Voting has eligibility requirements (citizenship, felony status depending on jurisdiction of offense) and registering someone in error could induce them to vote while inelligible, which is a serious offense.
Automatic tax filing might be nice for easy situations, but there's lots of things the IRS doesn't know and can't realistically know. Like how much capital improvements did you do on your house, and maybe even how much did you pay for your house ... whenever the IRS doesn't know the cost basis, they helpfully assume it is zero and send you a big tax bill... Still for w-2 + 1099s with cost basis reported, it could be easier.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-w...
Honest question: Why is there no such auto registration for women?
The fact is, western military traditions it sexist for no good reason. Yes, the strongest woman will be weaker than the strongest man. Yes, it you take a sport like swordfighting, the best woman will be at the level of the 50th best man. But we're not talking about taking champions on a 1 on 1 duel here. We aren't even talking about fighting. What really matters in armies is endurance, and women are close enough to men on that that it shouldn't really matter.
And even if you want to think of war as a succession of duels, war have changed in the last century. Women are just better as shooting than men, especially when standing.
But yes, in modern warfare there are as many jobs if not more that require precision or some level of intelligence as those that require brute strength. Even if fewer of them are right at the front line, they’re just as important.
You don’t send a large percentage of women to the front line in wars of attrition because their deaths mean a greater loss of future reproductive capacity than men’s do. But the way countries like the US have waged war over the last 75 years (with a relatively small surface area of soldiers put directly at risk), that’s less of a consideration. The counterpoint might be a border war without massive air superiority on either side like the current one in Ukraine.
There’s really no motivation for China to attack the US (they have plenty of economic leverage and that would be far less costly to them than an invasion, and what would they even want with the territory of a conquered US?) but I suspect many of the reasons the US is assumed to be immune to invasion are far weaker in the face of an enemy with far more manpower and a near-bottomless supply of drones that also has the capacity to cut off our access to key parts, materials, and manufactured goods.
Yet, here we are.
Unlike Vietnam, one can no longer hide from government in times of unrest.
Perhaps that's the wake-up call privacy needs.
I've looked into it, and this ailment is weirdly linked to the wealth of your parents.
That's true but you can leave for Canada or Europe.
I think a lot of people either (understandably) forgot or didn't pay attention to the details of when they got their driver's license, or we have a bot problem spreading toxic propaganda.
The majority of men are already registered. I agree this is not controversial.
its bizarre when people act like the preceding day, week, month, etc has no bearing on the weight of activities. same with who makes the decisions and their biases
if you want to present the history of why now, go ahead but acting like a gollygeewhiz LLM about it is bizzare and incurious.
Are you aware of the concept of "boiling the frog"?
2027: "It's just calling up the draft. It doesn't mean they are going to be sent to the frontline."
There is some truth to, what was it, Soros' reflexivity.
jjgreen•2h ago