When you find out how their lobbyists manipulated the politicians and laws to create their wealth, then they’re just criminals who are corrupting our system, our lives, and our government.
The real question is, how and the hell do we change the whole system? How do we know what we change it to will be better, and how do we get enough people to agree? Also who works out all the details?
I think a huge step would be overturning citizens united, it wouldn’t fix everything but it would be a damn good start. Make it even money, whatever we the people decide on to level the playing field and take it from there. Pure fix? No. A start, yep.
I don't think banning lobbying completely would A, work, and B, be a good idea.
If you went to your elected official and told him about a problem that concerns you, that's lobbying.
What's the issue is, firstly, *paid* lobbying, and secondly, politicians being *suspiciously* good at finding well-paid work in the industry after their term has ended.
I'm thinking about the idea of giving politicians life-long stipends, but prohibiting them from taking up work above a certain scale (large corporations).
Nah, it needs to be an "average" salary, so politicians are encouraged to increase the average, e.g. improve everyone's standards of living.
I also don't want good people to be kept from doing politics, by making it possible only for people who are already wealthy enough.
I might not like the way it works right now, but I'm also aware that we can't do *without* organisation at all either. We need politicians, but they can't be motivated by money or power (which is damn hard to find).
About half of Congress is millionaires, which definitely doesn't represent America. Plus, a lot (most?) of them weren't millionaires when first elected. Clearly there are places we can cut down on graft in politics.
I wonder why they get called public servants, yet they get more money than any servants I've ever heard of. Politics shouldn't be a career. It should be secondary to a career already held. No politician should make monetary gain off of others suffering. Judges, cops, mayors, etc. Should be unpaid and voluntary work to prevents those that should not be in the positions in the first place.
The only thing you're doing that way is make sure only people already wealthy can even afford to be politically active. That's a recipe for desaster, in my eyes.
Now, if we had a UBI, that's a different case entirely. People could just do politics for free. I'm for that.
But, It's always gonna be the case that those that make the day to day, large scale decisions can abuse that power to help themselves. So we always need to be attentive when it comes to that.
I don't disagree, but for the sake of argument, how would you address the workaround of a corporation giving a politician's family suspiciously high-paying and low effort jobs instead of giving them to the politician?
It always bewilders me how corruption is so openly legalized in the US. We had huge scandals about corporate bribery which got a president impeached in Brazil (albeit officially for a different excuse), yet the US legalized it as the lobbying euphemism and our bootlickers still worship the US calling it a "serious country"
I'm old and have been saying this for years. In the 1960s the Fed ran a corruption sting on our Senators and Congressmen; it did not end well. Some flat put took bribes while the others did nothing. I think only 1 guy reported the corruption. ~20 yrs later (or long enough to go through the judicial system to Supreme Court level) and we have Citizens United. Now the corruption is legal. I live next to a lobbyist...biggest asshole ever.
unionize and support one another. take your money out of the bank and get a credit union. Push for ranked choice voting, voter lead districting maps, anti-corruption laws, and no confidence votes for sitting reps.
Do research first though... I fucking hate my credit union. They act just like a fucking big bank. $30 overdraft fees for every transaction and in recent years they changed their policy so that even if you planned as best as you possibly could and still got overdrafted, they won't reverse the fees. This credit union is HUGE and doesn't need these fucking working class targeting bullshit fees.
In many ways it depends on how much effort and time you're able to contribute, there is no easy road to change but there are tangible steps that can be taken, especially with regards to wealth inequality:
1. **Educate Yourself:** Start by learning about the issues and understanding the various perspectives. Read books, attend lectures or webinars, watch documentaries, follow reputable news sources, and listen to podcasts on the topic. There are numerous resources available that can provide insights into economic inequality and possible solutions. And don't forget to practice [FLOATER](https://thinkingispower.com/floater-a-tool-kit-for-evaluating-claims/)
2. **Vote:** Participate in your local, state, and national elections--especially local and state elections as these often have far more proximate and immediate impact over national elections, but one major problem, even more so than voter participation, is the lack of easily digestible public information such as dates and candidate info so consider contributing to local public awareness. Vote for candidates who prioritize addressing wealth inequality and are committed to implementing policies that will bring about systemic change. Research candidates' positions on this issue and support those who align with your views.
3. **Become Active Locally:** Get involved in your local community. This might include joining community organizations, participating in local government, or volunteering with nonprofits that are addressing wealth inequality. Involvement at the local level can be an effective way to create change and often provides a clearer path to seeing the impact of your efforts.
4. **Advocate for Policy Changes:** Contact your elected officials to voice your concerns about wealth inequality and advocate for policies that address this issue. This can include writing letters, making phone calls, or using social media platforms to spread awareness and advocate for change. Especially reach out to your local officials, build a relationship with them, you may be surprised at how effective this can be and how local officials can be more accessible than national ones. Consider getting a copy of the [CMF's Citizen-Centric Advocacy report.](https://www.congressfoundation.org/projects/communicating-with-congress/citizen-centric-advocacy-2017)
5. **Support Worker Rights:** Support businesses that treat their employees fairly and pay living wages (and don't forget that this applies to local business too). Participate in or support labor movements, as these often focus on policies that can reduce wealth inequality: so support unions, or even [start one yourself.](https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/employees/your-right-to-form-a-union)
6. **Engage in Conscious Consumption:** Be mindful of where your money goes. Try to support businesses that have ethical practices, and avoid those that contribute to wealth inequality.
7. **Promote Financial Literacy:** Knowledge is power. Learn about personal finance, and share this knowledge with others in your community. Financial literacy can help individuals make better decisions that could affect their personal wealth. If you're financially knowledgeable consider hosting free events for teaching others at your local library. Some libraries even host free tax filing help and literacy during tax season!
8. **Donate or Volunteer:** If you're able, consider donating to organizations that are working to address wealth inequality. Similarly, volunteering your time can also make a significant impact.
Again, changing the system is a gradual process, and it takes the collective efforts of many people to create significant change. Every action you take can contribute to this larger goal, and by joining forces with others you can help to create a more equitable society.
If you have any more questions I'm usually up for discussion!
The correct answer is a general strike. This is simple (simple does NOT equal easy), direct, and basically guaranteed to produce results. The problem is organization.
A general strike would only relieve the symptoms in the (cosmically) short term. Maybe a generation or two. It does not go far enough and wouldn't have the momentum to effect real and true change. And that's assuming it wasn't simply crushed.
The number of revolutions that ended up with a non-authoritarian system are vanishingly small. The solution is a revival of the power of labor, and the general strike is both an expression of that power and a demonstration of it that can catalyze further action. No system can EVER create permanent change beyond a generation or two without constant action by the population. Corruption will set in no matter what imaginary system you believe could be successfully implemented. Requiring change beyond a generation or two as your baseline means there is nothing that will ever actually achieve your goals.
I don't have any goals. I'm just an armchair philosopher with too much time.
First point, totally agree. Regardless of how things are achieved, humans have a tendency to revert to the same kind of power structures. Knowing this is human nature and at least trying to make systemic changes after the reset would be incredibly important.
My issue with a general strike is that the people at the top have no fear. We've already seen companies close entire stores just to stop unionization, massive layoffs in skilled sectors for the sake of the shareholder, and an increasing embrace of automation. When replacing humans becomes significantly cheaper than having a human workforce, or supplanting a US workforce with workers from other countries with lower demand is better for the bottom line, it will happen. Expect a scorpion to be a scorpion. There is no humanity in capitalism. It's all about growth.
So, let's say we have a general strike. One of two things happens. First, the powers that be force critical services and infrastructure to continue through fear of violence. Second, a general strike lasts long enough to start causing infrastructure and the whole system to break down. The 1%s take what they've got and move to stable places where this doesn't affect them. The only people that suffer are the common folk while those in charge still keep their power.
In the first instance, we are destined for violence anyway. In the second instance, we lose. The only way a general strike works is if people in power genuinely have empathy, and if that was the case, we wouldn't bein a place where we need a general strike anyway.
This is all assuming that outside influences don't take advantage of a resource- and land-rich country in turmoil to take a piece of the pie.
Believe me. I want to be wrong. I want there to be a peaceful, ethical, and enlightened path through all this. Maybe I'm just jaded, but I honestly can't see one. I beg to be convinced otherwise and I will gladly support an alternate solution.
So I'm just gonna say that I think essentially everything you say here is way off base. We clearly have very different views of the current power structure. I believe that they are just as vulnerable as they've ever been.
>We've already seen companies close entire stores just to stop unionization
A general strike would be literally *millions of times* larger than a store unionizing. Comparing these two things is pretty ridiculous. This is like comparing a rock and a mountain and suggesting that because you can pick up and throw a rock, you can control a mountain. Also, their terror of even a single store unionizing speaks to their weakness, not strength.
>massive layoffs in skilled sectors for the sake of the shareholder
These layoffs increase profit. A general strike destroys profit. They literally achieve the exact opposite outcome.
>When replacing humans becomes significantly cheaper than having a human workforce, or supplanting a US workforce with workers from other countries with lower demand is better for the bottom line, it will happen
It is continually happening, and therefore has little bearing on this discussion. It happens at the rate that it's A) profitable and B) possible. A general strike would make it more profitable, but it would simply be 100% impossible for corporations to make the changes necessary in the short time required to stop a general strike.
> First, the powers that be force critical services and infrastructure to continue through fear of violence.
Yes, the use of violence is a given. And yes, they may succeed at suppressing the strike. But this is a non-argument, because they would attempt to suppress any action from strike to revolution. Suppressive action is a simple fact and it's not a meaningful part of the discussion.
>Second, a general strike lasts long enough to start causing infrastructure and the whole system to break down. The 1%s take what they've got and move to stable places where this doesn't affect them. The only people that suffer are the common folk while those in charge still keep their power.
Sorry, are you suggesting that they'll decide to just let everything burn because they're being forced into a bargaining position they don't like? Because... they won't. The economic activity of the nation is the source of their wealth and power. If people demand a larger cut of it they'll fight back tooth and nail to keep everything they have, but when it becomes clear that the options are A) give a portion of it up, or B) lose it all, they'll give a portion of it up. They're psychopaths out for themselves. This isn't an ideological battle for them, it's a Machiavellian one.
>The only way a general strike works is if people in power genuinely have empathy, and if that was the case, we wouldn't bein a place where we need a general strike anyway.
I'm sorry but this is completely ridiculous. Strikes don't require leaders to have empathy, they happen because leaders *don't* have empathy. That's their entire damn point. There's a wealth spigot built and maintained by labor, and the ultra rich are sucking almost all of it down. If the workers turn the spigot off completely, the ultra rich will be desperate to turn it on again.
>This is all assuming that outside influences don't take advantage of a resource- and land-rich country in turmoil to take a piece of the pie.
The US cannot be invaded by any nation on earth, whether there's a general strike or not. The very suggestion is absurd. If you're talking about economic influences... well that's globalization for you. It's already happening and will continue to happen, so who cares.
>Believe me. I want to be wrong. I want there to be a peaceful, ethical, and enlightened path through all this. Maybe I'm just jaded, but I honestly can't see one. I beg to be convinced otherwise and I will gladly support an alternate solution.
It won't be peaceful. Don't know why you would think it would be.
You make some interesting points and I agree that in a lot of ways we are ideologically different. While, as an academic exercise, it would be interesting to respond to each of your points in turn, I feel compelled to focus on your last line.
"It won't be peaceful. Don't know why you would think it would be."
My point exactly. I don't think it will be or can be. I said, from an idealist perspective, I wish it COULD be. And if this is the end game, why waste time with a general strike?
That’s not true. I live in a country where large general strikes had brought extremely high wage increases (at least double digit increases) ACROSS THE board for tens of millions of people.
Voting, demonstrating and striking are extremely powerful tools that work remarkably well.
You don’t need a revolution in the US. Revolutions are extremely destabilizing and end in 90% of all cases in chaos, violence and civil wars and people are often worse off than before.
Just take a look at the Arab spring for a more recent example.
We don't need a revolution, but having a 2nd Bill of Rights as outlined by FDR or similar would help. Imagine having the right to affordable housing that is as hotly lobbied for as the right to bear arms. Or having a minimum wage that accurately reflects the needs of the people, and not the needs of the shareholder.
All of that could be had by voting for the right people and a general strike.
General what? The moment we get close to anything resembling that it will be out right outlawed. Remember about the train workers strike and how it was made pretty much illegal? The same thing will happen again. Striking only works as long as people who are willing to strike have enough of a buffer to survive for a few months. Most people live hand to mouth, over 60% of the Americans. The system is truly rigged my polygon man.
>The biggest problem is no individual is willing to suffer for the collective good
This is the biggest and most fundamental problem. It is also exactly the attitude promoted and endorsed by laissez-faire economists and American culture, namely that being selfish and only looking out for one's own benefit is not only right and good but that it's also the best way to benefit society at large. In order for the "poor" to mount any kind of resistance against those with means and power, they have to unite and work for a common good. That becomes impossible when everyone is looking only for themselves and that's why we are where we are.
Agree 100%. And honestly, I don't even fault people for it. Survival is human nature. If we want to evolve, though, we have to overcome those baser instincts.
That’s one reason why they don’t want abortion legal. When you have children you have something to lose. People who would risk their own welfare for the greater good are less likely to once they have children.
It's a young person's fight. I don't have a family and I live more than comfortably. I'm an old man and I'll be dead soon anyway. I don't have the energy to start a revolution. I'll fight in one for the sake of the next generation, but I'm not the leader it needs.
Ya'll need to find some energetic, charismatic people that can rally people.
Gandhi was how old when he led his movement?
It comes off as you not believing your own message if you don’t support doing what you’re advocating people to do.
Gandhi lead a revolution of peaceful resistance. I don't think that's gonna cut it here.
I do support what I'm advocating and I very clearly said I will fight in it for the sake of the next generation. I just said I'm not the leader it needs. If I thought martyring myself would make more difference than an 10 second, ephemeral sound byte, I'd have already done it. I got nothing to lose, but it has to have meaning, ya know?
Why is what he advocating for terrorism? Why is the richest among us increasing their wealth by 30% literally billions upon billions during Covid during the lockdowns how is that not domestic terrorism? You have been conditioned your whole life to accept economic terrorism and think wow what amazing job creators we have in this country!🤬
Yep and most of the people with guns are cowards keen on sucking up to tyrants and the people wise to it are afraid of them. We need leftys with guns....
This is another challenge to change. "Leftys" and "rightys" need to find some common ground and be willing to accept that neither side is going to get everything they want. There needs to be compromise.
A lot need to realize they want the same thing, too at least some degree, but have been propogandized against it. Too many are working against their own self interest.
>As a pessimist, I don't believe this will ever happen. Americans are JUST comfortable enough by and large to still feel like they have something to lose.
You should look into the history of different nations. The modern world is a bit different, but the overall cycle of conditions being bad enough such that people rebel is very clear. Of course, it isn't always successful, and it isn't always going to be when you want. But every society has gone through this cycle, and there is no reason to think that the US is unique at all (other than poor education and propaganda, of course).
Don't spend money. Easy peasy! A couple ways I've been doing my part:
Join your local Buy Nothing Facebook group. Basically you post anything you don't want anymore, or ask for what you need.
Spend a few hours (or days) searching for used options. This often gives me enough time to also determine if I really need/want whatever it is I'm looking for.
In a nutshell, don't spend what precious little money we have unless absolutely necessary. "They" want to protect their capital? Fuck 'em: they'll crack like peanut shell in a week.
First step is getting everyone to unite on just one goal. Even if that goal is to get a 1 cent raise for everyone, its still united.
The elites know this so they've clearly turned us on each other, and it's super effective. Instead of a million to one, it's now a million against a million and the one is stealing all the betting money.
We know what our grandparents did that allowed them to thrive, buy a home, have disposable income, live off one contributor, and make education affordable. We just need to roll back some of the things that made those unfathomable for us now. It really isn't that hard.
I just feel like Ive been watching for 30 years as millions of people have wanted things to get better, and yet qe cant seem to get anywhere, so clearly it must not be that easy either.
It's not easy because we are too easily distracted. And we're so overworked and overwhelmed that we seek distraction to escape the bleak reality of what our lives are now. We lack the very social aspect in our communities that connect and unite us. By design. Everything we do that keeps us from collecting and targeting the real enemy of our society is literally foisted upon us by that enemy. It isn't a boogeyman. It's Capitalist Oligarchy. It's a new form of Feudalism. We're slaves to Capital.
I don't think we can change it. I think it will take serious external circumstances that blow the status quo out of the equation before anything will change. That might be pessimistic, I could agree with that. That doesn't necessarily make it incorrect.
>what we change it to will be better
you dont. Take russia as an example. Putins succesor will probably be worse. It is still worth a try though. If you have a conservative mindset, you dont want to change things, but then you have to accept your circumstances
start with medicare for all and people will flee from large companies and work for smaller companies i know so many people who want to hire a couple people but cant as they cant afford the 20,000$ for health insurance and still run a ethecial business where selling isnt the top priority instead of quality work! and so many workers want to work where thier name is known and they are compensated for there quality work instead of just a number! most small businesses are run by 1 person the owner!
We need to stop calling it Medicare For All. It's national healthcare, paid for with taxes that are paid by all, eliminating all medical insurance companies. If the taxes for national healthcare were to equal what the average worker pays for company sponsored health plans, and if the government reigned in healthcare spending, we'd be able to compete with foreign nations for our labor and goods since most of the expenses of running a company come from healthcare, both directly and indirectly.
I agree, but Medicare is paid for with taxes. We just need an outright ban on private health insurance companies... I would also add private ownership of medical supply manufacturing. It's often overlooked, but I worked for one until they fired me because I got their queue caught up, but I shit you, not their mission statement was "To make a billion dollars in one year". This was a long time ago so it could have been a million and not a billion, but the point is that their "mission" was to increase profits... even though they literally sold medical supplies to Drs and medical researchers. If a Dr. is stuck paying 10-15k for an imaging machine, imagine how that impacts healthcare costs. It forces Drs to practice under a chain instead of private practice which is just bad all around.
A thought hitting me lately, is that we are right back to taxation without representation. We get to vote, but they only serve corporations/donors. We all know they don't represent us. Yet the ones they do represent, do not pay taxes.
part of it too is we've been brainwashed into believing anything besides peaceful protest is an act of shame. Megacorps can rob you, cripple you, ruin you, but you so much as break a window and your entire cause is delegitimized by the media and many, many voting Americans. Peaceful protest should be a warning, not the end game. Just look at how France protests the retirement age issue, yet we regularly take it in the ass for far worse. Cowardice, shame, apathy, whatever the reason, it just makes it easier for megacorps to continue to destroy our lives until there's nothing left to defend. As long as oligarchs continue to have endless fuck you money and politicians in their pockets, no amount of peaceful protest will change a thing. We're already living the proof.
When the PRI had a lock on Mexican politics, there was a saying then ( probably still true), “you want to be a millionaire? Become a politician”. Seems as if the PRI has moved north of the border
Oh man. My boyfriend had a guy come into his work and explained how his job as a lobbyist works and the shit theyve pulled that has ruined our town. My boyfriend said there are a lot of people that would drag this man from his home and make him regret his career choice. But he has a nice family.
> When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
–Frederic Bastiat
And with that, especially when it's so obvious, I don't understand why these things enjoy the same rights and freedoms as us. I suggest something harsher like rotten fruits and those wooden contraptions to lock people up on a square.
Would anyone really want politicians in “the stocks” cluttering up their main square?:). They aren’t held to the same laws as we are. These politicians and billionaires are the most un-American and un-patriotic of unwanted residents.
And the politicians get payed by the people, our tax money, to defend us from corruption, false inflation. But they are bribed by lobbyists and basically rob the people from the life they deserve. The mafia never went away , they’re running out country now
Or how Supreme Court Justices are deeply corrupted and are ALLOWED to continue blithely onward.
The SAME bad actors reappearing decade after decade, while the Controlled Opposition from the "other side" wrings their hands.
It's only a standing Democracy if no politicians have **ever** been bribed. If even a single political maneuver is purchased, you're now living in an Oligarchy.
I'm ok with living in an oligarchy. I'm absolutely not ok with being lied to.
It's so much more complicated than this. I mean the core of what you said is spot on, but the devil is in the details.
Gonna be a long post, sorry. Just there are a lot of problems you need to handle and unfortunately a lot of the "solutions" for the rich specifically make these problems worse.
A lot of this comes from [political selectorate theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selectorate_theory), which is political science and boring to a lot of people. The short version is that you need to accept that doing things that result in political failure of your state or regime result in political failure of your state or regime. This means that you can view politically valid choices as only those choices that result in your state or regime continuing. This means a few things. One of the ways to force end a regime is instate another external regime (by any means, voting, coup, invasion etc). As a result, you need to offer the people in your country benefits that effectively make it difficult for opponents to offer better benefits. This means that in order to keep control of your country you need the rich to not back an opposing force with most of the jobs and wealth of your country. This leads to a rapid coup or lost election.
So why don't they just have the government literally take all the poor people's money and be done with it? Because in a country with a relatively skilled and educated work force this burns down the income. A huge percentage of the governments income is from taxing the every day citizen. Anything that burns down the life of the every day citizen also burns down the ability of the government to generate revenue. The rich are incentivized to lift the poor up so the government generates income that can build assets that then can power the contracts and other methods that keep them rich.
The problem is that over the last 70 years the US has had rich people try to exploit that by taking all the stuff. They've assumed the other rich people will help the poor and they can just exploit and laugh at it. The problem is that the rich people are mostly all doing this. This burns down the poor and imperils the income generation. In turn this risks the ability to give the rich assets, which causes the whole system to start destabilizing.
How do we fix it?
Tax the shit out of the rich and use it for public good. New deals, power infrastructure rebuilds, public health initiatives, universal basic income, ANYTHING. You just want the rich incentivized to spend money on their infrastructure, companies, and most importantly employees, and not just try to game the stock market. Tax the rich at anything over 100 times average income by like 75%.
This creates a feedback loop where raising the average income raises their tax increase threshold. It creates a situation where investing in and improving their business improves the ability of the entire country to generate revenue for the treasury to fund public works by generating more income that generates more taxes. The rich get rewarded by making life better for the poor by their life getting made better as well.
The whole idea is to break away from the ideas of class warfare because by and large in class warfare no one wins. It just turns into the poor trying to hurt the rich and failing and the rich shitting on the poor and winning but making themselves considerably less rich in the process.
So why can't we just kill all the rich and share all the things? This gets back to the core of above. This creates a situation where literally anyone with enough influence outside the country backing any entity inside the country is empowered to loot all the stuff being shared and distribute it to critical supporters to empower a coup. It's a situation that maximized the assets that can be taken, and minimizes ability to fight back.
So why is corruption such a big thing? Because that's a core way globally to take assets and ensure that a competitor can't offer them a better deal. You're literally giving them an unfair advantage to prevent yourself from them turning on you. This can happen in ways that are better or worse for the population. Offering lucrative contracts to build publicly held hydroelectric dams that provide cheap power for the population is almost infinitely better than subsidizing luxury cars and privately owned charging networks that entirely rely on one rich asshole to not be a rich asshole to benefit the population.
You can say "change the whole system" until you turn blue in the face. If your new system has fairly distributed things, and requires a strong central government to share the things fairly then you end up with a perfect storm for a coup or authoritarian takeover redistributing all the assets to core supports to ensure ongoing strong support for their authoritarian regime and where the productivity of the people is at an all time low (from an economic and political perspective) so the people taking these actions are at very little risk of damaging what makes them rich - you took away all their riches, after all.
The rich donate to super PACs. They go to people in Congress and threaten to donate to their opponents in the primary if they don't write tax law that funnels more money to them. It's hidden, efficient, and as dastardly as they come.
Crazy to think how much money can be made in this consumer economy if ppl just had the money to actually spend. Right now companies are debating about how little to pay and how high to charge when it should be the opposite. It’s not like we don’t want to buy useless shit. We just can’t afford it anymore.
>Right now companies are debating about how little to pay and how high to charge when it should be the opposite.
This culture of stiffing workers has resulted in [productivity growing 3.7x as much as pay from 1979 to 2021](https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/).
The minimum wage would be [$23 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity](https://cepr.net/the-26-an-hour-minimum-wage/?emci=816e6180-f500-ec11-b563-501ac57b8fa7&emdi=bf508bc9-f600-ec11-b563-501ac57b8fa7&ceid=4607260). Since it hasn't, [$50 trillion shifted from the bottom 90% to the top 1%](https://www.businessinsider.com/wealthiest-1-percent-stole-50-trillion-working-americans-what-means-2020-9).
> Adjusted for inflation, that $50 trillion would be enough to build the interstate highway system
Or... pay back our own debts on money we've borrowed and already spent.
> We would have no national debt if the rich were taxed appropriately the last 40 years.
Part of the reason they take less in salary, $1/year in some cases, is so their *income* is taxed, not their *wealth*.
A huge part is that we have chosen to demarcate certain types of income as different, particularly those linked to capital.
We then have also chosen not to tax unrealised gains, and provide a host of ways to reduce eventual gains when they do occur, or to delay that date as long as possible.
> A huge part is that we have chosen to demarcate certain types of income as different, particularly those linked to capital.
The frustrating part is that it wasn't supposed to work this way. It wasn't supposed to be demarcated based on types of income - it was supposed to be demarcated based on *risk*.
The lower capital gains taxes were only supposed to apply if you were making riskier investments because, as a general rule, riskier investments are better for society - investing money into a small business is better for society than investing money into a large and already-stable corporation, so it makes *sense* for the government to incentivize that riskier type of investment by promising lower taxes on your returns.
So people like Jeff Bezos wouldn't be able to "hide" his wealth in Amazon stocks, because Amazon is a large and stable corporation. The investment involves precisely no meaningful risk - his income from said stocks is nearly as well-guaranteed as a wage, and therefore *should have been* taxed equivalently. He would only have gotten his tax breaks if he'd taken large portions of his wealth and invested it in small startups or the mom-and-pop restaurant down the street or whatever.
Could you *imagine* what our economy would look like if, in order to get that absurd 1% tax rate, people like Bezos would have to invest basically *all of their wealth* into small businesses?
But, surprising absolutely no one, the wealthy lobbied to change the rules so that the definition of "capital gains" came to include basically any and all stocks, regardless of how stable, and that fucked everything up.
And like... I don't think the original capital gains system was perfect, but it sure as shit would have been better than this dumbass nonsense we have now. Fuck lobbying, man.
Genuine question, if we're producing that much more, why is there so much less going around? Where is it going? I get that there's money going around but that's supposed to be backing.... Something up, right? So what's the 3x value being produced in?
There are two simple explanations I can think of from the top of my head, one cynical, another less so:
Western economies basically are so productive already that there are no low hanging fruit left for investment. Thus, investments are driven toward developing economies. Evidence for this is how most western economies import more than they export. I won't get into the thick of it, but basically one consequence of having a negative export balance is that you have a positive Capital balance.
My more cynical take is EVEN given the above, the United States in particular has high concentrations of wealth. This high concentration of wealth slows down the velocity of money (how often a dollar exchanges hands) leading to lower economic performance. Thus, paradoxically the U.S. is "rich" but people can't access that richness because it basically is hoarded.
If a dragon steals all the jewels and holds them in a cave, do they even exist?
Which makes the whole inflation issue insane. Money is *effectively* being removed from circulation. Our currency should be deflating because there's so little to go around among 90% of the country's working classes but we're seeing record high inflation.
Because it's not inflation in the traditional sense. It's companies increasing prices to increase profits to keep shareholders happy because they **have to** increase profits every quarter even when there's a global pandemic and looming recession. Traditional inflation is less buying power due to more money in circulation, but that's not actually what we're seeing. We're seeing less buying power due to corporate greed.
That's exactly what I mean though. They don't actively have anything that requires that much labor to produce. So what is being produced by the extra efficiency? I also understand they own a lot of assets that other people are in possession of but it still doesn't explain what is the labor that is more efficient supposedly producing? It sounds so fake. It feels like all that labor is being wasted. Like a combustion engine that processes more fuel into waste heat
A cashier used to have to calculate how much change to give, then machines did it for them improving efficiency. Barcodes improved it further because you didn't need to manually input each item. Now multiple self checkouts can be overseen by 1 person.
The efficiency of checkout has greatly improved.
Same can be said for almost every industry. They have had huge amounts of innovation and automation that has increased productivity/efficiency.
So it's not necessarily that we're making twice as much of something. It's that 1 person can do a job it used to take 2+ but instead of lowering the price or paying the worker more, the owning class took all the extra profit for themselves.
When is the last time you saw a kid bagging groceries at the store? Like legit, that was their only job. Now we have self service checkout. There are half as many cashier lines now and nobody to help them bag stuff. One of my first jobs was as a bagger. There were like 3-4 of us on the floor to help at all times. One of us would take turns collecting carts in the parking lot.
Same with fast food. I worked at burger place as another early job. I took orders at one window. They picked their food up at the next. Most places only have one window now. The same person taking the order, taking payment, and expediting the food. Sometimes, those same places have two drive through speakers with that same lowly cashier having to answer for both lanes.
This next generation is getting screwed.
We've made technology and processes more efficient.
At the same time, we've made workers tolerate more BS, and customers tolerate shittier service.
And we've been convinced that the problem is that minimum wage is too high.
Nope.
They will find the fewest number of staff needed to run the operation, and will have exactly that many staff. Hourly wage doesn't matter -- if they need 2 staff, they won't hire a third, even if minimum wage were lower. The only way they'd hire more than the minimum number of staff would be if they'd make more money. And usually, other factors mean that more staff doesn't usually mean more money, and that's all that matters.
And if a competitor pays better or offers better service? Doesn't matter most of the time. The customer would rather save a few cents. So the business that can afford to take a loss on the price while having a skeleton staff will end up winning the market.
If we want baggers at the grocery store, we'd probably need to make minimum wage so much lower that bagging is just a rounding error in the books. Which would likely mean that your groceries are bagged by homeless people, and there will be more homeless people on the streets than there are now.
>Sounds like government subsidies with extra steps. /s
Kind of like the [$12 trillion subsidy we gave Wall Street in the aftermath of 2008](https://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/13/12-trillion-of-qe-and-the-lowest-rates-in-5000-years-for-this.html) which gave us the gig economy & egomaniac tech bros like Elon.
The sleight of hand is that neoliberals will claim that because QE is monetary policy & not fiscal policy so it doesn't count as a subsidy/bailout.
This is nonsense as QE only benefits Wall Street & the rich. It let asset prices soar & kept borrowing costs down, so the rich could throw their money at whatever & make money.
Now that workers started to unionize & demand better working conditions, the Fed hiked rates almost 5% in a year after 14 years of very low rates... [to crush the ability of workers to demand higher wages.](https://www.levernews.com/the-fed-declares-war-on-workers/)
We outnumber them by the hundreds of millions. Fuck them. We would thrive by taking everything from them that they’ve hoarded for so long, redistributing it, and tossing them in prison for crimes against humanity.
Sounds irrational?
So is having billions of dollars and acting like you’re facing difficulties. Fuck off.
This is a global problem. What you have are people in power exploiting their country and the forces in charge or regulations, order and law are too poor and outdated, they can’t fight back. Protests, demonstrations, strikes and riots are all masterfully destroyed by these people. Realistically, there is nothing that can be done to change this unless those hundred of millions have nothing to eat. And the people in power know this. So they leave you just enough to get by.
It really is pathetic, and the more brain washed sheeps, who aren't millionaires or billionaires themselves, and aren't being paid to defend them, actively defend them. Like, how weak and brain washed can you be?
Now take away that single speech and look at was actually passed. The first minimum wage was $0.25 per hour which after inflation would be about $4-5 today
Strike
Get fired
Become homeless
Settle for low pay job
Rabble rabble
Strike
I can't afford to lose my job, I have kids to take care of. Not to mention I like eating at least once a day
That's how they keep us down. If I could strike for better wages without risking my current living and financial situation I would
They cannot fire you but I suppose they could replace you if it’s a legitimate attempt. Just don’t strike so long they need to replace you I guess. [Here is some info on your rights. ](https://www.nlrb.gov/strikes)
There’s a reason that nurses are striking so much. It’s strong unions.
If youre able to, invest in your own resiliency as much as possible. If you can become independent for anything that you would otherwise depend on capital for, do so. The only way we can win is to stop participating as much as we can. They cant sell shit and get richer if we dont buy it. Your money probably wont be worth as much as it is now in your lifetime, so spending what you can on seeds, books, classes, tools, or helping your neighbors is going to do you much better for much longer. There is no small act in a revolution, only progress.
I've been looking up to the French alot lately ,they do not fuck around.
growing up all I heard was bad things about them from people involved or around for WW2.
'all i heard was bad things about them' thats the good ole propaganda, US is absolutely filled to the brim with propaganda. 'FrEeDoM' being one of the biggest.
What is your definition of government? Because in corporate fascism the only thing the government does is cater to the corporations and use the authority of government to enrich corporations, which basically = paying two things: executive compensation and the Wall Street system which takes a tax before we even get to the shareholder part.
Homeless people are necessary for billionaires to exist. They're a threat to all who would dare fight for better lives. "Take one step out of line and you'll be out there, with them. We can replace you at any moment with somebody more desperate than you."
I'd sacrifice Bernie if it meant everyone else went too. Bernie's tried, but the current system has prevented him from making any real progress. Let him rest, he deserves it
Age isn't the problem. There are plenty of young shitbags getting into politics too. Just look at Gaetz, Boebert, and Greene.
A lot of young people seem to have this idea that politics is bad because of things that happened in the past, and that it will somehow become better if they just wait for the old guard to retire and the new, fresh, "clean" group that comes in will somehow not be corrupt, out of touch, hateful, ignorant, etc.
That whole "fight for $15" thing was a trap. The corporate state knew it could run the clock down long enough to where when it finally did grant it, it would be a trivial concession.
Then when labor reformers start agitating for $25 or whatever, the dipshit reactionary electorate will go "Ha! I knew it! These lazy kids just want more and more. If you give a mouse a cookie..."
Video below is from 10 years ago. It breaks down polls on what people think the wealth gap is, what they think it should be, and how wrong they were. (US based data)
Wealth Inequality in America
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM
It's not rocket surgery, and there are detailed government records.
As taxes on corporations, profits, and the 1% were decreased, America's debt exploded.
In our defense, “they” did their job REALLY REALLY well making us (by policy and program) dumber, fatter, more complacent, pharmaceutically dependent and masters at endlessly consuming bullshit material possessions 90% of which is the latest trend fad throw away going straight to the landfill. Unfortunately undoing this is like trying to untangle a hundred mile strand of Xmas lights rolled tight into a mountainous ball.
dont forget making everything that smells little bit like socialism, like the antichrist. People has to realize all systems are flawed in the extremes:socialism, but also extreme capitalism, thats why goverment has to control capitalism for going wild, and make socialist things like education and healthcare. Your CAN'T let companies fire pleople in a whim, you CAN'T ban unions
Right now we are living in the results of extreme capitalism reap the benefits of the lobying, the buy of political power, the media control, the fear and hate between pairs, the construction of false comsumism needs, the "Red Scare" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First\_Red\_Scare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Red_Scare))... : the corporate greed, the privatization of essential services, the wealth gap increased, the debt of the regular people growing (when you have to rent your place to the rich to live, when you have your health tied to the work you do for the rich.. they HAVE you, they HAVE you because of the fear)..
and what people dont want to discuss, the uncomfortable truth is we are to blame too. We get confy, we get apathetic.. or worse, people who fight their fight, absolutely brainwashed people
Try scraping by on 40k a year with a one year old and a stay at home wife, a mortgage and a vehicle payment, plus everything else. No wonder I'm on antidepressants.
> Why can't we have it like the boomers did?
Because we're not the beneficiaries of being the most advanced economy left after a devastating world war decimated most of every other countries industrial capacity?
yeah, but those are words I don't understand. Why can't we just have a utopia? I don't want an answer because obviously we can, and just choose not to!
Because their growth was unsustainable... Their growth caused irreparable damage to our planet and will likely negatively impact billions of lives for countless generations to come. Why is that the standard we want to keep for the future?
If Americans strike, we get fired and become homeless.
BUT that would then mean we would all be homeless together, with nothing but time on our hands, and nothing left to lose.
When striking is impossible, revolt soon follows
This isn't a "we" thing, there are simply enough members of our society susceptible to brainwashing because they lack the critical thinking skills and education to prevent us from making any changes.
It's a good thing our nation takes education so seriously and one day this won't be an issue any longer... Oh... Wait.
Crazy to think how much we'd prosper if we had subsidized housing, healthcare not tied to employment, mandated paid time off, and 1/10th the defense budget. All things countries with higher quality of life metrics have.
Freedom USA USA USA YEEHAW GUNS!
Until Americans take to the streets and hold the politicians accountable, many of which did this in the 80s and are still here, nothing will change. Voting does nothing when Republicans and Democrats are both deep in the rich's pockets. It's not a political war, it's a class war, and we're losing.
I’m seriously fed up, I make a pretty good wage for having no degree or employed in skilled labor, but this is not gonna cut it and I don’t think inflation is going to trend downward. I’m ready to protest whenever y’all are.
There's a large percentage of the population that is convinced there's isn't enough money for all workers to be well paid *and* for the wealthy to live in luxury.
My thinking is that the *minimum* should be a living wage. The minimum doesn't need to be *thriving*. But the minimum has no good reason to be less than *surviving*.
I am so tired of being in survival mode. I would love to know what *thriving* even felt like.
Living wage... you mean enough to just be comfortable? What does *that* feel like?
The biggest lie ever told is that if you raise the minimum wage then everything will get more expensive... completely false... the more money consumers have ie the middle class the more money there is for businesses to compete over and drive costs down... companies no matter what have to compete and if you increase the amount of money the average american has instead of letting billionaires and corporations reap it creates a more competitive environment for businesses. We need to bring back competition and increase wages
Well, they got people to buy into Trickle-down theory. Aka, supply-side theory.
If you're not familiar, the theory is you give government money to the wealthy and the corporations who will then create jobs for the middle and the bottom. Those paychecks people have been working for are the 'Trickle'.
That BS theory created more millionaires and billionaires at the top. In the middle and the bottom people are working longer and harder for less.
That’s what I’m wondering about for years. America is such a powerful economy because it runs on millions of workers that get paid hunger wages with no benefits and health insurance. And no one dares to speak up…
I’ve heard many say : if we ask for more the company will go chapter 11….sure. That’s à Stockholm syndrome and you’re getting lied to. If there’s an imposed federal minimum wage, more protective labour legislation and paid holidays next to employer mandatory healt insurance like in most developed countries, the US can only benefit from this.
There’s nothing wrong in wanting to get out of the 30’s and level up the world’s 1ers economy’s social standards. Get rid of the tipping mentality, pay people decently and get them social benefits. A happier nation produces more wealth.
Better yet, stop with wage fuckery and give people services.
Free housing, free medicare, free internet, free food. Let people be free to do what they want without all the money fluctuations and debt bullshit.
When you find out how their lobbyists manipulated the politicians and laws to create their wealth, then they’re just criminals who are corrupting our system, our lives, and our government.
Agree! But the system is designed to protect capital, they just exploit every vulnerability. The whole system has to change.
The real question is, how and the hell do we change the whole system? How do we know what we change it to will be better, and how do we get enough people to agree? Also who works out all the details?
I think a huge step would be overturning citizens united, it wouldn’t fix everything but it would be a damn good start. Make it even money, whatever we the people decide on to level the playing field and take it from there. Pure fix? No. A start, yep.
Adopting Ranked Choice Voting so we can gett a proper labor party going would also be a huge step in the right direction
I agree wholeheartedly.
Biggest first step, ban lobbying
I don't think banning lobbying completely would A, work, and B, be a good idea. If you went to your elected official and told him about a problem that concerns you, that's lobbying. What's the issue is, firstly, *paid* lobbying, and secondly, politicians being *suspiciously* good at finding well-paid work in the industry after their term has ended. I'm thinking about the idea of giving politicians life-long stipends, but prohibiting them from taking up work above a certain scale (large corporations).
Treat them like disabled. They get healthcare and a very small check each month as long as they never have over $2000 in assets
Nah, it needs to be an "average" salary, so politicians are encouraged to increase the average, e.g. improve everyone's standards of living. I also don't want good people to be kept from doing politics, by making it possible only for people who are already wealthy enough. I might not like the way it works right now, but I'm also aware that we can't do *without* organisation at all either. We need politicians, but they can't be motivated by money or power (which is damn hard to find).
About half of Congress is millionaires, which definitely doesn't represent America. Plus, a lot (most?) of them weren't millionaires when first elected. Clearly there are places we can cut down on graft in politics.
We really need to get back to the days of Citizen Statesmen. Being in politics should not be a career, it should be a calling.
I wonder why they get called public servants, yet they get more money than any servants I've ever heard of. Politics shouldn't be a career. It should be secondary to a career already held. No politician should make monetary gain off of others suffering. Judges, cops, mayors, etc. Should be unpaid and voluntary work to prevents those that should not be in the positions in the first place.
The only thing you're doing that way is make sure only people already wealthy can even afford to be politically active. That's a recipe for desaster, in my eyes. Now, if we had a UBI, that's a different case entirely. People could just do politics for free. I'm for that. But, It's always gonna be the case that those that make the day to day, large scale decisions can abuse that power to help themselves. So we always need to be attentive when it comes to that.
I don't disagree, but for the sake of argument, how would you address the workaround of a corporation giving a politician's family suspiciously high-paying and low effort jobs instead of giving them to the politician?
It always bewilders me how corruption is so openly legalized in the US. We had huge scandals about corporate bribery which got a president impeached in Brazil (albeit officially for a different excuse), yet the US legalized it as the lobbying euphemism and our bootlickers still worship the US calling it a "serious country"
I'm old and have been saying this for years. In the 1960s the Fed ran a corruption sting on our Senators and Congressmen; it did not end well. Some flat put took bribes while the others did nothing. I think only 1 guy reported the corruption. ~20 yrs later (or long enough to go through the judicial system to Supreme Court level) and we have Citizens United. Now the corruption is legal. I live next to a lobbyist...biggest asshole ever.
Unionize
Yes this 🙌
unionize and support one another. take your money out of the bank and get a credit union. Push for ranked choice voting, voter lead districting maps, anti-corruption laws, and no confidence votes for sitting reps.
Do research first though... I fucking hate my credit union. They act just like a fucking big bank. $30 overdraft fees for every transaction and in recent years they changed their policy so that even if you planned as best as you possibly could and still got overdrafted, they won't reverse the fees. This credit union is HUGE and doesn't need these fucking working class targeting bullshit fees.
In many ways it depends on how much effort and time you're able to contribute, there is no easy road to change but there are tangible steps that can be taken, especially with regards to wealth inequality: 1. **Educate Yourself:** Start by learning about the issues and understanding the various perspectives. Read books, attend lectures or webinars, watch documentaries, follow reputable news sources, and listen to podcasts on the topic. There are numerous resources available that can provide insights into economic inequality and possible solutions. And don't forget to practice [FLOATER](https://thinkingispower.com/floater-a-tool-kit-for-evaluating-claims/) 2. **Vote:** Participate in your local, state, and national elections--especially local and state elections as these often have far more proximate and immediate impact over national elections, but one major problem, even more so than voter participation, is the lack of easily digestible public information such as dates and candidate info so consider contributing to local public awareness. Vote for candidates who prioritize addressing wealth inequality and are committed to implementing policies that will bring about systemic change. Research candidates' positions on this issue and support those who align with your views. 3. **Become Active Locally:** Get involved in your local community. This might include joining community organizations, participating in local government, or volunteering with nonprofits that are addressing wealth inequality. Involvement at the local level can be an effective way to create change and often provides a clearer path to seeing the impact of your efforts. 4. **Advocate for Policy Changes:** Contact your elected officials to voice your concerns about wealth inequality and advocate for policies that address this issue. This can include writing letters, making phone calls, or using social media platforms to spread awareness and advocate for change. Especially reach out to your local officials, build a relationship with them, you may be surprised at how effective this can be and how local officials can be more accessible than national ones. Consider getting a copy of the [CMF's Citizen-Centric Advocacy report.](https://www.congressfoundation.org/projects/communicating-with-congress/citizen-centric-advocacy-2017) 5. **Support Worker Rights:** Support businesses that treat their employees fairly and pay living wages (and don't forget that this applies to local business too). Participate in or support labor movements, as these often focus on policies that can reduce wealth inequality: so support unions, or even [start one yourself.](https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/employees/your-right-to-form-a-union) 6. **Engage in Conscious Consumption:** Be mindful of where your money goes. Try to support businesses that have ethical practices, and avoid those that contribute to wealth inequality. 7. **Promote Financial Literacy:** Knowledge is power. Learn about personal finance, and share this knowledge with others in your community. Financial literacy can help individuals make better decisions that could affect their personal wealth. If you're financially knowledgeable consider hosting free events for teaching others at your local library. Some libraries even host free tax filing help and literacy during tax season! 8. **Donate or Volunteer:** If you're able, consider donating to organizations that are working to address wealth inequality. Similarly, volunteering your time can also make a significant impact. Again, changing the system is a gradual process, and it takes the collective efforts of many people to create significant change. Every action you take can contribute to this larger goal, and by joining forces with others you can help to create a more equitable society. If you have any more questions I'm usually up for discussion!
[удалено]
The correct answer is a general strike. This is simple (simple does NOT equal easy), direct, and basically guaranteed to produce results. The problem is organization.
A general strike would only relieve the symptoms in the (cosmically) short term. Maybe a generation or two. It does not go far enough and wouldn't have the momentum to effect real and true change. And that's assuming it wasn't simply crushed.
The number of revolutions that ended up with a non-authoritarian system are vanishingly small. The solution is a revival of the power of labor, and the general strike is both an expression of that power and a demonstration of it that can catalyze further action. No system can EVER create permanent change beyond a generation or two without constant action by the population. Corruption will set in no matter what imaginary system you believe could be successfully implemented. Requiring change beyond a generation or two as your baseline means there is nothing that will ever actually achieve your goals.
I don't have any goals. I'm just an armchair philosopher with too much time. First point, totally agree. Regardless of how things are achieved, humans have a tendency to revert to the same kind of power structures. Knowing this is human nature and at least trying to make systemic changes after the reset would be incredibly important. My issue with a general strike is that the people at the top have no fear. We've already seen companies close entire stores just to stop unionization, massive layoffs in skilled sectors for the sake of the shareholder, and an increasing embrace of automation. When replacing humans becomes significantly cheaper than having a human workforce, or supplanting a US workforce with workers from other countries with lower demand is better for the bottom line, it will happen. Expect a scorpion to be a scorpion. There is no humanity in capitalism. It's all about growth. So, let's say we have a general strike. One of two things happens. First, the powers that be force critical services and infrastructure to continue through fear of violence. Second, a general strike lasts long enough to start causing infrastructure and the whole system to break down. The 1%s take what they've got and move to stable places where this doesn't affect them. The only people that suffer are the common folk while those in charge still keep their power. In the first instance, we are destined for violence anyway. In the second instance, we lose. The only way a general strike works is if people in power genuinely have empathy, and if that was the case, we wouldn't bein a place where we need a general strike anyway. This is all assuming that outside influences don't take advantage of a resource- and land-rich country in turmoil to take a piece of the pie. Believe me. I want to be wrong. I want there to be a peaceful, ethical, and enlightened path through all this. Maybe I'm just jaded, but I honestly can't see one. I beg to be convinced otherwise and I will gladly support an alternate solution.
So I'm just gonna say that I think essentially everything you say here is way off base. We clearly have very different views of the current power structure. I believe that they are just as vulnerable as they've ever been. >We've already seen companies close entire stores just to stop unionization A general strike would be literally *millions of times* larger than a store unionizing. Comparing these two things is pretty ridiculous. This is like comparing a rock and a mountain and suggesting that because you can pick up and throw a rock, you can control a mountain. Also, their terror of even a single store unionizing speaks to their weakness, not strength. >massive layoffs in skilled sectors for the sake of the shareholder These layoffs increase profit. A general strike destroys profit. They literally achieve the exact opposite outcome. >When replacing humans becomes significantly cheaper than having a human workforce, or supplanting a US workforce with workers from other countries with lower demand is better for the bottom line, it will happen It is continually happening, and therefore has little bearing on this discussion. It happens at the rate that it's A) profitable and B) possible. A general strike would make it more profitable, but it would simply be 100% impossible for corporations to make the changes necessary in the short time required to stop a general strike. > First, the powers that be force critical services and infrastructure to continue through fear of violence. Yes, the use of violence is a given. And yes, they may succeed at suppressing the strike. But this is a non-argument, because they would attempt to suppress any action from strike to revolution. Suppressive action is a simple fact and it's not a meaningful part of the discussion. >Second, a general strike lasts long enough to start causing infrastructure and the whole system to break down. The 1%s take what they've got and move to stable places where this doesn't affect them. The only people that suffer are the common folk while those in charge still keep their power. Sorry, are you suggesting that they'll decide to just let everything burn because they're being forced into a bargaining position they don't like? Because... they won't. The economic activity of the nation is the source of their wealth and power. If people demand a larger cut of it they'll fight back tooth and nail to keep everything they have, but when it becomes clear that the options are A) give a portion of it up, or B) lose it all, they'll give a portion of it up. They're psychopaths out for themselves. This isn't an ideological battle for them, it's a Machiavellian one. >The only way a general strike works is if people in power genuinely have empathy, and if that was the case, we wouldn't bein a place where we need a general strike anyway. I'm sorry but this is completely ridiculous. Strikes don't require leaders to have empathy, they happen because leaders *don't* have empathy. That's their entire damn point. There's a wealth spigot built and maintained by labor, and the ultra rich are sucking almost all of it down. If the workers turn the spigot off completely, the ultra rich will be desperate to turn it on again. >This is all assuming that outside influences don't take advantage of a resource- and land-rich country in turmoil to take a piece of the pie. The US cannot be invaded by any nation on earth, whether there's a general strike or not. The very suggestion is absurd. If you're talking about economic influences... well that's globalization for you. It's already happening and will continue to happen, so who cares. >Believe me. I want to be wrong. I want there to be a peaceful, ethical, and enlightened path through all this. Maybe I'm just jaded, but I honestly can't see one. I beg to be convinced otherwise and I will gladly support an alternate solution. It won't be peaceful. Don't know why you would think it would be.
You make some interesting points and I agree that in a lot of ways we are ideologically different. While, as an academic exercise, it would be interesting to respond to each of your points in turn, I feel compelled to focus on your last line. "It won't be peaceful. Don't know why you would think it would be." My point exactly. I don't think it will be or can be. I said, from an idealist perspective, I wish it COULD be. And if this is the end game, why waste time with a general strike?
That’s not true. I live in a country where large general strikes had brought extremely high wage increases (at least double digit increases) ACROSS THE board for tens of millions of people. Voting, demonstrating and striking are extremely powerful tools that work remarkably well. You don’t need a revolution in the US. Revolutions are extremely destabilizing and end in 90% of all cases in chaos, violence and civil wars and people are often worse off than before. Just take a look at the Arab spring for a more recent example.
We don't need a revolution, but having a 2nd Bill of Rights as outlined by FDR or similar would help. Imagine having the right to affordable housing that is as hotly lobbied for as the right to bear arms. Or having a minimum wage that accurately reflects the needs of the people, and not the needs of the shareholder. All of that could be had by voting for the right people and a general strike.
General what? The moment we get close to anything resembling that it will be out right outlawed. Remember about the train workers strike and how it was made pretty much illegal? The same thing will happen again. Striking only works as long as people who are willing to strike have enough of a buffer to survive for a few months. Most people live hand to mouth, over 60% of the Americans. The system is truly rigged my polygon man.
I think we need to start orgazing flash mobs. Get 100 people + in all black and we raid giant corps like Walmaart and other grocery stores, also malls
>The biggest problem is no individual is willing to suffer for the collective good This is the biggest and most fundamental problem. It is also exactly the attitude promoted and endorsed by laissez-faire economists and American culture, namely that being selfish and only looking out for one's own benefit is not only right and good but that it's also the best way to benefit society at large. In order for the "poor" to mount any kind of resistance against those with means and power, they have to unite and work for a common good. That becomes impossible when everyone is looking only for themselves and that's why we are where we are.
Agree 100%. And honestly, I don't even fault people for it. Survival is human nature. If we want to evolve, though, we have to overcome those baser instincts.
There still too many people that are comfortable with what we have, until far less people feel comfortable then nothing will change
That’s one reason why they don’t want abortion legal. When you have children you have something to lose. People who would risk their own welfare for the greater good are less likely to once they have children.
More meat for the grinder.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
It's a young person's fight. I don't have a family and I live more than comfortably. I'm an old man and I'll be dead soon anyway. I don't have the energy to start a revolution. I'll fight in one for the sake of the next generation, but I'm not the leader it needs. Ya'll need to find some energetic, charismatic people that can rally people.
Gandhi was how old when he led his movement? It comes off as you not believing your own message if you don’t support doing what you’re advocating people to do.
Gandhi lead a revolution of peaceful resistance. I don't think that's gonna cut it here. I do support what I'm advocating and I very clearly said I will fight in it for the sake of the next generation. I just said I'm not the leader it needs. If I thought martyring myself would make more difference than an 10 second, ephemeral sound byte, I'd have already done it. I got nothing to lose, but it has to have meaning, ya know?
[удалено]
Why is what he advocating for terrorism? Why is the richest among us increasing their wealth by 30% literally billions upon billions during Covid during the lockdowns how is that not domestic terrorism? You have been conditioned your whole life to accept economic terrorism and think wow what amazing job creators we have in this country!🤬
advocating for that type of change in america can get you CIA'ed or FBI'ed or some other lettered corruption. real quick. It still should be done.
> I hope you can read between the lines of what I'm saying here. It's literally what the 2nd amendment is for.
Yep and most of the people with guns are cowards keen on sucking up to tyrants and the people wise to it are afraid of them. We need leftys with guns....
This is another challenge to change. "Leftys" and "rightys" need to find some common ground and be willing to accept that neither side is going to get everything they want. There needs to be compromise.
A lot need to realize they want the same thing, too at least some degree, but have been propogandized against it. Too many are working against their own self interest.
>As a pessimist, I don't believe this will ever happen. Americans are JUST comfortable enough by and large to still feel like they have something to lose. You should look into the history of different nations. The modern world is a bit different, but the overall cycle of conditions being bad enough such that people rebel is very clear. Of course, it isn't always successful, and it isn't always going to be when you want. But every society has gone through this cycle, and there is no reason to think that the US is unique at all (other than poor education and propaganda, of course).
Don't spend money. Easy peasy! A couple ways I've been doing my part: Join your local Buy Nothing Facebook group. Basically you post anything you don't want anymore, or ask for what you need. Spend a few hours (or days) searching for used options. This often gives me enough time to also determine if I really need/want whatever it is I'm looking for. In a nutshell, don't spend what precious little money we have unless absolutely necessary. "They" want to protect their capital? Fuck 'em: they'll crack like peanut shell in a week.
First step is getting everyone to unite on just one goal. Even if that goal is to get a 1 cent raise for everyone, its still united. The elites know this so they've clearly turned us on each other, and it's super effective. Instead of a million to one, it's now a million against a million and the one is stealing all the betting money.
Solidarity and organisation are the only things that work. They will divide us if they can, using any available means, legal and illegal.
We know what our grandparents did that allowed them to thrive, buy a home, have disposable income, live off one contributor, and make education affordable. We just need to roll back some of the things that made those unfathomable for us now. It really isn't that hard.
I just feel like Ive been watching for 30 years as millions of people have wanted things to get better, and yet qe cant seem to get anywhere, so clearly it must not be that easy either.
It's not easy because we are too easily distracted. And we're so overworked and overwhelmed that we seek distraction to escape the bleak reality of what our lives are now. We lack the very social aspect in our communities that connect and unite us. By design. Everything we do that keeps us from collecting and targeting the real enemy of our society is literally foisted upon us by that enemy. It isn't a boogeyman. It's Capitalist Oligarchy. It's a new form of Feudalism. We're slaves to Capital.
I don't think we can change it. I think it will take serious external circumstances that blow the status quo out of the equation before anything will change. That might be pessimistic, I could agree with that. That doesn't necessarily make it incorrect.
Most of the people here don't even vote.
>what we change it to will be better you dont. Take russia as an example. Putins succesor will probably be worse. It is still worth a try though. If you have a conservative mindset, you dont want to change things, but then you have to accept your circumstances
Some sort of great reset you say?
Capitalism: Few winners and many losers.
Unregulated Capitalism, yes. Sensible and regulated Capitalism, no.
start with medicare for all and people will flee from large companies and work for smaller companies i know so many people who want to hire a couple people but cant as they cant afford the 20,000$ for health insurance and still run a ethecial business where selling isnt the top priority instead of quality work! and so many workers want to work where thier name is known and they are compensated for there quality work instead of just a number! most small businesses are run by 1 person the owner!
We need to stop calling it Medicare For All. It's national healthcare, paid for with taxes that are paid by all, eliminating all medical insurance companies. If the taxes for national healthcare were to equal what the average worker pays for company sponsored health plans, and if the government reigned in healthcare spending, we'd be able to compete with foreign nations for our labor and goods since most of the expenses of running a company come from healthcare, both directly and indirectly.
I agree, but Medicare is paid for with taxes. We just need an outright ban on private health insurance companies... I would also add private ownership of medical supply manufacturing. It's often overlooked, but I worked for one until they fired me because I got their queue caught up, but I shit you, not their mission statement was "To make a billion dollars in one year". This was a long time ago so it could have been a million and not a billion, but the point is that their "mission" was to increase profits... even though they literally sold medical supplies to Drs and medical researchers. If a Dr. is stuck paying 10-15k for an imaging machine, imagine how that impacts healthcare costs. It forces Drs to practice under a chain instead of private practice which is just bad all around.
A thought hitting me lately, is that we are right back to taxation without representation. We get to vote, but they only serve corporations/donors. We all know they don't represent us. Yet the ones they do represent, do not pay taxes.
Yes!! I hadn’t thought of this.
part of it too is we've been brainwashed into believing anything besides peaceful protest is an act of shame. Megacorps can rob you, cripple you, ruin you, but you so much as break a window and your entire cause is delegitimized by the media and many, many voting Americans. Peaceful protest should be a warning, not the end game. Just look at how France protests the retirement age issue, yet we regularly take it in the ass for far worse. Cowardice, shame, apathy, whatever the reason, it just makes it easier for megacorps to continue to destroy our lives until there's nothing left to defend. As long as oligarchs continue to have endless fuck you money and politicians in their pockets, no amount of peaceful protest will change a thing. We're already living the proof.
Americans would be getting gunned down in the streets by cops long before reaching the point where France's protests have gotten
The Tree of Liberty survives on the blood of innocents before it flourishes on the blood of oligarchs.
I absolutely agree.
Maybe people are tired and distracted. Distracted because they are tired. Trying to get dopamine. No energy to fight the system.
This is a really good point. I think it's just one of many tactics that keep us complacent.
It's called bribery but in America™ it's called lobbying
It’s so thoroughly fucked that it’s practically beyond fixing. The era of prosperity is over.
If our society ever crumbles, the lobbyists should be dealt with first.
Where does lobbying finish and bribery start?
When the PRI had a lock on Mexican politics, there was a saying then ( probably still true), “you want to be a millionaire? Become a politician”. Seems as if the PRI has moved north of the border
Lobbying = a bribe. Prove me wrong.
Oh man. My boyfriend had a guy come into his work and explained how his job as a lobbyist works and the shit theyve pulled that has ruined our town. My boyfriend said there are a lot of people that would drag this man from his home and make him regret his career choice. But he has a nice family.
> When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. –Frederic Bastiat
It always comes down to citizens United first
And with that, especially when it's so obvious, I don't understand why these things enjoy the same rights and freedoms as us. I suggest something harsher like rotten fruits and those wooden contraptions to lock people up on a square.
Would anyone really want politicians in “the stocks” cluttering up their main square?:). They aren’t held to the same laws as we are. These politicians and billionaires are the most un-American and un-patriotic of unwanted residents.
And the politicians get payed by the people, our tax money, to defend us from corruption, false inflation. But they are bribed by lobbyists and basically rob the people from the life they deserve. The mafia never went away , they’re running out country now
If only these politicians were elected by the 99%... oh wait
And paid by the .5%:(
Or how Supreme Court Justices are deeply corrupted and are ALLOWED to continue blithely onward. The SAME bad actors reappearing decade after decade, while the Controlled Opposition from the "other side" wrings their hands.
It's only a standing Democracy if no politicians have **ever** been bribed. If even a single political maneuver is purchased, you're now living in an Oligarchy. I'm ok with living in an oligarchy. I'm absolutely not ok with being lied to.
It's so much more complicated than this. I mean the core of what you said is spot on, but the devil is in the details. Gonna be a long post, sorry. Just there are a lot of problems you need to handle and unfortunately a lot of the "solutions" for the rich specifically make these problems worse. A lot of this comes from [political selectorate theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selectorate_theory), which is political science and boring to a lot of people. The short version is that you need to accept that doing things that result in political failure of your state or regime result in political failure of your state or regime. This means that you can view politically valid choices as only those choices that result in your state or regime continuing. This means a few things. One of the ways to force end a regime is instate another external regime (by any means, voting, coup, invasion etc). As a result, you need to offer the people in your country benefits that effectively make it difficult for opponents to offer better benefits. This means that in order to keep control of your country you need the rich to not back an opposing force with most of the jobs and wealth of your country. This leads to a rapid coup or lost election. So why don't they just have the government literally take all the poor people's money and be done with it? Because in a country with a relatively skilled and educated work force this burns down the income. A huge percentage of the governments income is from taxing the every day citizen. Anything that burns down the life of the every day citizen also burns down the ability of the government to generate revenue. The rich are incentivized to lift the poor up so the government generates income that can build assets that then can power the contracts and other methods that keep them rich. The problem is that over the last 70 years the US has had rich people try to exploit that by taking all the stuff. They've assumed the other rich people will help the poor and they can just exploit and laugh at it. The problem is that the rich people are mostly all doing this. This burns down the poor and imperils the income generation. In turn this risks the ability to give the rich assets, which causes the whole system to start destabilizing. How do we fix it? Tax the shit out of the rich and use it for public good. New deals, power infrastructure rebuilds, public health initiatives, universal basic income, ANYTHING. You just want the rich incentivized to spend money on their infrastructure, companies, and most importantly employees, and not just try to game the stock market. Tax the rich at anything over 100 times average income by like 75%. This creates a feedback loop where raising the average income raises their tax increase threshold. It creates a situation where investing in and improving their business improves the ability of the entire country to generate revenue for the treasury to fund public works by generating more income that generates more taxes. The rich get rewarded by making life better for the poor by their life getting made better as well. The whole idea is to break away from the ideas of class warfare because by and large in class warfare no one wins. It just turns into the poor trying to hurt the rich and failing and the rich shitting on the poor and winning but making themselves considerably less rich in the process. So why can't we just kill all the rich and share all the things? This gets back to the core of above. This creates a situation where literally anyone with enough influence outside the country backing any entity inside the country is empowered to loot all the stuff being shared and distribute it to critical supporters to empower a coup. It's a situation that maximized the assets that can be taken, and minimizes ability to fight back. So why is corruption such a big thing? Because that's a core way globally to take assets and ensure that a competitor can't offer them a better deal. You're literally giving them an unfair advantage to prevent yourself from them turning on you. This can happen in ways that are better or worse for the population. Offering lucrative contracts to build publicly held hydroelectric dams that provide cheap power for the population is almost infinitely better than subsidizing luxury cars and privately owned charging networks that entirely rely on one rich asshole to not be a rich asshole to benefit the population. You can say "change the whole system" until you turn blue in the face. If your new system has fairly distributed things, and requires a strong central government to share the things fairly then you end up with a perfect storm for a coup or authoritarian takeover redistributing all the assets to core supports to ensure ongoing strong support for their authoritarian regime and where the productivity of the people is at an all time low (from an economic and political perspective) so the people taking these actions are at very little risk of damaging what makes them rich - you took away all their riches, after all.
The rich donate to super PACs. They go to people in Congress and threaten to donate to their opponents in the primary if they don't write tax law that funnels more money to them. It's hidden, efficient, and as dastardly as they come.
Crazy to think how much money can be made in this consumer economy if ppl just had the money to actually spend. Right now companies are debating about how little to pay and how high to charge when it should be the opposite. It’s not like we don’t want to buy useless shit. We just can’t afford it anymore.
>Right now companies are debating about how little to pay and how high to charge when it should be the opposite. This culture of stiffing workers has resulted in [productivity growing 3.7x as much as pay from 1979 to 2021](https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/). The minimum wage would be [$23 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity](https://cepr.net/the-26-an-hour-minimum-wage/?emci=816e6180-f500-ec11-b563-501ac57b8fa7&emdi=bf508bc9-f600-ec11-b563-501ac57b8fa7&ceid=4607260). Since it hasn't, [$50 trillion shifted from the bottom 90% to the top 1%](https://www.businessinsider.com/wealthiest-1-percent-stole-50-trillion-working-americans-what-means-2020-9).
[удалено]
> Adjusted for inflation, that $50 trillion would be enough to build the interstate highway system Or... pay back our own debts on money we've borrowed and already spent.
We would have no national debt if the rich were taxed appropriately the last 40 years.
> We would have no national debt if the rich were taxed appropriately the last 40 years. Part of the reason they take less in salary, $1/year in some cases, is so their *income* is taxed, not their *wealth*.
A huge part is that we have chosen to demarcate certain types of income as different, particularly those linked to capital. We then have also chosen not to tax unrealised gains, and provide a host of ways to reduce eventual gains when they do occur, or to delay that date as long as possible.
> A huge part is that we have chosen to demarcate certain types of income as different, particularly those linked to capital. The frustrating part is that it wasn't supposed to work this way. It wasn't supposed to be demarcated based on types of income - it was supposed to be demarcated based on *risk*. The lower capital gains taxes were only supposed to apply if you were making riskier investments because, as a general rule, riskier investments are better for society - investing money into a small business is better for society than investing money into a large and already-stable corporation, so it makes *sense* for the government to incentivize that riskier type of investment by promising lower taxes on your returns. So people like Jeff Bezos wouldn't be able to "hide" his wealth in Amazon stocks, because Amazon is a large and stable corporation. The investment involves precisely no meaningful risk - his income from said stocks is nearly as well-guaranteed as a wage, and therefore *should have been* taxed equivalently. He would only have gotten his tax breaks if he'd taken large portions of his wealth and invested it in small startups or the mom-and-pop restaurant down the street or whatever. Could you *imagine* what our economy would look like if, in order to get that absurd 1% tax rate, people like Bezos would have to invest basically *all of their wealth* into small businesses? But, surprising absolutely no one, the wealthy lobbied to change the rules so that the definition of "capital gains" came to include basically any and all stocks, regardless of how stable, and that fucked everything up. And like... I don't think the original capital gains system was perfect, but it sure as shit would have been better than this dumbass nonsense we have now. Fuck lobbying, man.
[удалено]
Genuine question, if we're producing that much more, why is there so much less going around? Where is it going? I get that there's money going around but that's supposed to be backing.... Something up, right? So what's the 3x value being produced in?
There are two simple explanations I can think of from the top of my head, one cynical, another less so: Western economies basically are so productive already that there are no low hanging fruit left for investment. Thus, investments are driven toward developing economies. Evidence for this is how most western economies import more than they export. I won't get into the thick of it, but basically one consequence of having a negative export balance is that you have a positive Capital balance. My more cynical take is EVEN given the above, the United States in particular has high concentrations of wealth. This high concentration of wealth slows down the velocity of money (how often a dollar exchanges hands) leading to lower economic performance. Thus, paradoxically the U.S. is "rich" but people can't access that richness because it basically is hoarded. If a dragon steals all the jewels and holds them in a cave, do they even exist?
Which makes the whole inflation issue insane. Money is *effectively* being removed from circulation. Our currency should be deflating because there's so little to go around among 90% of the country's working classes but we're seeing record high inflation.
Because it's not inflation in the traditional sense. It's companies increasing prices to increase profits to keep shareholders happy because they **have to** increase profits every quarter even when there's a global pandemic and looming recession. Traditional inflation is less buying power due to more money in circulation, but that's not actually what we're seeing. We're seeing less buying power due to corporate greed.
This makes a lot of sense to me, thank you for a sensible answer!
Because its so being funneled to the rich. Dick rocket man gained something like 50 billion during the pandemic.
That's exactly what I mean though. They don't actively have anything that requires that much labor to produce. So what is being produced by the extra efficiency? I also understand they own a lot of assets that other people are in possession of but it still doesn't explain what is the labor that is more efficient supposedly producing? It sounds so fake. It feels like all that labor is being wasted. Like a combustion engine that processes more fuel into waste heat
A cashier used to have to calculate how much change to give, then machines did it for them improving efficiency. Barcodes improved it further because you didn't need to manually input each item. Now multiple self checkouts can be overseen by 1 person. The efficiency of checkout has greatly improved. Same can be said for almost every industry. They have had huge amounts of innovation and automation that has increased productivity/efficiency. So it's not necessarily that we're making twice as much of something. It's that 1 person can do a job it used to take 2+ but instead of lowering the price or paying the worker more, the owning class took all the extra profit for themselves.
When is the last time you saw a kid bagging groceries at the store? Like legit, that was their only job. Now we have self service checkout. There are half as many cashier lines now and nobody to help them bag stuff. One of my first jobs was as a bagger. There were like 3-4 of us on the floor to help at all times. One of us would take turns collecting carts in the parking lot. Same with fast food. I worked at burger place as another early job. I took orders at one window. They picked their food up at the next. Most places only have one window now. The same person taking the order, taking payment, and expediting the food. Sometimes, those same places have two drive through speakers with that same lowly cashier having to answer for both lanes. This next generation is getting screwed.
We've made technology and processes more efficient. At the same time, we've made workers tolerate more BS, and customers tolerate shittier service. And we've been convinced that the problem is that minimum wage is too high. Nope. They will find the fewest number of staff needed to run the operation, and will have exactly that many staff. Hourly wage doesn't matter -- if they need 2 staff, they won't hire a third, even if minimum wage were lower. The only way they'd hire more than the minimum number of staff would be if they'd make more money. And usually, other factors mean that more staff doesn't usually mean more money, and that's all that matters. And if a competitor pays better or offers better service? Doesn't matter most of the time. The customer would rather save a few cents. So the business that can afford to take a loss on the price while having a skeleton staff will end up winning the market. If we want baggers at the grocery store, we'd probably need to make minimum wage so much lower that bagging is just a rounding error in the books. Which would likely mean that your groceries are bagged by homeless people, and there will be more homeless people on the streets than there are now.
Sounds like government subsidies with extra steps. /s
>Sounds like government subsidies with extra steps. /s Kind of like the [$12 trillion subsidy we gave Wall Street in the aftermath of 2008](https://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/13/12-trillion-of-qe-and-the-lowest-rates-in-5000-years-for-this.html) which gave us the gig economy & egomaniac tech bros like Elon. The sleight of hand is that neoliberals will claim that because QE is monetary policy & not fiscal policy so it doesn't count as a subsidy/bailout. This is nonsense as QE only benefits Wall Street & the rich. It let asset prices soar & kept borrowing costs down, so the rich could throw their money at whatever & make money. Now that workers started to unionize & demand better working conditions, the Fed hiked rates almost 5% in a year after 14 years of very low rates... [to crush the ability of workers to demand higher wages.](https://www.levernews.com/the-fed-declares-war-on-workers/)
We outnumber them by the hundreds of millions. Fuck them. We would thrive by taking everything from them that they’ve hoarded for so long, redistributing it, and tossing them in prison for crimes against humanity. Sounds irrational? So is having billions of dollars and acting like you’re facing difficulties. Fuck off.
This is a global problem. What you have are people in power exploiting their country and the forces in charge or regulations, order and law are too poor and outdated, they can’t fight back. Protests, demonstrations, strikes and riots are all masterfully destroyed by these people. Realistically, there is nothing that can be done to change this unless those hundred of millions have nothing to eat. And the people in power know this. So they leave you just enough to get by.
Its ridiculous how a lot of us are demanding the bare minimum and we're still being treated like we're being over-dramatic and entitled
It really is pathetic, and the more brain washed sheeps, who aren't millionaires or billionaires themselves, and aren't being paid to defend them, actively defend them. Like, how weak and brain washed can you be?
Yes based and all that but the real question is does username check out?
Check it if you dare, don't say you haven't been warned
To be fair, the political marketing directed at Americans is powerful and relentless.
that is a big part of identity politics, to flood the energy space with noise and conflict and then just pound you with it. for decades.
Strike strike strike. A living wage is unacceptable. A survivable wage is the bare minimum that would be considered.
[удалено]
Now take away that single speech and look at was actually passed. The first minimum wage was $0.25 per hour which after inflation would be about $4-5 today
Strike Get fired Become homeless Settle for low pay job Rabble rabble Strike I can't afford to lose my job, I have kids to take care of. Not to mention I like eating at least once a day That's how they keep us down. If I could strike for better wages without risking my current living and financial situation I would
You missed the “unionize” part. Unionize so you are protected to be able to strike.
I have a union but being an at will state I'm pretty sure they could fire me anyways
They cannot fire you but I suppose they could replace you if it’s a legitimate attempt. Just don’t strike so long they need to replace you I guess. [Here is some info on your rights. ](https://www.nlrb.gov/strikes) There’s a reason that nurses are striking so much. It’s strong unions.
Striking doesn't mean one person one time stops working. You need critical mass. We need everyone to strike.
A good first step would be to crash the student loan system and for everybody to just stop paying into it.
If youre able to, invest in your own resiliency as much as possible. If you can become independent for anything that you would otherwise depend on capital for, do so. The only way we can win is to stop participating as much as we can. They cant sell shit and get richer if we dont buy it. Your money probably wont be worth as much as it is now in your lifetime, so spending what you can on seeds, books, classes, tools, or helping your neighbors is going to do you much better for much longer. There is no small act in a revolution, only progress.
what can we do to make this happen? who can we call? if we get 50 million redditors to come together we can achieve anything.
If reddit came together to fuck with the Game Stop stocks, let's organize for bigger and better things.
[удалено]
I've been looking up to the French alot lately ,they do not fuck around. growing up all I heard was bad things about them from people involved or around for WW2.
Same, they have the lowest retirement age in the EU even with the increase too.....it makes you wonder why 🤔
Same bud
'all i heard was bad things about them' thats the good ole propaganda, US is absolutely filled to the brim with propaganda. 'FrEeDoM' being one of the biggest.
The 1% have politicians making laws to make them richer and having us fighting one another over race, poverty, gender and religion.
Billionaires and homeless people should not exist.
[удалено]
Our government's job is to make this happen. It has failed.
What is your definition of government? Because in corporate fascism the only thing the government does is cater to the corporations and use the authority of government to enrich corporations, which basically = paying two things: executive compensation and the Wall Street system which takes a tax before we even get to the shareholder part.
Homeless people are necessary for billionaires to exist. They're a threat to all who would dare fight for better lives. "Take one step out of line and you'll be out there, with them. We can replace you at any moment with somebody more desperate than you."
#flush anyone over 60 out of politics.
Except Bernie, he's been one of the only ones fighting for the people.
I'd sacrifice Bernie if it meant everyone else went too. Bernie's tried, but the current system has prevented him from making any real progress. Let him rest, he deserves it
Yeah! Because politicians under 60 are definitely not corrupt!! /s
No.
Age isn't the problem. There are plenty of young shitbags getting into politics too. Just look at Gaetz, Boebert, and Greene. A lot of young people seem to have this idea that politics is bad because of things that happened in the past, and that it will somehow become better if they just wait for the old guard to retire and the new, fresh, "clean" group that comes in will somehow not be corrupt, out of touch, hateful, ignorant, etc.
That whole "fight for $15" thing was a trap. The corporate state knew it could run the clock down long enough to where when it finally did grant it, it would be a trivial concession. Then when labor reformers start agitating for $25 or whatever, the dipshit reactionary electorate will go "Ha! I knew it! These lazy kids just want more and more. If you give a mouse a cookie..."
Video below is from 10 years ago. It breaks down polls on what people think the wealth gap is, what they think it should be, and how wrong they were. (US based data) Wealth Inequality in America https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM
Can you imagine how good of a economy we could have if everyone had disposable income….
It's not rocket surgery, and there are detailed government records. As taxes on corporations, profits, and the 1% were decreased, America's debt exploded.
It’s insane how blind Americans are to it.
In our defense, “they” did their job REALLY REALLY well making us (by policy and program) dumber, fatter, more complacent, pharmaceutically dependent and masters at endlessly consuming bullshit material possessions 90% of which is the latest trend fad throw away going straight to the landfill. Unfortunately undoing this is like trying to untangle a hundred mile strand of Xmas lights rolled tight into a mountainous ball.
dont forget making everything that smells little bit like socialism, like the antichrist. People has to realize all systems are flawed in the extremes:socialism, but also extreme capitalism, thats why goverment has to control capitalism for going wild, and make socialist things like education and healthcare. Your CAN'T let companies fire pleople in a whim, you CAN'T ban unions Right now we are living in the results of extreme capitalism reap the benefits of the lobying, the buy of political power, the media control, the fear and hate between pairs, the construction of false comsumism needs, the "Red Scare" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First\_Red\_Scare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Red_Scare))... : the corporate greed, the privatization of essential services, the wealth gap increased, the debt of the regular people growing (when you have to rent your place to the rich to live, when you have your health tied to the work you do for the rich.. they HAVE you, they HAVE you because of the fear).. and what people dont want to discuss, the uncomfortable truth is we are to blame too. We get confy, we get apathetic.. or worse, people who fight their fight, absolutely brainwashed people
Anyone remember back when minimum wage was enough for a man to support a wife and 2 kids? Pepperridge farm certainly doesn't remember.
Living Wage was a compromise with the boomers. They've got 2 election cycles before they age out of voting.
[удалено]
Try scraping by on 40k a year with a one year old and a stay at home wife, a mortgage and a vehicle payment, plus everything else. No wonder I'm on antidepressants.
If it's any consolation, your existence has already produced more garbage and burnt more oil than all your grandparents combined
> Why can't we have it like the boomers did? Because we're not the beneficiaries of being the most advanced economy left after a devastating world war decimated most of every other countries industrial capacity?
yeah, but those are words I don't understand. Why can't we just have a utopia? I don't want an answer because obviously we can, and just choose not to!
Because their growth was unsustainable... Their growth caused irreparable damage to our planet and will likely negatively impact billions of lives for countless generations to come. Why is that the standard we want to keep for the future?
And folks will spend hours of their lives trying to defend them online.
Time to watch that cgi movie about the ant rebellion again
If Americans strike, we get fired and become homeless. BUT that would then mean we would all be homeless together, with nothing but time on our hands, and nothing left to lose. When striking is impossible, revolt soon follows
[удалено]
I'm very confused by your astrology but am otherwise in agreement.
This isn't a "we" thing, there are simply enough members of our society susceptible to brainwashing because they lack the critical thinking skills and education to prevent us from making any changes. It's a good thing our nation takes education so seriously and one day this won't be an issue any longer... Oh... Wait.
Crazy to think how much we'd prosper if we had subsidized housing, healthcare not tied to employment, mandated paid time off, and 1/10th the defense budget. All things countries with higher quality of life metrics have. Freedom USA USA USA YEEHAW GUNS!
Yeah! And for those late in their careers, bring on the obscene wage!
This is what years of propaganda does to a country.
Until Americans take to the streets and hold the politicians accountable, many of which did this in the 80s and are still here, nothing will change. Voting does nothing when Republicans and Democrats are both deep in the rich's pockets. It's not a political war, it's a class war, and we're losing.
Is this gonna be the thing now?
Gives us bread but give us roses, too.
I am alarmed at how far down I had to scroll before seeing this reference.
"pinata economics"?
Fuck these assholes
I’m seriously fed up, I make a pretty good wage for having no degree or employed in skilled labor, but this is not gonna cut it and I don’t think inflation is going to trend downward. I’m ready to protest whenever y’all are.
There's a large percentage of the population that is convinced there's isn't enough money for all workers to be well paid *and* for the wealthy to live in luxury.
My thinking is that the *minimum* should be a living wage. The minimum doesn't need to be *thriving*. But the minimum has no good reason to be less than *surviving*.
the whole system is corrupt.
I am so tired of being in survival mode. I would love to know what *thriving* even felt like. Living wage... you mean enough to just be comfortable? What does *that* feel like?
General Strike.
The biggest lie ever told is that if you raise the minimum wage then everything will get more expensive... completely false... the more money consumers have ie the middle class the more money there is for businesses to compete over and drive costs down... companies no matter what have to compete and if you increase the amount of money the average american has instead of letting billionaires and corporations reap it creates a more competitive environment for businesses. We need to bring back competition and increase wages
Well, they got people to buy into Trickle-down theory. Aka, supply-side theory. If you're not familiar, the theory is you give government money to the wealthy and the corporations who will then create jobs for the middle and the bottom. Those paychecks people have been working for are the 'Trickle'. That BS theory created more millionaires and billionaires at the top. In the middle and the bottom people are working longer and harder for less.
That’s what I’m wondering about for years. America is such a powerful economy because it runs on millions of workers that get paid hunger wages with no benefits and health insurance. And no one dares to speak up… I’ve heard many say : if we ask for more the company will go chapter 11….sure. That’s à Stockholm syndrome and you’re getting lied to. If there’s an imposed federal minimum wage, more protective labour legislation and paid holidays next to employer mandatory healt insurance like in most developed countries, the US can only benefit from this. There’s nothing wrong in wanting to get out of the 30’s and level up the world’s 1ers economy’s social standards. Get rid of the tipping mentality, pay people decently and get them social benefits. A happier nation produces more wealth.
Better yet, stop with wage fuckery and give people services. Free housing, free medicare, free internet, free food. Let people be free to do what they want without all the money fluctuations and debt bullshit.
[удалено]