I love the CLARITY and FEEDBACK of the TikTok sale or ban (U.S. House March 13, 2024)

[Multicolored Lemur]

House passes a bill that could lead to a TikTok ban if Chinese owner refuses to sell

The bill would require the Chinese firm ByteDance to divest TikTok and other applications it owns within six months of the bill’s enactment.

apnews.com

On Wednesday, March 13, the U.S. House passed a bill which said, Hey, TikTok, you have 6 months to sell to a new company or face a U.S. ban. This passed the House with a strong 352 - 65 majority.

The Senate needs to pass it. And President Biden has said he will sign it.

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

Other straight-forward laws —

In Obamacare, health insurance companies can no longer “pre-exist” patients and say they won’t cover people for this or that because the condition pre-existed coverage.

The federal minimum wage is $7.25. A single number. Now, about half of U.S. states have a higher state minimum wage. And often people working lower paid jobs very much know this number.

The “salary threshold” of $35,568 which I try to promote. If a Walmart assistant manager makes below this “threshold,” he or she still gets time-and-a-half for overtime.

I think this is very effective at pushing companies to spread out available jobs.

President Trump’s Labor Department are the ones who increased it to $35,568. But this was in Dec. 2019 right before Covid, so no one remembers.

President Biden’s Labor Department wants to raise it to about fifty-five thousand.

And the fact that I have to explain all this shows that it hasn’t caught on! Not yet anyway.

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

If a piece of legislation can fit on 1 side of 1 piece of paper, I think this is very good for democracy.

If it fails, you get feedback that it fails and maybe even prompt feedback. Conversely, some things will work better than we think.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

House passes a bill that could lead to a TikTok ban if Chinese owner refuses to sell

The bill would require the Chinese firm ByteDance to divest TikTok and other applications it owns within six months of the bill’s enactment.

apnews.com

On Wednesday, March 13, the U.S. House passed a bill which said, Hey, TikTok, you have 6 months to sell to a new company or face a U.S. ban. This passed the House with a strong 352 - 65 majority.

The Senate needs to pass it. And President Biden has said he will sign it.

I'm kinda leaning towards disagreeing with this bill. I think the government can regulate business, but I don't think they should be telling the business who can run it. On one side there is security concern that the current owners of Tik Tok has a lot of personal data on Americans that they can share with the Chinese government. On the other side, there is ideal of America being a land of free-speech and free enterprise.

If there was evidence that the owner of Tik Tok was sending private information on Americans to China then I'd be for banning the company, but the article says that no such evidence exists. Although, there is a potential for it to happen, and it is usually smart to be proactive to lessen potential risk rather than being reactive.

Considering all of this, I think the US leaders should look for options to limit information sharing of Americans when there's a high risk of data being shared with foreign adversaries.

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

Although, there is a potential for it to happen, and it is usually smart to be proactive to lessen potential risk rather than being reactive.

That’s kind of where I come down. And I view China as a rival, no more, no less.

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On the general point of short & clear legislation . . .

Okay, you know how transparency has become a goal of public policy and has become a bit of a buzzword, “transparency.” And actually, I think it’s a pretty good buzzword. In addition, if we were to add “short-cycle feedback” to it, we might really be on to something!