“This is bad. And you should feel bad.”

But again, you're only looking at income and that's not the best measurement.

Like let's say there are two families, one who makes $95k/year and the other who makes $65k/year. You are saying just based on that, the $65k/year family needs more assistance.

But what if the $95k/year family has 5 young kids who are all in sports and dance and some in childcare and the family's average annual expenses is about $90k/year whereas the $65k/year family is just a couple with no kids and they only average annual expenses of around $45k/year? The $95k/year family only has about a $5k buffer from living beyond their means whereas the $65k/year family has a $20k buffer, so it seems like the $95k family probably needs assistance more than the $65k one in this specific case, but how would that be determined unless there was some way to collect and process all that information (which would be very costly to do)?

And even if you had a way to collect and process all that info, would it still be able to make such a determination? It seems unlikely, so giving everyone something like this is probably still the best way to make sure it gets to as many people who need it as possible.

No, all they figured out was that you make less than the limit they set (which is why they did it that way, it was the easiest way). You are saying it should be distributed based on who “needs” it the most.

“People who need the most get the most, etc.” That can’t be determined just by looking at someone’s income, so whether you realize it or not, you are talking about hiring a team to design and implement some algorithm that takes into account various metrics, which would have to be collected, in order to decide “this person needs $550, this other person needs $345, this other person needs $120, this other person needs $0, etc.” The only way that would actually be “more efficient” is if you completely disregard the cost of setting it up. But if you factor in how much work that would be, it does end up being cheaper to just give the benefit to everyone (or at least, like in this case: a group with a very large cutoff) and being okay with the fact that some people who “don’t need it” will wind up getting it.

It costs to figure out stuff like that. I bet it would cost more than $450 for them to figure out that you specifically “don’t need” $450.

Therefore, they actually are saving money by just giving you $450 and not paying to determine that you don’t need it.

Better to overshoot and give it to some people who don't "need" it than undershoot and not give it to people who actually are struggling.

People making near, but under the cap, are likely paying more in taxes as it is, so more of a wash once you get up there anyways.

The main issue is that not every game is important, which is why players take games off. NFL doesn’t have this problem because there are only 17 games and you have to win as many as possible to make the playoffs, so rarely is a team in position to let their best players sit out a couple times. And if they are, they either have one of the best or worst records in the league and it typically only happens last week or two of the season (aka minimal impact).

IMO if NBA can’t/won’t reduce the number of games, then they should use a format similar to Latin American soccer leagues. Have two parts of the season (Apertura and Clausura) that each have their own champion and then those champions play for the title at the very end. This would make all the games more important because instead of an 82 game single season there would be two 41 game mini-seasons (or realistically less than that to make room for extra playoff games) which would mean sitting out a couple games could actually be the different between making the playoffs or not, which is typically not the case now with so many games on the schedule, and is why they do it so often.

This split format would also kind of curve tanking because they could set it up so that it only looks at the worst record out of the two for the lottery or something so a team could potentially secure a lottery pick in the Apertura and then actually try to win in the Clausura, as opposed to simply trying to be terrible the entire year for the same outcome, which is what they do now.

I still got an ad for the candidate that lost my local State House race this morning on Youtube. lol

I used to live in Michigan. One of the best things about it was being on the western edge of the Eastern timezone, it would be light out until about 9:30 at night in the summer and stay light until at least 5:00 in the winter (even with switching the clocks back).

I’ve always thought Maine should do the same, being on the western edge of Atlantic time would be so much better. You guys would love it if you tried it.