If you had any idea the kind of info that mothers and daughters have to talk about, you wouldn’t worry about helping your son trim the verge :D

I don’t have a source but I’ve read that young children can learn up to 4 languages at once, without mixing them up, before they show any sign of strain.

So why does anyone launder money? Isn’t the whole purpose of that to hide conspicuous flows of cash from illegal activities? If it’s safe to pay taxes on ill gotten gains, why launder?

I just mean that the aphorism about drugs dealers is colorful and amusing. I understand it’s making a real point but it’s also funny.

I havent heard that one. That’s rich.

I’d really like to fix the whole mess. Our economy relies on these folks but they are kept a second class, subject to exploitation and prosecution at any time. All so agricultural and construction labor can be got for less than minimum wage. It’s disgusting and broken. And anytime the racists get riled up, they have a legal basis to browbeat everyone with. It’s ridiculous.

I have to wonder how many would ever use it to file for a tax refund though. Wouldn’t that out them to the government?

Yeah you can’t really talk though.

Only 3? Found the optimist!

Just as a point of perspective, I’m 51 and my wife is 46. We are entirely independent and on great terms with all our parents. I still don’t relish the idea of staying overnight at her parents house with them.

Pretty condescending though and makes a lot of age based assumptions.

It’s interesting - the psychology of that. Recently I was answering someone who asked why the US doesn’t have more of a working class movement, and a big part of my answer was that no one in the US thinks of themselves as part of the working class. Even if they are unarguably at the base of the economy, their plan is to get out of the working class, not make it better. Similarly, I can see Americans having a problem accepting themselves as a permanent minority. In other parts of the world this is just a fact of life. Christians in Syria know they will never be a majority. When rebels ousted Assad, one of the first things they said was that they will treat minorities well. Those minorities know who they are. Similarly, Kurds are 15% of Iraq and that is just a fact based on hundreds of years of ethnic history in the region. But in the US, everyone is on their way to something better (at least so we think). Parts of Europe had very formal class systems for long periods of history so there are people who just think of themselves as working class and they stand for workers’ rights. Not so in the US. No one here is working class or a monitory. We’re too full of all the rhetoric about being created equal.

I’m just hearing it for the first time in this thread but my first impression isn’t great. Do you really want a label that brands you as a “minority?” That doesn’t seem like a great first step toward equality.

It’s the same phenomenon as “LGBTQI+”

It was literally LGB at one point. I understand the concept of inclusion but I think pursuing it by appending and appending and appending is a lousy way to go. I believe the “Q” was finally added in part because it was hoped to be some kind of catch-all, but that didn’t work.

Water just wasn’t really an option

This is funny, considering how many people in the world survive on muddy water they had to walk miles to collect in a bucket.

This is the answer. People above are somehow blaming private corporations for their public infrastructure (which doesn’t even make sense anyway) when the real answer is that many people just think “it doesn’t taste good” compared to the syrupy swill they’ve become addicted to.

Yes chlorine is a very volatile chemical and dissipates quickly.

Yes I think “having to work” is definitely the boundary of upper class. We’re talking inheritances, investments, landlording, whatever.

I earn a great deal of money at my job - top 1%. But I live in a HCOL area and am raising two kids. We have no aspirations but to own our house someday and send our kids to college. If we go on a vacation once a year we are happy. I would lose absolutely everything were I to get laid off from my job. We still look for sales at Costco and cook at home instead of eating out, like everyone else. This still feels like “middle class” to me, whatever my wage is.

However I am seeing that even the basic components of the American Dream, a house and a family, are more than most can attain. I think that says that our working class is growing and perhaps getting pretty large. Certainly if you are living hand to mouth that’s working class. If you have no prospect of owning your home or sending your kids to college, that’s working class.

“Working class” has associations from when we were an industrial and manufacturing economy. People who work in an office don’t think “I’m working class” because they don’t wear coveralls and operate power tools. But we’ve transitioned to a services-based economy now for many years, so I think a LOT of people are working class without even realizing it.

And if you don’t even know you’re working class, how are you going to get fired up about a workers rights rally?

I’ll add one extra thing here: that no one in America identifies themselves as “a worker” or “working class.”

Perhaps Europe, with its historic class strata, is better prepared for this. Maybe people there know that they are working class and always will be. With that identity firmly held, they can find each other and agitate for their rights.

In America, if you are working class, first of all you’d never admit it. Everyone is “middle class” here, don’t you know. And even if in your heart you know you are working class, your aim is to get out of the working class, not make its life better.

No justifications here, just a description of American psychology on this topic.

Or just, you know, move on with your life.