That’s just salaried folks though. The vast majority of american workers are hourly or contractors. Per the Dept of Labor’s own site:

The Wage and Hour Division is dedicated to protecting and enhancing the welfare of the nation’s workforce with a focus on low-wage, underserved workers. In fiscal year 2023, we successfully recovered over $274 million in back wages and damages for more than 163,000 workers nationwide.

Wage theft is when employers don’t properly pay their employees and is a HUGE problem because it isn’t always out of malevolence, it can be as simple as the time clock not properly computing overtime, etc.

If you don’t think that $274 million is large amount, think about how the vast majority of these things never get reported to the authorities; that number should be higher.

Source for quote: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/data

Surprised it hasn’t been mentioned, but Electric Vehicles in general. I remember wishing for them to be a thing when I used to drive my family’s gas-guzzling vehicles. If you look outside of Tesla, there are plenty of options even affordable ones, it might Leaf you in disbelief.

Yes! I grew up with Warhammer, and I can’t tell you how many times as a teen I wished I could just make my own minis, or print something specific to add on while kitbashing.

Fast forward to today and I have a resin printer, unfortunately my free time is a bit less than it was 20 years ago so it doesn’t see as much use as I’d like. God I feel old.

^This. I can tell every time my pc updates by the fact that nothing ever works correctly anymore.

Literally just downloaded video drivers yesterday due to this, and I have the vast majority of auto updates turned off for windows… Every update moves me closer to switching Os entirely.

I legit “joke” about how I wish extraterrestrials would show up so the world could get its shit together on a regular basis. Glad to see I’m not alone in my cynicism about our species.