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This is a gross oversimplification of a complex issue that makes it seem like a person who can't have children, or someone who doesn't want children is somehow never going to be happy. You don't need any of that. You do need friends- relationships. But they don't have to be romantic ones and they certainly don't have to have children. Also not sure what culture is saying the single life is this great happy life, we push the opposite a lot harder in this culture.

I agree that there's a lot of hyperbole around the impact of minimum wage on small business. I would still contend that it's an overall negative for those businesses though. And it's not that they can't pay them... A lot of that hyperbole is that they will be forced to close or they're gonna leave the city. Most of them don't. They just... cut hours. Like cited up above. Those small businesses... Wages went up, overall payroll is DOWN. Most of them are saving money by hiring less people and cutting the hours of the part timers they already have. They are making it work. Still, i contend that the reaction as a small business is still negative. Just because they make it work doesn't mean it's a satisfactory solution (at least in my mind). I am FINE with states who feel like they need to go above and beyond. If in California they want to pass a $20 minimum wage because a small studio apartment can go for more than $2k a month... go for it. I am not in or near California at all. Not my business and not my place to tell them how to run their state. For the most part, anyway. I know you said you're for the freedom dividend, so there's no argument here. But 12k a year (effectively $6 an hour doing a 40 hour / week job all year) has way more benefits across the board. I actually don't know if there is a negative other than government cost -- which Yang has planned out well enough for me to jump on board. Doesn't have the negative impact on small business, people working those part time jobs COULD ACTUALLY QUIT (if they want). Give people the freedom to pursue things they actually love and enjoy rather than having to work all the damn time. We agree here more than we don't, I just had to get that out there.

The minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation, much less progress. It should be much higher than it is, and the idea that raising it is going to cause some huge collapse of small business is just not true. Why do you think businesses that can't afford to pay their workers a living wage should stay in business? They are just exploiting their own workers. The freedom dividend is a great measure, but we also need a higher minimum wage. In other news, Yang is leading the straw poll in Florida and its not even close. He's at 35%. Warren is next at 20%.

Why have we not seen this when we've raised the minimum wage then? If your business cannot survive while paying their workers a livable wage, then you deserve to go under. I agree its not $15/hr across the country. I don't need $15/hr in Kentucky and I probably need more than that in SF and NY. But a livable wage, assuming 40-hour work week? Absolutely, yes.

I appreciate the detailed response. I still don't get it, and I will lay out why. But first: Guns kill quite a bit more than 10,000 people in the United States per year. Mass shootings, sure, they are less than 500, though the trend is growing upwards. But gun violence kills a lot of people. About 40,000 people died from gunshot wounds in the US in 2017. And again, its trending upwards, that was more than any year since 1968. Medicare sucks is a huge generalization. There are plenty of people who would not be able to afford their medication at all except for medicare. Are there problems? Of course there are, but the issues are less with medicare and more with the ridiculous prices hospitals charge and insurances charge as a whole. (I am aware Medicare is an insurance, just saying its not solely an issue of theirs.) So then to address the point. You are against medicare for all because you don't want it to come at you and yours expense. On what grounds, then, should I pay taxes to the city to support my fire department? My local police? Infrastructure for highways that I never use? Why should we not privatize all of that and just have people buy crime insurance, highway insurance- or tolls, everything tolls- and firefighter insurance? And if you don't have it and you're being robbed the police don't come. If you're on a road you shouldn't be, you're idk, arrested. And if your house is on fire, it just burns down and the firefighters don't come. Plenty of times those things are not your fault, (minus not being on the road, everyone has a GPS at this point). Why should I pay for someone else's misfortune of having their house on fire and needing firefighters? Why should my taxes go to paying the police when I haven't needed them? Obviously, because society is better off that way. Just like it would be better off if people didn't have to grin and bear it if they have something wrong and hope its not too serious. Because what the GOP doesn't want people to know is that we still end up footing the bill. Someone shows up at the hospital, they aren't going to turn them away if they are dying. And many of those problems can be stopped for far less money if they are caught earlier, but people without insurance won't go until they are forced to. People are far happier in countries with some form of socialized healthcare, but in the US we're too busy diving under the covers at the mention of the word socialism to even consider what it would actually mean, and the fact that we already have socialist system that run just fine. This even wraps all the way back around to gun control again. You guys, according to our poll, seem to think mental illness is a major factor in mass shootings. You know one of the biggest problems for people who have mental issues? They don't have insurance that will cover it, so they can't get treatment. The right's biggest lie is to tell the middle class that the poor person is the problem- You shouldn't have to subsidize the poor people. All the while the top 1% just keep taking more and more of the pot.