agtmadcat

And they say that the German sense of humor is no laughing matter!

Livers are trippy organs.

In California starting in a couple of years transit agencies aren't going to be allowed to buy anything other than electric busses. Shame on Trimet for delaying by two decades.

Have you started a ketogenic diet yet? It was originally a treatment for epilepsy, but a lot of people also use it for weight control. You can get details over on /r/keto if you're not familiar with it!

I think "most economists" is a bit of a stretch - from what I've seen, raising the minimum wage is such a mixed bag that there's no consensus on what to expect. It seems that the general economic consensus is that something higher than what we have now would be good, but jumping by some huge amount ($20/hr or whatever) would be a ruinous shock to the system.

You are correct that minimum wage and healthcare issues are packed with emotional appeals that the left uses, but science can only provide us limited value in those, because economics is hard, and is really terrible at predicting anything.

That being said, while both the left and right have far too much emotional nonsense, there are a few hard-science areas where the left is aligned with reality, but the right isn't. The left has a few too (nuclear power and GMOs come to mind), but they're not generally issues with the potential downsides of not doing anything about climate change.

I really wish there were a science party, where evidence ruled all, and emotions were left at the door. The problem is you'd never be able to get enough people to vote for it, because there will always be some piece of reality that they disagree with, and most people can't put their personal beliefs aside to let science work. =(