His cameo in Home Alone 2 was free. He was the owner of the Plaza Hotel at the time and he insisted on the cameo as part of the payment for using the hotel for filming.

He’s not showing Trump respect, he’s showing respect to the office of president and to the American people.

The working class is supposed to get compensated fairly for increases in productivity.

The issue is that productivity gains aren’t equally distributed across the economy. A factory worker today is probably 100x more productive than a factory worker in the early 1900s. However, a hairdresser today has exactly the same productivity as one from a hundred years ago.

So it would stand to reason that the hairdresser should see no increase in pay at all due to no increase in productivity. Yet a haircut today costs a lot more than it did a century ago. Why is this? Because no one would work as a hairdresser today at century-ago wages. They would go work in a factory instead.

And so increases in productivity — even if they’re restricted to only one sector of the economy — cause inflation across the whole economy. This is called the Baumol Effect. This inflation means that a lot of the wage gains of the factory-worker get eaten up by the increased cost of haircuts, education, healthcare, and countless other goods and services.

It should also be noted that none of the productivity gains have led to an increase in the availability of land in desirable areas. When something is limited in supply but not demand it should be no surprise that the price goes up.

Men are only half the population, so what’s drawing women to conservative politics?

Women being allies to conservative men. Religious women (women are generally more religious than men) also tend to be more conservative.

Furthermore I think a lot of young women are disillusioned by the “having it all” lifestyle that was promised to them by feminism. Having a dream career and raising a family (without waiting until 35 to have kids) is extremely unattainable for all but the very rich.

I also think a lot of young women, like their young male counterparts, feel that housing is unattainable. Back in the time before women entered the workforce in a major way a house was genuinely affordable on one income. Now that women are nearly equal participants in the labour force it shouldn’t be a surprise that it takes two (upper middle class) incomes to be able to afford a house. What once was an option (a career for a woman) became a requirement. Through no fault of anyone, that can leave people feeling cheated by the system.

It’s a Red Queen’s race

It’s a tradition in Canadian politics to drop BS promises on your way out the door. It’s frankly embarrassing that they’re still doing it.

The handful of well-intentioned docs are the exception, not the rule.

I wouldn’t be so quick to judge the intentions of doctors who do over-prescribe. Consider this scenario:

You are a doctor. Your patient comes in with severe pain from a herniated disc caused by an injury at work. None of the ordinary painkillers or muscle relaxants you prescribe are working and they keep returning to your office to complain about constant pain. You know that opioids will be extremely effective at reducing or eliminating their pain but you also know that these drugs cause addiction. You explain this to your patient and they are adamant: they are 100% willing to risk becoming a drug addict if it means they can escape their severe chronic pain.

What do you do?

Personally, I find this dilemma so troubling that I would not want to be a doctor because of it. I have other reasons for not taking that career path but even if it were the only reason it would be enough to stop me. I don’t think it’s at all obvious that you can just ignore a patient in severe pain and say “I’m sorry, I won’t prescribe this legal drug which will alleviate your pain.”

The risk is that they vote for higher salaries for themselves! They already earn way more than most people!

I like Wikipedia but I’m still not going to donate. They’ve got many millions and a bunch of millionaires on the board. They don’t need my money!