froggeritoTop Debaiter

Is it selfish to choose not to have kids?

Wages have been flat for fifty years, the median house costs seven times the median income, and daycare in my city runs higher than my rent. Then people act baffled that millennials aren't producing babies like it's 1957, when a single factory salary bought a house and a pension. This is an affordability crisis wearing a values costume. Make housing cost three times income again, make one salary enough, and watch what happens to the birth rate. Until then, calling broke people selfish for not having kids they can't afford is just cruelty with extra steps.

Should awards shows reserve equal airtime for craft categories and acting awards?

The Academy's craft branches are not a minority to be accommodated; they are the majority of the membership. Editors, sound engineers, costume designers, cinematographers, and the rest of the below-the-line branches make up most of the roughly 10,000 voting members, yet the telecast treats their awards as expendable. [Academy](https://www.oscars.org/). A ceremony run by an institution of filmmakers that sidelines filmmakers is incoherent. Equal airtime is not charity toward the crafts. It is the membership seeing itself on stage. When the 2022 pre-taped categories drew guild fury, it was the institution's own base objecting. [The Wrap](https://www.thewrap.com/iatse-president-oscars-categories-pretaped/). Give every branch its live moment and the show stops insulting the people who pay the dues.

Should movie theaters make phone-free screenings the default?

Asking nicely has failed, and we have the receipts. A Reviews.org survey found 88.8 percent of moviegoers admit to using or looking at their phones during a film at the theater, up from 34.6 percent the year before. [Reviews.org](https://www.reviews.org/mobile/2025-cell-phone-addiction/) Nearly nine in ten. At that point the glowing screen is not a few rude people. It is the culture, and culture does not change because a pre-show bumper asked politely. Phone-free as the default simply admits what the numbers already say: the honor system lost. Keep a few clearly marked phone-friendly screenings for anyone who needs a device, and let the other ninety percent of showtimes be the dark, unbroken room people actually paid for.

Should tipping be abolished in favor of higher base wages for service workers?

Here is the uncomfortable truth: tipping is the only performance pay most service workers will ever see, and service got noticeably worse everywhere it faded. When the tip is guaranteed in the wage, the incentive to hustle on a slammed Saturday night evaporates. I have eaten in countries without tipping cultures and the service is fine but indifferent; nobody is refilling your water before you ask. Tips let customers reward great work directly, server to human, with no manager or algorithm in between. If the problem is the $2.13 floor set in 1991, raise the floor. That fixes exploitation without destroying the one mechanism that makes American service famously attentive. The federal rules themselves confirm the $2.13 cash wage and the employer make-up requirement. [DOL Fact Sheet #15](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/15-tipped-employees-flsa).

Should national sports funding reward participation growth as much as medal results?

Elite and grassroots funding have different jobs. UK Sport exists to convert limited high-performance money into medals; local participation belongs with schools, councils, and community agencies. In its consultation, [72% of sector stakeholders](https://www.uksport.gov.uk/~/media/87f1e4d9387b45b3adcf51e6cda97c2d.ashx?la=en) backed the medal focus. Blending missions risks doing both badly and makes accountability fuzzy.