Consider McKeesport. Look at Upper 10th ward or Christy Park. House prices are way below what the rest of the country are at but are moving upwards. There’s plenty of houses that are 4 bedrooms you can snag for $100-150k. Upper 10th ward is considered a hidden secret to McKeesport, there’s hardly any traffic, because it’s on a hill, no violence. Port vue is also nice, it’s a bordering township also on the hill, but it’s on the other side of the river so it’s also very safe.

I remember seeing a comic that showed a neighborhood road covered in potholes, and it had an average speed of 20 mph. Then they repaved the road and the average speed went up to 40 mph. Then people complained cars were going to fast so they installed speed bumps that brought the average speed back down to 20 mph.

Better to just keep the roads at a constant level of bad but not car destroying bad and it keeps roads at safe speed.

Our roads out here by Pittsburgh are pretty bad by the hills to the east. You just get used to it lol

Pure democracies end up becoming mob rule. In a true democracy, every person would have a vote on every decision of government. This may work on a small town, or even county level, but you start getting into entire states or even entire countries, it’s not plausible.

According to the Hoover Institution, -

“A “pure democracy,” explained Madison, “can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction.” But a republic, he continued, “by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, . . . promises the cure for which we are seeking.” The Framers believed that cooler heads would prevail if the people’s impulses were funneled through elected representatives in government. And, in fact, representation was only one part of the Founders’ remedy for the mischiefs of faction. They also separated the powers of government among three branches, established a Senate in which states, not people, have equal voice, established the electoral college rather than direct popular vote for the selection of the president, divided powers between the national and state governments, and allowed that individual rights would prevail over national (and later state) power.”

The whole separation of power was not just the 3 branches of government, but also the types of representation.

Should the wealthy not have a say in politics?

We’re not supposed to have true democracy. The system was designed as a republic for a reason.

The way our elected officials are elected was designed to prevent one group from taking over, even if 51 percent of the country agree with them.

The House of Representatives is elected by popular vote of the individual constituencies.

The Senate was originally chosen by the governor of the state whenever there was an opening.

And the President is chosen by a group of electors chosen by the people of each state.

The senate was already changed to match the house of reps voting method. Let’s not change the presidency to match the house and senate. The whole system was designed so that it gave everyone equal representation in our government.

So 8-9 months out of the year I’m essentially a half time stay at home dad, drive the daily 4 hours taking 2 kids to and from school, my wife works from home but she has a stressful job as an engineer. 3-4 months out of the year I prepare tax returns. On a good day I can knock out 12-17 returns in a day. Last year I did somewhere between 850-900 federal state and local income tax returns. There is no relaxing during tax season, you can relax either on April 16th, or when the extensions are completed. I wake up, work, come home, help out the girls to bed and crash

My problem is during tax season it’s not uncommon for me to drink 1 pot or more a day of coffee. My office has a standard Mr Coffee, and any light roast or coffee with anything more than light acidity upsets my stomach. The darker the roast, the smoother it goes down for me. And I definitely need the coffee when I’m down the office about 10-14 hours a day 7 days a week. Energy drinks don’t do much for me and they have way too much sugar.

I find it hard to believe that every dark roast is just a bad batch of coffee beans. I understand how it can be used in that manner, but are you saying that for dark roasts they just grab the cheapest beans and burn the hell out of them?

I’m not surprised you’re buried here at the bottom

I think they are looking to be removed from all these text lists altogether. I get at least a dozen a week and as many times as I hit stop I still keep getting texts.