Feb. 5th, 2026

birdwatcher: (Leif Gram: Mr. Fix)
cato.org -- Why Immigrants Were Fiscally Positive. The US government spends more than it receives in taxes and other revenue, so many people believe that deporting a person with average characteristics would improve the deficit. They reason that, with fewer US residents, there would be a commensurate decrease in government spending and thus a lower deficit.
However, a significant portion of government spending consists of items that do not causally increase or decrease with population. For instance, the US military, nuclear arsenal, and NASA spaceflight would remain the same regardless of whether the US population grew or shrank by a million people. [...] As we explain in more detail in the Appendix, immigrants may benefit from this spending, but they do not require the government to spend more on these items. Indeed, immigrants may even decrease these costs for the US-born by lowering interest rates and decreasing military recruitment costs. And they certainly ease the fiscal load on the US-born, because immigrant taxpayers help shoulder the fiscal burden of these expenditures.
birdwatcher: (belgium fries)
theguardian.com -- ‘The right has won the family’: my relentless search for lefty mommy bloggers.
In my ideal algorithm, I would get served posts to assuage my doubts. I would watch nursery hauls of a mother whose progressiveness I did not doubt. I would know that she dreads the realities of the climate crisis. I would listen to a parent describe her weekly meal prep for a family of four and not wonder if she was politically aligned with the men in government stripping food safety regulations. Maybe tips on how to get your daily steps in with a newborn would include showing up at protests or delivering mutual aid groceries. Because in real life, I was raised by and hope to be a mother who is both fluent in the chaotic and comforting mundanity of domesticity and enraged by the systems that diminish and destroy families and livelihoods. I just don’t see that much of it in my online spheres.
Instead, the most popular motherhood and lifestyle content lands somewhere on the short spectrum between conservative tradwife propaganda and extraordinarily apolitical, considering the paralyzing polycrisis we find ourselves in.

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Feb. 5th, 2026 10:59 pm
birdwatcher: (Dore: Ogre)
Non, Grigoryan,
Non, je ne regrette rien...