PJSJ™

A know it all, just not sure what all I know. Answers to all questions available here. Correct ones not guaranteed. Pittsburgh sports fan & friend of Dave Muir.

[PJSJ™ @hiddenvigorish]

Nothing better than this: An inspiration to us all. https://t.co/3R4rdryvVD

[Seinfeld Quotes @seinlanguage]

George: “This is gonna be my time. Time to taste the fruits and let the juices drip down my chin. I proclaim this: The Summer of George.”

[BucciOT.Com @Buccigross]

Welles Crowther’s bravery and heroism on 9/11 shall never be forgotten. As survivor Judy Wein, who was rescued by Crowther notes, “People can live 100 years and not have the compassion, the wherewithal to do what he did.”

[Martin Varsavsky @martinvars]

On radically different incomes life in America can be surprisingly similar.

Imagine three single mothers, each raising a ten-year-old boy. One is a public-school teacher in Tampa earning $50,000 a year. Another is a lawyer in Atlanta earning $200,000. The third is a venture-capital partner in Chicago earning $1 million.

On paper, they inhabit three different Americas. One earns twenty times more than another. One is 25th percentile im wealth the other 84th the last one top 1%. They describe inequality in the USA.

Now look at their sons.

All three wake up with electricity, running water, refrigeration, heating and air conditioning. They eat plenty of food, ride in safe modern cars, wear sneakers, watch YouTube, play the same video games, use similar phones and tablets and have access to vaccines, antibiotics, dentists and modern medicine.

One goes to public school, another to private school, the third perhaps to an elite private school. One flies economy once a year, another travels frequently, the third may occasionally fly private. Their houses, neighborhoods and vacations are different.

But their actual daily lives are far less different than their mothers’ incomes suggest.

The socialist argument has always been about equality of outcomes.

Well, look around. In much of ordinary material life, capitalism has already produced something remarkably close to it.

The millionaire’s refrigerator does not keep milk twenty times fresher. Her son’s iPhone does not make YouTube twenty times more entertaining. He cannot eat twenty breakfasts, sleep twenty hours at once or enjoy a video game twenty times more because his mother earns twenty times as much.

For several hours every day, these three boys may be doing almost exactly the same thing.

This would have been unimaginable two centuries ago. The child of a rich family and the child of a laborer often lived in genuinely different physical worlds. One had plentiful food, warmth, books, servants, doctors and transportation. The other might lack adequate calories or clean water.

Industrial capitalism destroyed much of that inequality by doing something socialism never managed very well: making formerly scarce things cheap enough for almost everyone.

Cars, refrigerators, televisions, air conditioning, computers and smartphones began as luxuries and became mass-market goods. The entrepreneur became rich precisely by making what the rich had available to everybody else.

And that may explain one of the great ironies of the new American enthusiasm for socialism. Capitalism’s victories are now so complete that nobody notices them.

Clean water is not considered wealth. Neither is electricity. Nor refrigeration. Nor an air-conditioned bedroom, instant global communication, unlimited music, thousands of films or a computer in your pocket more powerful than anything that existed when many of today’s billionaires were children.

Those things have become invisible because almost everyone has them.

What remains visible are the inequalities capitalism has not eliminated: the mansion, the private school, the beachfront house, the prestigious university, the best neighborhood.

But if the political demand is that ordinary people should be able to enjoy many of the same basic experiences as the rich, something extraordinary has already happened.

Put these families on a chart and the inequality looks enormous.

Put their ten-year-old boys on three sofas at eight o’clock at night, eating pizza in sweatpants and staring at nearly identical screens, and the difference becomes surprisingly hard to see.

Equality of income? Obviously not.

Equality of many of the outcomes that actually fill a human day?

Far more than we admit.

[Dan Bongino @dbongino]

This dude doesn’t know jack shit about the 1980s in America—and Jack left town.

I was a teenager when the ’80s ended, and it was an INCREDIBLE time to be alive.

No social-media rage farming. The Miracle on Ice kicked off the decade, and the Berlin Wall and communism came crashing down at the end. Reagan putting up monster GDP growth numbers. Pre-woke MTV. Indiana Jones. No men in women’s bathrooms. And much, much more.

The ’80s TORE IT UP.

Friends don’t let friends fall for Hollywood propaganda.

God bless America—and God bless the ’80s! 🇺🇸🇺🇸

[Jim Bowden⚾️ @JimBowdenGM]

The Seattle Mariners are going to win the ALWest & the Pittsburgh Pirates season is not over yet: https://t.co/k9KX8i3hd2

[Mike Commito @mikecommito]

On this day in 1980, Terry Fox arrived in Wawa, Ontario, 4,901km west from where he began the Marathon of Hope @TerryFoxCanada

[Michael A. Arouet @MichaelAArouet]

Inequality is good.

The possibility of becoming wealthy is a fantastic incentive to innovate and create. It has been the foundation of human progress.

That’s why capitalist countries are prosperous but not equal, while socialism always leads to equal distribution of poverty.

[The Athletic @TheAthletic]

What price do you put on a lifelong dream?

For former substitute teacher Lewis Kalb, it was $22,000.

The 73-year-old retiree won the Phillies' auction to call an inning on the radio.

And he sounded like he'd been doing it for years.

https://t.co/BUGNuNM0Vf

[Brian McElhinny @rtjr]

If you get doubled off the bases TWICE IN THE SAME GAME you need to be benched. Ridiculous.

[PJSJ™ @hiddenvigorish]

@DTonPirates Double 👎👎

[PJSJ™ @hiddenvigorish]

@mearshannah_ The Great Gonzo Brothers!

[Darren Rovell @darrenrovell]

This Day In 1969: Russians find out they lost the Cold War battle of first to land on the moon.

Worth noting: No top Russian official doubted it was real.

[Darren Rovell @darrenrovell]

July 13, 1985.

[PJSJ™ @hiddenvigorish]

@darrenrovell Lots more competition in soccer than ice hockey. Russia, a couple European teams and Canada (and maybe only Canada) compete with the US in ice hockey.

[PJSJ™ @hiddenvigorish]

@BobSmizik On cue….Davis Homers…..

[Sarah Langs @SlangsOnSports]

base
ball

[Mark Cuban @mcuban]

The reason anyone gets insanely rich is almost always because of the stock market. It certainly how @elonmusk did.

And the reason they get rich from the stock market, is because 150m Americans decided they wanted to own shares of stocks directly, or through their retirement plans, or through other approaches as a way of building their net worth and trying to create a better life for themselves.

One Hundred Fifty Million Americans. About 60% of adults.

Effectively believing that @elonmusk and many billionaires could make them wealthier and help them achieve a better life.

If you want @elonmusk , and most billionaires to no longer be that rich, convince those 150m to sell their stocks, funds, ETFs whatever.

Of course you would wipe out the net-worth of most of those people, and everyone else’s savings, as the markets crashed and brought down the economy and created the worst depression we have ever seen.

Alternatively

There are ways to improve healthcare access and eventually make it available to all.

To start -
If you want @elonmusk and all billionaires to improve healthcare for everyone , ask them to stop doing business with the enormous healthcare conglomerates and to work directly with transparently priced care providers.

It’s the behemoth HC conglomerates that make HC so bad for so many. (Check my timeline for more detail)

Removing them would push the cost of healthcare down for everyone. Their corporate decisions impact our healthcare cost and availability.

Of course if they do that, not only would our HC costs go down , and the quality of care for their employees and the entire country go up

But

They would see their corporate cash flow increase dramatically and we would have more millionaires, billionaires and maybe even another trillionaire when that cash flow moved from the big health care conglomerates to their bottom line, so would the net worth of the 150 million American adults that own public stocks

Capitalism is better than socialism because 150m Americans can influence exactly what happens in this country.

[Aiden Stepansky @AidenStepansky]

“To the kids here in Pittsburgh, he's the biggest thing in baseball by far. He is baseball,” Ingomar Franklin Park Little League President Chris Greco said.

READ:
https://t.co/uhwxbS8c0D

[Greg Brown @gbrowniepoints]

Thanks to Ben Susco for the message & the photos! Good stuff @Paul_Skenes

[PJSJ™ @hiddenvigorish]

@gbrowniepoints Amen. Long night of not knowing. Bucs haven’t had many All Star Second Baseman. Don’t want to lose this one.

[Michael Beschloss @BeschlossDC]

General Eisenhower's June 5, 1944, note for the message he would issue if the D-Day invasion failed the next day. He said that if there was any blame, "it is mine alone."