similar to if they were stealing food stamps.
Like all social welfare programs it can be amended, changed, done away with, etc and it’s not “taking your money”. That money was gone when the taxes were paid.
If you want social security to be an existent and viable social welfare program when it’s time for you to receive it, vote for parties and politicians working to make that happen and punish those that don’t.
Or conversely if you don’t want that welfare program to exist vote that way.
But don’t treat social security as some bank account you’ve paid into, it’s not that.
> But don’t treat social security as some bank account you’ve paid into, it’s not that.
It's not that, and it cannot ever be. Any government that "saves" dollars in a social security account is lying to themselves and their citizens.
At a national level, dollars are a way of measuring the pie, they aren't the pie itself. A government can't put a trillion dollars into a savings account one year and then take it out a decade later. If they pretend to do that all they are doing is destroying a trillion dollars today and then creating it again a decade later, causing massive inflation and deflation.
A government can only save tangible items. If they spent a trillion dollars on building retirement homes and training nurses, then those will be available for purchase by private or public dollars in the future. Anybody looking at the book and saying "there's a trillion dollar deficit, we're stealing from the future" would have it completely backwards.
"Anybody looking at the book and saying "there's a trillion dollar deficit, we're stealing from the future" would have it completely backwards. "
Isn't that only true if the government is spending that money in a way that creates wealth down the line? I think that is a very debatable notion. Not only is the government not creating that army of doctors and nurses, it's allowed the creation of a system where only a limited amount of doctors and nurses can be made privately. They are not good stewards of the money looking out for your grandkids best interest.
> Isn't that only true if the government is spending that money in a way that creates wealth down the line?
Yes exactly. Which is why the amount of the deficit isn't particularly relevant, it's how it's spent. For example, giving everybody COVID relief cheques makes inflation worse, but spending on green infrastructure lowers inflation in the long term.
> But don’t treat social security as some bank account you’ve paid into, it’s not that.
Maybe that's true, but "it's not welfare, it's your money, your benefit is proportional to your investment, etc" has been the marketing since inception. It's certainly what I was taught in high school civics.
> Or conversely if you don’t want that welfare program to exist vote that way.
This doesn’t work with open boarders where those who get in will eventually be allowed to vote, the US has had amnesties before. A case of the government choosing their constituents rather than the other way around.
Most people that I know my age (millennials) pretty much assume SS will have run out by the time they need it. I can only imagine gen Z would be expecting social overhaul sometime during their working careers.
The US is mostly made of up people who were born in the US. Of course, everyone in the US (including Native Americans) have ancestors who moved here from elsewhere, but that's true everywhere (even within Africa where humans originated, there's tons of movement). Moreover, none of this is relevant as the US government is responsible to its citizens, full stop.
In this case, there's nothing in the text that suggests ill intent; u/snarf21 had to parse subtext to find "bad motives". This sort of "assuming bad faith without any sort of evidence" violates this guideline:
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
I’m not American nor do I live in the US. I have visited and worked there many times and have many friends from there. I know for certain I will not get any SS despite paying into it for a number of years.
Ha - right. I hear people say, “Save for retirement!” I’m sorry… but at this rate of inflation, and this rate of political instability, and this rate of national debt, I’m pressing X to doubt the US (or at least the economy of it) will still exist by the time I retire. At least not in its current form…
In which case… I’ll probably have as many kids as I can afford and hope for the best at this rate.
Worth remembering the US is the longest-running country with the same constitution (Britain doesn’t have one and has changed politically in significant ways compared to the US in the last 240 years). All good things come to an end. The US is statistically overdue.
Your private retirement savings may be nationalized and redistributed under public pressure. Students loan debt forgiveness was the canary in the coal mine. Instead of addressing the ballooning costs of higher education (which incidentally is a failure), we chose to indulge the rapacious monster that is academic administration and petty careerism.
>Students loan debt forgiveness was the canary in the coal mine.
Not really a canary when taxpayer funded bailouts have occurred numerous times over the existence of the US. It is just the way societies work, you just need to make sure your assets keep appreciating at at least the rate that the currency’s purchasing power is reduced.
So can anything really, which is scary. In the 1930s, the government banned private ownership of all gold that wasn’t a small amount of jewelry and mandated anyone possessing it exchange it for dollars… with only an executive order. (Executive Order 6102)
That was also a canary in the coal mine moment. Amazingly the ban lasted until 1974.
You should just come out and say that you’re against subsidizing the wrong people. But maybe you’re a libertarian and think government should’t subsidize any of the thousand other things it does, like parents and farmers. I would have called myself a libertarian too some time ago, but now I see it as just youthful naivety.
>You should just come out and say that you’re against subsidizing the wrong people.
The "wrong people" that OP is against subsidizing is the fraudulent higher education business in the United States. Government should subsidize some things, where markets fail (markets are just a tool, after all), but in this case we're going to be giving these universities and institutions a green light to do whatever the hell they want with tuition costs. They'll raise them again, for no real reason, because why the hell wouldn't they? Uncle Sam will pay for it.
Perhaps we should just nationalize the endowments instead.
The bigger factor is the federal government giving out unlimited loans in the first place.
Schools ask for $20k, government lends $20k. Schools ask for $30k, government lends $30k. $40k, $50k, $60k, $250k, why should the schools stop? Zero underwriting, zero incentives to not waste money.
It's a strange positive feedback cycle where student loans make universities more affordable, which increases demand, which enables universities to admit more students and then to raise tuition when they can't admit any more students.
The professors the university cares about will get their just pay. I know of a professor who makes well in excess of a million USD yearly, and I've also known adjuncts getting paid 30-something thousand a year.
The ironic thing is that the former professor is an ex-CEO who had tens of millions before he ever taught a class.
Student debt is not “not dischargeable in bankruptcy.” It’s more difficult to discharge in bankruptcy than some other kinds of debt but it’s not “not dischargeable.”
It is probably more accurate to say that student loan debt is technically dischargeable in bankruptcy, but it is extraordinarily difficult to do so, since you need to prove undue hardship.
It did happen once in 2020 however, so it may become more common in the future.
However, that scenario you are describing is unlikely to last beyond those people who were given the loans before student loans became dischargeable. Lenders would simply become extremely picky when giving out student loans, in the scenario where student loans are dischargeable.
Probably something along the lines of "oh, so your degree is not in CS/engineering/pre-med/<other-high-earning-potential-degree>? And you aren't taking the loan out to attend Stanford/UC/<random-Ivy-school>? And you don't have much in terms of collateral assets to be discharged in case of a bankruptcy either? Well, we cannot offer a loan, sorry". Which would essentially make student loans not an option for vast majority of students.
However, I followed the logical chain of thought of where that approach would lead. And I honestly don't want to live in a world where we reserve liberal arts and other non-STEM degree just for children of the wealthy, while the rest have to settle for "useful degrees". And I am saying that as someone who went to a college where almost everyone was doing STEM (which makes sense, given it was an engineering school).
Yes, and that risk would greatly reduce the loans made and prevent colleges from increasing prices so fast. Allowing colleges to garnish a percent of your wages would make a lot more sense actually.
What's the alternative to investing in the US economy? Are you investing in foreign stocks? Gold? Cattle?
I'm not an economist, but I would expect that if things go badly in the US, it will mean devastating recession everywhere, including China or whoever is going to be the next dominant economy, at least for a time until the global economy reorganizes itself, so I would think you're screwed either way. Maybe the transfer of economic dominance will happen gradually, in which case you may as well put your money in the US economy until there's evidence that the US has peaked, right?
Lastly, the UK doesn't have a constitution? I thought it was a "Constitutional Monarchy" which presumably implies a constitution?
> What's the alternative to investing in the US economy? Are you investing in foreign stocks? Gold? Cattle?
A paramilitary organisation, so when governments finally collapse, you will be there ready, able to take everything you want like a candy from a child.
I was actually thinking something like this. Not "paramilitary" so much as "make sure you have good land, food preserves, a respectable arsenal, and good leadership rapport with your local community" or some such.
You certainly don't want to be the only guy with sheep. That's a good way to have your sheep taken. Ideally you are best friends with the other sheep owners and can all agree on a "fair" price for your collective sheep.
> Ha - right. I hear people say, “Save for retirement!”
My great-great grandfather didn't have "health insurance" or "social security deductions", and neither did yours. Yet we exist as their descendants.
Evangelical advice about "death preparation" is the original "buy the cryptocurrency I already own".
I am the youthful energy of an aging empire, and so are you. I do not look forward to doing nothing. When I begin to feel the pangs of mortality - what will my character be like?
"All men die, not all men die whining."
To be born at the beginning of the longest cumulative period of R&R [0] since the beginning of recorded history is to instinctually rear children (policy influence) with a value system that revolves around "comfort" (a Permobil factory is coincidentally located next to my Amazon alma mater BNA2 [1]).
The Greatest Generation [2] survived the turmoil of their youth (fighting an "enemy" as it was reacting to stagnant, lifeless neighbors) and after becoming investor class (age 60-90), they completed their magnum opus by bringing back [3] the first extralunar beings [4] (equipment built by employing the hands/ingenuity/ambition of the youthful, inspired Boomer Generation).
To have many children and make them build spaceships is why global encyclopedias [still] call you "the Greatest".
I mean I rest easy knowing my government is keeping my social security money safe for me so it will be there when I retire.
I've been hearing this my whole life, and through circumstances worse than they are now. You want high interest rates? Rampant inflation? Try the 70s and 80s. Unstable world governments? phhhhhhffft I'll grant you, a certain political party has gone off the rails, but it's otherwise same shit, different decade. And as I now near the point when it's time for the SSA to start cutting me checks (I've still got a few years), it looks like they will still do exactly that.
That said, I've always planned finances as if Social Security won't be there when I retire.
For us Hungarians this isn’t really news, it wasn’t even secret how unfair and illegal the last election was. Viktor Orban is running a hybrid authorian country that’s going into the authorian direction, and right now I don’t see any way to stop him.
I'm not impressed by the fainting couch "oh, that authoritarian Vktor Orban" polemics for the same reason I find US political discourse obtuse and genuinely hateful. There is a consistent refusal (and inability) to engage with the topic intellectually and a tendency to dwell in emotionalism. It's intellectually shallow and lazy. Orban must be understood in the broader cultural and political context. Fixating on Orban is a way to ignore the problem, a convenient way to scapegoat someone for all the things you don't like, good or bad. Projection abounds. If Orban never was, someone else would take his place.
The political rifts today are not merely over policy, but over basic ethical matters and norms. Scapegoating is just a way to avoid having to deal with your real problems by projecting onto someone often superhuman causal powers that would explain why things aren't the way you'd like them to be. Conspiracy theorists do the same thing.
You are right in a way, but you can't ignore the influence of powerful individuals on the society in general. Yes, there are many conservatives in Hungary, but it's a whole different level if the person representing them repeatedly breaks the law and pushes things much further.
An analogous situation is in Poland. The unofficial ruler of the country declared that Germany is the biggest enemy of Poland, playing on the feelings of the older generation, and is trying to build a narrative around that (the EU servers only Germany, hence EU = evil). That wasn't a narration among Polish conservatives a few years ago, it was constructed by a single person and spread by his minions and the media he is controlling. The biggest absurdity of the last days was when Germany proposed giving Poland Patriots, the Polish defense minister happily agreed as any normal person would, then the day after after the unofficial ruler got berserk he completely changed his opinion and refused to accept them (how can Germans protect Polish sky if we say Germany = Evil?). What a shitshow!
If any of you were looking to spew a bunch of pseudo intellectual nonsense while distracting from the point at hand. This is a fine example of how to do it
All he's saying is that Hungary is a conservative country and if Orban didn't exist there would be another Orban. That is if you see conservatism as a societal disease which seems to be the case here in HN
If conservatism is equal to whatever the fuck Orban is doing, conservatism can permanently fuck off and die.
I eon't think it is, though. There's a lot of worth there still, even if the good parts have become obscure. Good parta include freedoms of all kinds and Chicago/Austrian economics.
Orban has actual power to wiels. He's not scapegoated, he makes decisions that transform reality. Of course there's a surrounding circumstances, but our hierarchical system means a single person has tremendous potential to steer a nation.
If he uses it to erode certain values then he is to blame a n their erosion.
The fact that slightly over than half of the population supported it doesn't mean he is without agency.
To me, Orban is the symptom of a larger problem. If the majority of Hungarians are against him and the ruling party, stopping him will be a matter of having massive protests and forcing him to resign. The hard part is breaking his spell over Hungarians.
A lot of us who have the means to protest left the country instead as a form of protesting, because it's so easy to move inside EU.
A huge other part of Hungarians who Orban gave votes to were born and poor people living in Romania and getting just a little bit of money from the country to vote for Orban, but they are not paying taxes (representation without taxation is just as bad as taxation without representation, which was achieved in Magna Carta).
Hungarians living in Hungary had 1 day to vote, while Hungarians living in Romania had weeks and could vote in letter.
This sounds like the “politicians picking the electorate” that is complained about in the US when amnesties happen, and about debate about mail in voting and so on. I think there’s a valid discussion to be had about this but it doesn’t seem completely unprecedented.
This... world has no shortage of hyper-inflated egomaniacs who would like to rule a galaxy or two if they could, regardless of their actual skills. If this is combined with smooth-talking, these people, albeit being horrible leaders and bad for future of nations, tend to get re-elected over and over by folks you don't see nor hear about in the news, aka silent majority.
Same as ie Putin - for every protester/leaver this year there is literally 100 that are +-content enough to stay, maybe sometimes throw a complaint or two and continue business as usual. And vote for him. Even with some corruption and election rigging I'd say (and happy to be mistaken) they are properly majority-popular, just not 96%-popular. Then one realizes part of population is plain stupid in rather unfixable way, and the choices become being cynic for rest of life or simply leave.
> for every protester/leaver this year there is literally 100 that are +-content enough to stay
I've never been to Russia. The impression I've formed is that there is a strong nationalist/imperialist camp among the Russian population. I'm inclined to trust the Levada polling organisation, and they say that Putin (and his invasion) have broad support among Russians.
We tend to personalize these things; e.g. it's all Putin's fault. I think that's a mistake; if you don't acknowledge that the nationalist/imperialist sentiment is widespread in the population, then you'll attack the wrong target, e.g. by trying to assasinate Putin. But if the xenophobia and nationalism are just part of the national sentiment, that's not going to work.
I have no idea how one might set about combatting nationalist/imperalist sentiment in a foreign country; traditionally we use spies and trouble-makers, but I don't think that works well.
>I have no idea how one might set about combatting nationalist/imperalist sentiment in a foreign country
When it goes beyond sentiment and into a genocidal war of aggression, like it did in Russia, there is one approach that no one in their right mind would advocate for, but it does work. It certainly worked in Germany and Japan.
Sure; strategic bombing (I suppose that's what you mean). Actually, my understanding is that both countries were militarily defeated; I believe that strategic bombing was really just political theatre.
Well Japan gave up immediately when Soviets entered the war with them, fire bombing of cities wasn't doing much on decision making. And Germany was literally defeated to last soldier standing, so yes strategic bombing definitely didn't defeat neither of those, just helped starve army for resources
Oh please. Any direct US involvement was long after the movement was well underway. The Ukrainians picked who should run the country (then and since), and the fact that they picked somebody who the US could work with is testament who they want to align with. Any subsequent elections, as well as who Ukrainians are literally fighting now, is only more validation that the maidan revolution was organic.
Even if you believe that the votes in Crimea and Donbass were as free and fair as Ukraine's national elections (which I don't), there is still the small matter that those votes were illegal under Ukrainian law, and thus their outcome is meaningless.
You think those elections were fair, that's cute. The 80%+ referendum rates sure are validated by the blue and yellow flags being waved when the Ukrainians return.
If you had left Donbass out of your argument, I think it would be a lot more compelling. In the aftermath of the USSR breakup, referenda in the 1990's indicated large majority of Crimea did not want to be part of Ukraine.
It probably happened. So what? I mean, are we kindergarden children to assume no foreign powers work at continuously in any country? Helloo, Russia was just next to Ukraine and did a shitton of stuff, up to and including whatever it did to ignite Euromaidan.
You can either ignore one side and point to the other (which is like... no comment). Or go into absurdism and say there is no real internal agency in any country and everything is a conspiracy theory. Or just look at things and use a bit of common sense, compare Eastern and Western influences in Ukraine and never ever again mention that particular anecdote, because in context it's absolutely ridiculous.
> Or go into absurdism and say there is no real internal agency in any country and everything is a conspiracy theory.
Ah, so saying that Ukraine and it's citizens didn't have exactly the same agency as any other country and its citizens while the US was fomenting a coup against it's Russian-backed government is just like saying nothing means anything, black is white and up is down. It's absolutely ridiculous to say that there was any result of the most powerful country in the world using Ukraine as a battleground to attack the most powerful country in the region.
This is not the smart position, this is attempting to shut down upsetting discussions with circular nonsense.
Putting "helloo" in front of a claim is not an argument, any more than "oh, please" or "come on!"
Took me a while to parse your comment and I'm not sure I got it, but I think the key is "US was fomenting a coup". Everybody was fomenting a coup, obviously. Probably even the Chinese were having people on the ground. Doesn't automatically make everything that happened there a result of US action.
To be eligible to vote, you need to register on the Electoral Register. But when you do that, all UK political parties get access to your information (name and address, maybe nationality). And there is no way to opt out. You can only opt out of commercial companies getting access. Credit ratings companies have access too.
> The electoral register lists the names and addresses of everyone who is registered to vote in public elections. The register is used for electoral purposes, such as making sure that only eligible people can vote. It is also used for other limited purposes specified in law, such as:
Detecting crime (e.g. fraud)
Calling people for jury Service
checking credit applications
> Anyone can inspect the full register. Inspection will be made under supervision. They can take extracts from the register, but only as hand written notes. Information must not be used for direct marketing purposes, unless it has been published in the open register. Anyone who fails to observe these conditions is committing a criminal offence.
> The Electoral Registration Officer has a legal obligation to share some of the information. This includes absent voter information and copies of the marked register (this is the register which indicates whether someone has voted, but no how or for whom they have voted), which can be supplied to the following people:
Elected Representatives
Election Candidates
Political Parties
The Electoral Commission
Police forces and similar bodies
Is this actually worse? It's not tied to the ruling party specifically.
The UK is slightly weird in not having a single unified national identity system. Instead it has a number of critical ID checkpoints: you need ID to buy or rent a house, and to have a bank account, before we even get into voting for which ID requirements have just been introduced based on the US "fraud" narrative. But there isn't actually a specifically named "ID card" or "ID database".
Instead we have all these para-ID schemes. The electoral register is one of them.
> "The UK is slightly weird in not having a single unified national identity system"
Weird within Europe, perhaps, but not globally. None of the other countries I've lived in (USA, Canada, New Zealand) had a national ID system either. Yes, the USA has the Social Security Number (and NZ has IRD number, Canada SIN), but those are all analogous to the UK National Insurance Number.
Note that unlike the US's SSN, NZ's IRD numbers are only used for tax (so yes, your employer and bank have it, but it's not used for identity verification or for things that don't involve tax).
It's on the letters the council keep sending me warning me that it's a legal requirement to register and I could be fined £80 if I don't. (I am registered, at a different address).
Orban's far right government is a great straw man for testing public outrage levels and narrative impact for what every other government did (and worse).
I discovered that covid data is used in a similar way in Canada, where vaccination status data (name/dates/doses/addr/ph) was passed to a PR/oppo firm working for a politicians office. The data was sent to an outsourced call center to call people on behalf of a private PR firm that had the same name as an internal government department (a mere coincidence, surely). Given vaccination dates were and are a strong proxy for political leanings, this oppo research firm working for campaign offices is not only in posession of this medical information, but they shared it with call center contractors.
I had a lengthy email exchange with the privacy office about it to get assurances of the privacy protections and recourse in the contracts, and they declined to provide copies of the agreements governing the relationship between this firm and the privacy protections for this medical information, and basically bumbled and delayed until I went away, ultimately yielding nothing.
I didn't go to the press about it because the mainstream press could not be relied upon to be principled and investigate privacy breaches and other abuses during covid for fear of enabling hesitancy, and going the alternative media route would just set me up for retaliation by the government, so I let it go since as a privacy professional, I had got evidence of my suspicions about how egregiously the data has been handled. The rollout was one of the most cynical abuses of public trust in history, to the point where the Atlantic published a piece about "amnesty" for the people behind it - for what precisely, we are only learning now in trickles and spurts.
If this is something you care about, contact the agency or the privacy officer of the government department that administered your vaccinations and ask them for the list of parties your data was shared with, and for copies of the privacy impact assessments they were obligated to do, and the contracts with those parties that presumably have privacy protections and recourse for breaches written into them. I've moved on, as my opinion about these actions is set, but if you want the story of what went on, ask for the privacy impact assessments (or lack thereof) for the data sharing of vaccination data. Further, you can ask for how your consent to vaccination was collected (it wasn't, and there wasn't a way to register that you were being subject to a medical procedure under duress either), and the picture of what the response was becomes clear.
Sure, Orban's a hate figure, but he's also a test balloon for how much the Economist and its establishment colleagues want to admit about what they did, and a mirror for calibrating what your own governments almost certainly did as well.
Understandable you don't want to go to the press, but I and other Canadian HNers would love to see the exchange you had with our privacy office. Between that and the ArriveCAN contract, I think the people deserve some concrete answers behind some of the decisions our federal government made.
It wasn't federal, they just provided air cover. All the covid stuff was done at the municipal public health level, co-ordinated through provinical public health and "science tables" using the WHO's Covax system on the back end, run by one of the big-5 consulting firms and delivered over a well known CRM platform.
The one thing you can see about covid policy was that every single decision was deniable to where no individual holds responsibility or accountability for it. It's by design, where everyone was using "recommendations" and acting on them with a tacit alignment to narrative, it was a modern version of just following orders. The effort and panic to avoid being held individually accountable for any decision is what characterized the whole response.
If you are concerned, do an access to information (canadian "FOIA") request for the privacy impact assessments that every initiative related to health information is legally obligated to do and provide, and keep track of what initiatives didn't have one done. Have a look at the regs changes to privacy legislation that were "temporary" for emergency use as well. The whole debacle was an orchestrated end run around privacy laws and other conventions around the use of health information and services as a political tool.
> If this is something you care about, contact the agency or the privacy officer of the government department that administered your vaccinations and ask them for the list of parties your data was shared with, and for copies of the privacy impact assessments they were obligated to do, and the contracts with those parties that presumably have privacy protections and recourse for breaches written into them.
Thank god every government on earth would happily comply with this and not lie or withhold information whatsoever.
Why is it up to Human Rights Watch to police this? If Hungary has violated European privacy directives, and it sounds likely that they have, then why isn't the EU holding them to account?
The EU generally delegates enforcement of directives to national governments, since governments like Hungary's would not vote to give the EU the powers and budget necessary to hold such governments to account.
Hungary at least had opt—in checkbox. US political parties are so much worse…
“Voter analytics firm PredictWise harvested location data from tens of millions of US cellphones during the initial Covid lockdown months and used this data to assign a “Covid-19 decree violation” score to the people associated with the phones.
These Covid-19 decree violation scores were calculated by analyzing nearly two billion global positioning system (GPS) pings to get “real-time, ultra-granular locations patterns.” People who were “on the go more often than their neighbors” were given a high Covid-19 decree violation score while those who mostly or always stayed at home were given a low Covid-19 decree violation score.
Not only did PredictWise use this highly sensitive location data to monitor millions of Americans’ compliance with Covid lockdown decrees but it also combined this data with follow-up surveys to assign “Covid concern” scores to the people who were being surveilled. PredictWise then used this data to help Democrats in several swing states to target more than 350,000 “Covid concerned” Republicans with Covid-related campaign ads.”
