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The US has no social safety net. Healthcare comes from your employer. Everything is centered around having a job. Opinions on AI diverge significantly and someone’s response to this question would be pivotal to me in a hiring role. The market is not great for job seekers. The hiring manager can wait for someone who aligns with their company’s perspective on this.
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No, if anything, I would say a very unfortunate trait of existence right now is that reality does NOT tend to punish corporations for being completely idiotic, at least not very fast at all.

Look at musk's companies. They will basically never (on any near timescale...) produce GAAP profitability and yet their IPO is in the trillions. To the point that S&P refusing to suspend their GAAP profitability requirements means the index will basically never see this company in it (which I'm quite pleased about).

The power of already-accumulated capital is simply more powerful than things like "don't be completely pants-on-head stupid about a recent fad" "don't seig-heil in front of the world stage" "there's no point in having people come to an office just to spend all day on zoom" etc etc etc.

The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent, and companies can remain irrational longer than you can go without contributing to your 401k.

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How is Germany relevant in this?
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Acknowledging that my perception might be skewed because there are still a ton of social safety nets in place.

The same might not be true everywhere.

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Last time I was in Germany I saw what appeared to be homeless children
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Did they look Ukrainian or Syrian? Germany let in millions of people over the last few years and never built enough housing.
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Welfare doesn't entirely eliminate homelessness.

It's… like… not that simple.

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Last time I was in Germany I saw elderly people going through garbage bins in the park I sat at. I think you overestimate the safety net in Germany. In my European country the elderly sit at cafes drinking coffee, not going through bins.

Update:

Every street corner has a yellow garbage bin for recycling. That is where your plastic bottles go. Seems like a better system than having elderly going through bins.

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Maybe in your country they also don't have a deposit on bottles/cans, making it pointless to go through trash cans?
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Plastic bottles go in the yellow recycling bin. Deposit systems are dumb.
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Not OP but many people eligible for social benefits don't seek it, for all kinds of reasons (not knowing about it, pride, ideology, peer pressure, ...)
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Keep in mind that not every old person who searches garbage bins is actually poor. Some of them just have dementia. I personally know such people in my home town.
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That's why I said "mostly"
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