That would be a nightmare, you're basically bringing in a new currency at that point because now all cash, every bank account and every price in the whole country needs to change. That's going to be probably hundreds of thousands of times more effort and expense than phasing out pennies!
Is that a federal law or state law? Whichever jurisdiction it is, surely you'd only need a one-clause amendment to add an exception for rounding cash transactions by up to two cents to account for the discontinuation of pennies... I just can't imagine that taking more than a few weeks to resolve, surely your political systems in the US haven't become that dysfunctional where this couldn't be fixed that quickly?
Australia's rules for how to round are summed up in four dot points here in a single page of info, with another two short paragraphs about how electronic/credit card and cheque transactions are handled (they are not rounded): https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/rounding-and-eftpos-tr...
When the removal of one and two cent pieces actually happened in Australia (1991), all the details were distributed in a pamphlet of just four pages. That amount of information is probably about all people need, literally just a document with some guidelines!
Yes but massive censorship and the constant surveillance of children is also not good for the children ultimately. We need to bring the question of “does this help create a world that we want children to grow up in?”
Are we really going to argue “since some parents won’t adequately parent their children, we’re going to create a massive censorship and surveillance apparatus and the Government will tightly control what everyone is allowed to view or talk about online”?
I might dryly suggest that it is prudent preparation for the computing environments they will encounter in their future jobs. Like the way expensive prep schools have children wearing business casual...
Maybe “simple and easily manipulated” is better. The driving force behind the UK’s “child safety” push seems to be mostly because there was “enormous potential across the Safety Tech sector … to foster the development of sustainable, high-tech companies across the country” [1].
Don’t be deceived - huge amounts of lobbying went into this, because some savvy entrepreneurs saw a market to sell age-verification services. The key driver behind the laws is more about creating that market than actual child protection - if they were actually interested in that, they wouldn’t be pushing things that are clearly so ineffective (but expensive).
The people around you are thriving. The progress she wants is happening but not without trillions in opposition to the working class. The fight won't be won silently.
I'm outside the US political sphere so might have a different perspective looking in from abroad, but how could anybody possibly have expected anything but just grift and corruption from a second Trump term? There was the whole first term to see that he said one thing and then would act only what ever way benefited his, his family's, and his associates' interests...
From inside the USA, I don’t know. It’s baffling how even in 2015 people expected anything different from the crassest man alive.
Perhaps they thought the grift and corruption would benefit them, and not harm them and thus were okay with it? Like how from the first term someone was quoted saying something along the lines of “they’re not hurting the right people”
In 2015 the democrats chose to go for the 'establishment obvious candidate' despite strong grassroots support for a more populist candidate with a clear track record of working for the best interest of the American People.
They did Bernie dirty, and were lucky to get even as many votes as they did. The email scandal immediately before the election didn't help, but that's more of an excuse for what someone was going to do anyway.
After ~10 years of the current president campaigning both in and out of office. Particularly after Jan 6th. Even more so after congress was too spineless to do their jobs for the people who elected them. NONE of what's happened since really, really, surprises me. Sadden? Disappoint? Dismay? Oh yes, all of those and more. I've been amazed at how fast all that stuff started to happen in the second term. I do totally believe that waste of carbon never read Project 2025 ; just rubber stamping what the rich supporters have asked for.
Looking back further. I'm seriously saddened the Democrats didn't do the right thing for the American People way back in 2008 / 2009. National Single Payer Healthcare. Make healthcare efficient, have competition among providers, but give every person the right to healthcare as part of the social contract and the taxes they pay.
I'm still hopeful that when the pendulum swings back the other way we can end the nightmare of all the damned paperwork and billing and having to do annoying renewals every bloody year.
I think the key reason is that Americans (and Brits) have been lead down the path that all politicans and government in general is corrupt and inefficient, and so it becomes which corrupt person you want in charge. Your guy or the other guy. This is, of course, due to decades of oligarch propaganda. Even otherwise intelligent people think government is the problem and libertarian market forces are the solution. Burn it (government) all down is their end game
Today, all of us have many choices about where we get our news from, and by and large we overwhelmingly choose to listen only to those sources that confirm our existing opinions.
This means that people who voted for Trump are unlikely to ever hear about this sort of corruption, or if they do it will be spun as "his enemies attacking him" or something.
The part you're missing is that a very large number of voters (on both political sides) expect nothing but outright grift and corruption from both parties. And they're not wrong to do so.
Remember, Trump won both times against a candidate who was anointed by the powers that be, not chosen by the people. (Hillary Clinton at least went through the motions of holding primaries, but Kamala Harris didn't even have that).
So people say - out of the two corrupt parties, I might as well vote for the one that isn't actively attacking me.
Keep in mind that Democrats will declare you an outcast if you disagree with any single line of the party agenda - and they're currently pushing at least 3 ideas each of which is strongly rejected by some (independent) fraction of the voterbase.
I agree with the corruption part. After all "drain the swap" was an effective election slogan.
The attack part is just a hyperbole. The leader of MAGA will openly call for people being jailed or primaried if they disagree.
I also get where you are coming from. I have seen this play out 3 times. A non-establishment candidate comes in promising change and removing corruption. Very good at agitation and rousing people by talking about how their government has failed them. Promising to make things better.
But once in power things take a nose dive. The candidate and the party members are even more corrupt. They believe grift and corruption is the norm so there is nothing wrong in being overly and openly corrupt.
And despite the blatant corruption supporters keep making excuses for the behavior. "At least they won against the establishment" or "at least they are in my corner" but often they cannot point to examples to how their lives are better. In most cases they either point to policies which are making lives better for a selected set of people i.e. corruption or just devolve into whataboutism along party lines.
In most cases it takes at about a decade for people to see that their lives aren't any better and this "non-establishment" candidate is even worse. By that time serious damage to the government infrastructure has already been done. There is no coming back.
Sooner or later this behavior will turn US into a third world country where government employees demand bribes openly. But hey, "both parties are corrupt" so why not have partisan and corrupt government employees too.
There are too many things to really worry about it too much. It's not really how language works anyway - like would you say "You don't want to call your organisation the Rare Books Association because 'rare' is only one letter away from 'rape'?" - clearly that's ridiculous.
I've never heard of it either until reading these comments (I'm in Australia). Assuming the NA in that acronym means North America (?) and given that Denx and this new entity is German it's probably safe to assume that they haven't heard of it either.
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