#usa things

in a time of more and more ads: gentle reminder that if your AGI is less than like $80k and you can file the 1040EZ, check out https://freefile.taxslayer.com (which i accessed via the irs.gov website trusted tax partners page)

I’m too proud of this answer not to share it

if youre on disability/partial disability and you win the lottery you get kicked off disability benifits because that counts as 'earned' income and/or you now have more than 2k in savings

This is my first time ever living in an apartment. I'm several floors up. My apartment is trash chute adjacent.

I mean, look, I'm not gonna advocate for Colombia's public education system because I attended a prep military academy in the summers and a private catholic school for the whole time I was there, so I've never stepped foot in a public school there. It was expensive and decidedly NOT public education that very few in the country have access to, because well, ✨economic inequality✨.

But I do know that kids get MANDATED geography and history of the world. I know that despite going to private school we were working with government set education standards and by 6th grade I'd already taken physics and Chem and was well on my way through algebra 2 (most of these are 10th-11th grade things AT BEST in the US). I know that bilingual education is mandated in every public school in Colombia and although most people pick up as much as Americans pick up with mandated Spanish, some schools crank out people with great mastery of English.

Colombian kids at least know where everything in their country is, and we know our neighboring nations. We know just who is in Central America even if we can't place them in the map everytime. We know that Eurasia is a big ass continent and can tell you at least some cities and countries and where they are. We can sure as shit find China and Russia on a map, and have a vague idea of where the middle east is—this is especially true considering the whole Israel situation for a Catholic majority country.

The gaps of what's available for kids in the US is INSANE. The fact that if you don't have the time for an AP course or the money for private school your education is subpar at best is saddening. This is also a big ass spotlight on inequality, because depending on your zip code (read if your neighborhood is mostly black/minorities) your education is even shittier, your teachers are underpaid, your classrooms are overcrowded, and nevermind honors/AP courses since underpaid teachers can't be called on to teach them. You get outdated textbooks, if you even get textbooks at all. I graduated from an inner city HS in NYC and the fact that I made it to college was a miracle! My HS still makes a massive deal out of the ONE kid we had who got into Yale, where that seems to be a given for so many people in the more affluent neighborhoods. And even with all the AP courses available to me and the extracurriculars I had (and the education I had coming in to the US) I felt severely under prepared compared to my white counterparts in school in a lot of things. I had to work TWICE as hard as they did simply because the public system did NOT prepare minorities and black students to go to college.

This shit is saddening and real.

The state of this country is UH, precarious at best. It's a big shining light on the absolutely disgusting inequality going on, and the incredible truth that white people keep pretending this isn't about race when generations of black/poc/minorities just don't even get a chance. Or even when it's poor white people in rural areas who they don't give a shit about. THE INEQUALITY SEEPS INTO EVERYTHING.