A good reason to have laws regulating the maximum pay gap between executive and the lowest paid peon. And make sure to include all types of pay like stock options so companies can’t squirm out of it.
I'm ok with this, but it's essentially just a step toward socialism which is the better option (but will never happen). Because all this will do is make CEOs less wealthy from the company itself. The investors still make tons more than the CEOs already and they don't do anything. You need to force revenue sharing essentially which is just socialism with extra steps. Cause CEOs will just end up investing in other companies and still be wealthy and get less compensation from the company itself.
No, for investors to grow revenue it would. Which was the whole initial concept of owning the means of production. You invest in what you thought would make money. You didn't invest because you wanted to take away employee's earned value to yourself. But that's what it came to. A majority of inflation is profit-driven related. Not government assistance related like many corporations and conservatives want you to think. Aside from that, any overt success is shared amongst everyone and no increase would be offset by normal COLA through the supply chain. People could survive and thrive without having to gut the value of employees or those in the supply chain. The only issue would be loss of business which is always a risk. But losses can be shared equally or if it's a large enough loss over a long enough time, it would require some folks to be laid off and depending on why, the employees could put the person running the business.
You didn’t invest because you wanted to take away employee’s earned value to yourself.
The fact that this ends up being the way that companies create more ‘shareholder value’ is a particular disease of modern neoliberalism. What you describe seems to me more similar to how companies in the US were run in the 1950s. More of a ‘rising tide lifts all ships’ approach that was used before management became antagonistic towards labor (viewing business units as ‘cost centers’ etc…). Its a particular framing that I think we can say does not guarantee any kind of result of profitability, but seems particularly enshrined in modern management culture.
Its a particular framing that I think we can say does not guarantee any kind of result of profitability, but seems particularly enshrined in modern management culture.
It’s enshrined in a management culture that has largely conquered labor through a mixture of anti-union measures and taking capitalism global so that they can pay as close to zero as possible for labor in other countries.
Sure, the products and services (and the country) all suffer, but nobody really seems to give a shit about that.
Exactly. Increasing pay would be really, really nice. But we can do that and have more control over our workplaces. Worker owned companies would prevent huge disparities in pay from reoccurring, regardless of what the government does.
Like a wise and angry man once said: "Fuck the G rides, I want the machines that are making them."
I know. But investors don't care. They're the root of the problem. CEOs are simply an employee of the company that ultimately represents the shareholders interest. Affecting their pay does not affect shareholder value that much. It just commoditizes the CEO position.
Seriously, I literally just posted the same comment basically. It’s really silly how fixated on CEOs people are. I guess they are an easy scapegoat example, but they’re just goons hired by the board of directors on behalf of the shareholders. It’s not like they straight up own the company. (Yeah yeah yeah, there’s stock compensation, and some founder CEOs like Zuck still own shares after IPO etc, i know.)
Socialism is the abolition of social classes. Regulating capital is usually called Social Democracy, or Marxism. Honestly, sieze the means of production.
Haha what the fuck do you think we’re talking about here? Nobody said lower CEO pay or anything about a ceiling, we’re talking about lessening the pay gap by enforcing a ratio. If CEOs want to make huge wages they need to pay employees more. This is grade school math dude.
Obviously you’re trolling and I’m just feeding it, but on the small chance that you’re not… Well shit man, maybe don’t dig yourself into stances so strongly if you can’t do basic math?
Dude scroll up. Unless buddy edited the post, this entire response thread was a reply calling for reducing ceo pay to fix the ratio. Which I maintain, despite all the name calling, doesn’t fucking help anything at all
37% federal plus 5-10% state, plus additional Medicare tax and 3.8% investment income tax and a bunch of others, not good enough for you? That’s literally approaching 50% what’s your problem?
A majority of wealth doesn't come from income so would never be touched by income tax. A "wealth tax" is just a broad term meaning that they should be taxed on the wealth fairly. Like capital gains for instance is a doozy. Way less taxation than what you likely pay (percentage wise obviously).
So "wealth tax" would include an income tax, capital tax, estate tax etc, all just at rates that are equivalent to how well the system treats them. They get a much larger advantage off the system that is set up than most others.
And the ultra wealthy don't even always have an income. You think Bezos has a salary right now that's significantly attributing to his wealth? Or Buffet or even Zuckerberg? I forget, his his salary still $1 a year? You want to tax only that?
But they're literally not counted under income tax law. So you're essentially arguing for the exact same thing if you want it to count under some sort of tax.
Edit: short term capital gains is the only one that counts as income. Long term is not and is severely under taxed compared to income tax. Like, I like your intentions, but you're severely fucking up the details and it details your entire motivation and intentions.
When your comment backed me up, I didn't find any reason to respond. Capital gains tax isn't income tax. You admitted it by typing it out. You're just showing that "wealth tax" is just a tax on various means of wealth. I don't know if English isn't your first language, but you're literally agreeing with everyone but saying you don't.
No one owes you anything, nor do they owe you a response. Especially when it didn't back up your own point.
Thanks for typing out a lot of words to say "you want taxes other than income."
You never even offered a rebuttal to what I said. You're a fucking joke.
Don't talk to me again. You're so unhinged you came back 6 days because someone decided you weren't worth the fucking time to respond to due to your shitty ass logic and poor understanding of language. So again, capital gains tax is not income tax. You agree. Thanks. You understand that "wealth tax" is just a broad term that means taxes on things other than their income (which in many cases is $1, such as Zuckerberg).
You're not a CPA. If you are? I feel bad for your clients as they're gonna get fucked in audits.
That's only short term capital gains tax. Long term capital gains is taxed at a different rate than short term. I literally already mentioned that.
Edit: to be clear, Schedule D would include sales of assets that aren't required to be reported on 1040. https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1040gi you can follow the instructions there and specifically where it tells you how to choose different tax rates than, you know, the income tax rate.
All capital gains and losses foot on schedule D line 16 and flows into 1040 line 7. The worksheet below breaks out items treated differently like section 1250 recapture, qualified dividends and LTCG:
It’s all income, just different tax rates and rules.If you want higher LTCG tax rates sure, crank it up I don’t care.
Wealth tax is NOT simply asking for higher tax rates.
Wealth tax typically includes unrealized capital gains. All unrealized gains eventually become realized one way or another. At that point LTCG tax or estate tax applies.
Taxing unrealized capital gains is a terrible idea. Wealth tax is a terrible idea. Income tax is just fine. Income tax includes realized capital gains. Crank that rate up if you want. Just no wealth tax. These are completely separate concepts.
the fact you even had to say "typically" means its a broad term that just means different things to different people. if someone wanted to tax unrealized gains specifically, they would say that. they didn't. they're essentially just saying they want wealthy people to pay taxes.
this has been repeatedly told to you. you even used a specific rate to describe income tax as being enough. that alone would have excluded your whole, now further expanded upon but originally excluded by definition, explanation.
this was also extremely clear from everything i said. multiple times. but obviously, like i said, multiple times, you're in agreement with me. you just have some hangup on the definition of an ambiguous word that the original user gave no further intent behind and just jumped to your own conclusions on nothing, despite being told, repeatedly.
do you understand now?
I'm done here. I can't believe you're arguing with someone who has repeated been on the same page as you. Nothing you've said is in disagreement with me (except my claim you're not a CPA). Its like you just want to hear yourself talk or "win" something. Especially after that childish rant about someone not responding to you on the internet. Honestly. You should be ashamed of that. I don't get it. Do you want the last word or not? It's behavior like that which makes me believe you aren't a CPA because you're not acting like a goddamn fucking adult.
So you don't get all stressed out or angry or need an extra call to your therapist, i'm not going to respond again, but I might downvote you just for fun. And honestly, why is an upvote without a comment ok but a downvote without a comment isn't? Someone can disagree with you and leave it at that. They don't owe you anything, you entitled ass.
That’s literally exactly what I’m advocating for word for word. Wealth tax bad, income tax good. Income tax rate too low? Crank it up to your hearts content. Glad we agree.
The problem is that once you are super rich you don’t really have an income anymore. You just expand your wealth and you end up paying way less taxes on that.
This is something that the common mortal can’t even think of.
The upper-class does not rely on income the same way the middle and lower class do. Taxing income affects us much more than it does them, that’s why you institute a wealth tax to spread the burden.
You simply don’t understand. All income flows into wealth. All wealth is eventually becomes, one way or another, taxable income. You can defer it for a while but it’s literally all the same thing.
You’re talking about legislating a massive clusterfuck, like you can’t even imagine how messy it would be, that pretty much nobody would comply with free of errors and omissions, all over a timing difference.
Just please, I’m fucking begging you, stop talking about a wealth tax, especially when you don’t understand how tax works to begin with.
The point is that if max pay gap laws are passed, CEOs will just hide their actual pay in external resources and normal employees will still make exactly the same.
Good. Make them hide it. Then make it illegal to hide income(if it already isn’t). Tax agencies like the IRS are really good at catching this sort of thing.
Make it difficult for them and their companies.
Make them have to spend to hide it. If they get caught, the money goes back to the economy. If they don’t get caught, at least some the money they spend on law firms and accounts goes back to the economy.
Because this is America and if you make rules like that you’ll crush the American Dream ^tm^ and no one will want to work at all because you’ve taken away their ability to daydream about one day being the disgustingly rich person doing the trickling instead of the disgustingly poor person waiting to be trickled on.
Yes, Bernie, we know. We will because we have no other choice. Because of how absolutely broken and corrupt our entire political system is, we can vote for a ideologically repugnant lame-duck conservative or a literal fascist.
No matter how much we hate Biden and the DNC's corrupt, self-serving conservatism, we still have two brain cells to rub together and do, in fact, understand that "both sides" are most definitely NOT the same.
Yeah, both sides aren’t the same. How do you deal with the 20% of the country that want a fascist government and the 30% who are ok with it as long as it keeps taxes low and punish the “right people”?
I’m just venting in my reply to your comment; this isn’t a criticism of what you said.
How do you deal with them? With patience and honesty. You talk politics, make it OK to discuss things without demonizing people who disagree with you. If it’s impolite to discuss politics, then only the impolite will share their political opinions. And you know who benefits? The fascist. They want the opposition silenced by propriety. They want the extremes to be the loudest voices, because it paints the picture that both sides are unreasonable.
Don’t avoid the subject. Dive headfirst into it, and be prepared to resist the urge to roll your eyes or get emotional. Be calm, be rational, and be direct. Conservativism is a fungus that grows in the darkness. In the conservative mind, they are the heroes, and everyone else is evil. You won’t win that debate with logic. You have to use the gray rock method, and prove to them that you both disagree with them, and you are not their enemy.
The only decent tactic I found is to focus on having the government being the arbitor of who is a good person.
You also have to argue against the programming that relying on any unearned government assistance is bad. So, the best way to respond is asking if there should be a qualification that anyone working shouldn’t get the same benefits of someone who is broke.
It isn’t perfect, though. There is also a lot of tribalism.
Unfortunately, there’s a reason cult deprogrammers are heavily trained. If you’re not an expert, the above behavior can have the opposite effect, helping reiterate to them that their crazy positions are actually reasonable and acceptable. The worst thing you can do to a cult member is acknowledge their beliefs respectfully. The second worst thing you can do is insult them. See the problem?
You have to use the gray rock method, and prove to them that you both disagree with them, and you are not their enemy.
This is the problem. When someone holds a belief that is not ok, telling them that is “ok” doesn’t work. You’ll be “one of the good ones”, but it’ll end there.
I’ve tried basically everything under the sun with ly parents and family. Including variations of this.
It doesn’t work.
If someone is as set in their ways and conspiracies and worldview. There’s no getting them out if it, if they don’t already want to. They just come up with whatever counterargument or idea that makes sense to them or supports them. Real or imagined. Facts and reality literally don’t matter.
About the only thing left I’m gonna end up trying to do is to effectively give them a form of ideological shock, which may end up just shattering their worldview. Not exactly intentional, mind you, but just by living my own life. Maybe having their child be something they’re supposed to hate will shake up their foundational beliefs enough to question things.
Yes, and I’m very sorry you’re dealing with that. You’re right, you’re not going to fix a conservative mind. The strategies I mentioned are recommended to protect and preserve your own mental health, not to fix theirs. Set boundaries, identify gaslighting, disengage emotionally from their outbursts, and protect your self esteem from their whims. It might help them recognize their issues and improve their relationship with you, but there are no guarantees.
This is the same reason I talk about how much I am paid with my coworkers
Sure it makes sense that someone here longer than me will get more, but of two people are hired at the same time and one is making $3,000 more (My own experience) then it’s bs
I think you and OP really need to get some tools to deal with your emotions. I spend 50 hours there (and in actually vile places) and yet I do focus on stuff where I can have impact on.
However recognise also… nothing is solved by voting biden in instead of Trump. Since the issue isn’t Trump the person, but the wider politican movement. There will be next trump after this trump and next trump after that trump. Names change, the situation doesn’t.
It’s just kicking the can down the road for another 4 years. Nothing more, nothing less. US voters and system really need to do some hard long term thinking and planning to come up with a plan to actually solve the issue. Instead of keeping kicking the can down the road for 4 years at a time. Since again (as with Trump in 2016) the can doesn’t get kicked along for yeat another 4 years. Instead when USA goes to kick the can, it is actually this time a glass bottled molotov, that bursts in flames upon being tried to be kicked yeat again.
You throw corrupt around like it has meaning when it’s nothing more than compromise. It’s compromise in order for the party to get into power, not corruption… conflating the two is ignorant to the fact DNC wouldn’t not get into power ever without it.
Most Americans don't see themselves as workers, they see themselves as just some a main character who is only struggling due to a personal fault in a quick time event rather than corporate planed actions that worked with the government to enable that thinking in the first place.
You say "tax the rich" and they think you mean them because they made $100k last year. Nah you're good! You could make 10x that and you'd still be good. I was talking about the people who make 450,000x that amount in a year.
The regulators are the National Labor Relations Board, who brought the suit attempting to force Starbucks to re-hire them. The regulators are doing their jobs in this case. The courts, especially the Suprene Court, are the ones captured.
West to accuse him of only backing Biden because he is “fearful of the neo-fascism of Trump.
That quote shows how frankly, stupid, Cornel West is. Game theory & math show that it is impossible for a 3rd party run to succeed with US style FPtP voting in place. Get rid of that & then we can talk, but not to you, shit for brains.
Post an archive link or copy and paste the article if it’s behind a paywall. I can’t subscribe to dozens of news outlets because someone posted an article once for a throwaway discussion.
Use a browser extension if it’s personally important to you, or just paste the link in yourself. Archive sites go offline; they shouldn’t be primary link sources.
It's personally important to the person sharing it. The reason they're not subscribing is because it isn't personally important.
If you want to share information, you need to take the responsibility of making sure it's readable. You can't just throw shit at the wall and expect everyone else to interpret it correctly. That's a recipe for misunderstanding and divisiveness.
You’re winning an argument that no one is having with you, great job 👍
You didn’t respond to the substance of my comment. Links to paywalled articles are trivial to paste into a site like archive.is. Archive sites are taken down all the time, it makes no sense to provide them as the primary source of a link.
Or I’m someone who directly experienced the ethnic cleansing and genocide committed against my people by the the Serbs. I have zero sympathy or tolerance for keyboard warriors and actual fascist apologists when it comes to the subject. Educate yourself first and actually think critically sometime about shit you say (as you claim you do), rather than just repeating the tired, and frankly lazy, “west bad/NATO bad” mantra.
Ah yes NATO good Serbia/Yugoslavia bad. You can apply the very advice you give to yourself, since you stan for NATO. NATO is the single biggest evil organisation in human history, and USA the biggest terrorist country.
In the case of the Yugoslavian wars and Serbian aggression against Bosnia, yes, NATO was good and Serbia was bad. Serbia instigated the first genocide on European soil since the Holocaust (caveat: depending on how you classify Armenia geographically) and refused to stop and back off until they were bombed. It wasnt until the bombs started falling on THEIR people and country that they finally stopped. Also, continuing to refer to Serbia as “Yugoslavia” makes me think that either you’ve no idea about what you’re talking when it comes to the Balkans, or are a Serb apologist.
I mean, if Trump won and abolished all elections and declared himself dictator for life, then West's chances of being elected president as a third party candidate wouldn't actually change one way or the other.
So maybe being a feckless third party candidate in an authoritarian neofascist dictatorship isn't really that different from being a feckless third party candidate in a constitutional democracy.
Damn, fake London actually did something good? I’m sure it’s not the first time that’s happened, but it is the first time I’ve heard of that happening, as a non-Canadian.
But I believe that’s not the first, and won’t be the last, time Ontario has regressively overruled the democratic will for genuinely beneficial change.
The party of compromise has been working hard to find middle ground and bipartisan support from people who dog whistle to neo nazis. It doesn’t surprise me to hear someone eyeballing the 3rd party route.
Not that I think you’re wrong about the math and who will ultimately win if it becomes a serious thing, I’m just not surprised people are getting heated and stoking some fires.
Or just like, compete in a Democratic primary like Bernie did. Maybe don’t shoot for president on your literal first attempt, but you can if you really want to. Bernie was way more successful in promoting his message running in those Democratic primaries than any of the random Greens have ever been.
Who do you think is smarter, a leading intellectual, harvard professor and still relevant figure or a kbin poster?
While I don’t prescribe that smarts matter perspective does and my perspective is that it seems you are missing something. Do you think a person critically looking at our system and having spoken with very learned people for decades knows more than you or maybe talks on a different framework? I sure hope you do reflect on that again.
a 3rd party run to succeed with US style FPtP voting in place
However as 2016 showed it is also impossible for the FPTP lesser of two evils routine to keep kicking the can down the road for ever, you eventually will land on the “bandit” sector on trying to yeat again run the russian roulette of “surely the fear of the greater evil will again make the lesser evil win”.
Since lesser of two evils too long leads to apathy. People won’t be rebelling by voting for Trump, by voting for even Cornel West, they won’t be even really rebelling at all. Instead they will be so disillusioned by decades of lesser of two evil, they will instead sign up for extra shift of work or decade to sleep in bed to rest for a day instead of going voting.
The great enemy of Democrats is not Trump, it is sleeping peoples party and you don’t win against sleeping peoples party with negative campaigning and fear mongering. It will just make them sleep more. Only thing to make them awake is positive campaigning. Likeable, popular, enthusiasm generating candidates and platforms. The message of “no we can make a change” instead of “please help us keep the status guo alive for 4 more years by kicking the can down the road by preventing greater evil for these four years.”
It’s always disappointing when people shit on the few politicians who are actually trying to help because there’s not enough of them to win…
AOC is out there bringing this stuff up and motivating younger generations to get involved in politics, and it’s working.
So it’s really hard to believe all the people who claim to be on the left but spend all their time shitting on the ones trying and not the ones who won’t even talk about it.
I’ll really never understand why so many people reserve so much hate specifically for AOC. Is she perfect? Is she immune from the hypocrisy you find in literally every elected official today? Hell no. She’s definitely guilty of having said one thing than voted the other way and similar, as is every other politician out there.
But on the relative scale of U.S. Politicians, she’s one of the few who is at least making the right noises about change, and while she doesn’t always get things done, she definitely seems to be moving in a better direction than most other politicians.
And yet people single her out all the time for their hatred. Between her and the hate surrounding Greta (which is also weirdly prevalent on Lemmy), it’s hard to see it as anything more than just hating young women who speak up, and wind up being wildly successful at doing so
And yet people single her out all the time for their hatred. Between her and the hate surrounding Greta (which is also weirdly prevalent on Lemmy), it’s hard to see it as anything more than just hating young women who speak up, and wind up being wildly successful at doing so
I feel like there’s a lot of accounts on Lemmy that are larping so people believe the bullshit horseshoe theory is real.
It’s the only rational explanation for lemmygrad and similar instances.
It’s the only rational explanation for lemmygrad and similar instances.
Idk, I explain that one away simply with the fact that stupidity and a desire to troll don’t strictly follow party lines. Nothings stopping a communist (or someone dumb enough to think being pro russia/China is the same thing) from having the mental maturity of your average the_donald poster
“Leftist” Jimmy Dore can take the blame for a good chunk of that. Ever since she snubbed him about a year ago all that dude does is hyper fixate on AOC. It’s legit disturbing
This is why the 2 party system is fucking bad. In the Netherlands we have a wide range of parties we can vote for, no need for strategic votes like this.
It’s a symptom of the winner takes all election system… Its most stable with one or two major parties. The hope for more parties is one reason some of us push for instant runoff elections, but it “confuses” people so its not had the traction I’d like.
The US can’t support more than two parties with how the elections are run. Instead the primaries have to filter down the varied candidates into compromises
Britain uses the same system and has some successful third parties like the Scottish National Party.
Regional third parties tend to dramatically outperform national ones. Because FPTP does best with 2 candidate elections, but those 2 candidates don’t have to be in the same party across every district.
For presidential elections - yeah. You run a third party candidate like Nader, you get Bush. You run Perot, you get Clinton.
@Tak@Pipoca both the US and the UK have fptp single member districts for national legislature, so the expectation would be that in the UK parliament they'd only have Labour and Tories, no 3rd parties representing regional issues, just wings of the duopoply serving that purpose. But the difference isn't derived in that both have FPTP, but that the US has a media environment that propagates binary choices, BBC still strives for viewership but not the extent that US MSM does via oversimplification
Doesn’t that not include basically anything else but that factor and then labeled as the same thing for the sake of argument? How does that relate to funding, regulation, power structures, and much more nuanced factors?
The US has always been a two party system from the start back before there was a BBC. Are we going to say Fox news created the original contention of federalists and antifederalists?
Yes, voting for Biden is better… But it also very much allows the Democrats to abuse the situation and put whoever they want on there. Because the alternative will always be worse. And so you’re destined to always having an acceptable president, but never a great one that people really want.
We have a parliament here and, yeah, it’s so much better in basically every way. I can actually vote for what I want and not have to worry that it’s not strategic. Because I’m the end it will just empower the party and thus give them more negotiating power.
We also have more than 2 parties in Spain, however the way votes are counted it’s better to vote for the big parties than the local ones. Literally, voting your local party and them supporting the big “left” party will amount less seats than just voting the big party. Usually people vote locally but since we have the looming danger of the extreme right party, people have been focusing on the big left, just to ensure that we don’t get Vox.
Still having more than 2 parties promotes discussion and makes it really difficult for a party to go rogue.
The Netherlands has proportional vote, that’s why.
With electoral circles instead of PV, mathematically the two largest parties get way more representatives than the percentage of the public votes they get, and the bigger the electoral circles and fewer the representatives the worse it gets.
(Further, voters own behaviour changes to one of “useful vote” rather than “choosing those who better represents them”, plus tribalism becomes way more extreme when there is only a black & white choice - so lots of votes are driven by team loyalty - all of which makes it even worse)
(Also smaller parties dissapear, both because they can’t secure funding and because their members lose hope of ever making a difference. The closest you get to “small parties” in the US are independents, running for a very specific electoral circle only and whose voice is a drop in the ocean in a place like the US Congress)
The US has single representative very large electoral circles for Congress and double representative State-sized electoral circles for the Senate, so their system is rigged to pretty much the max it can and the result is a power duopoly.
I lived in The Netherlands and now I live in a country where the system is somewhat less so (smaller electoral circles, multiple representatives per circle) and even here you see the two largest parties getting and extra 10-20% each representatives in parliament compared to the popular vote (the governing party has 56% of parliamentary seats on 42% of votes cast) whilst the smaller parties have half as many representatives as their popular vote (in other words, every vote for a smaller party counts less than half as much as a vote for a large party, which is hardly democratic).
Most so-called “democratic” nations have this kind of rigged system, but places like the US and Britain take it to the extreme, so it’s unsurprising that when the economic supercycle is at the point where the many start hurting, in the absence of true choice you get instead the internal takeover of the rightmost of the party dupoly by the Trumps and Boris Johnsons of this world offering an ultra-nationalist far-right populist mix of othering, scapegoating and simple “solutions”.
(Funilly enough if you compare The Netherlands with Britain, whilst even now the far-right is stuck at maybe 20% in the former, in the latter it took over the Tory Party from the inside - which is far easier than convince half the population to vote for them - and hence has been in power for almost a decade with an absolute majority).
in theory, in practice strategic votes still matter for the actual government because parties can just decide not to work with someone and the biggest party gets first picks for the coalition
meaning that in practice, having the biggest party still matters massively, and in a mostly right wing country, the right gets to vote for who best represents them, while the left still has to vote strategically if they want to take actual administrative positions
I’d like to disagree. strategic voting means you shift your vote to what you suppose to be more majority carrying, which usually tends to go for centrists with quite some neoliberal positions. And they usually manage to put through the same shit as the right on economic issues, or implementing authoritarian attacks on civil rights, like mass surveilance.
It is the same thing in the US. There is the far right extremist republicans and the right wing democrats (by european standards) because they try to cover the supposed center, and everyone left of that still votes for them. So in the end they still get no health care, no social security, lots of warmongering, bad schools and institutionalized racism…
In Germany we get the same bs with people voting social democrats “strategically”, that end up pushing for neoliberal economic policies and authoritarian social policies.
She’s not calling for protest. She’s not calling on her supporters to rise up and target McCarthy or Thomas. That’s what she should be doing.
Do everything she can to stress for nonviolent resistance, of course, but our greatest enemies are just men. They have addresses, friends and family, business interests, investments, properties, vocal and financial supporters, and many other targets that are very vulnerable to collective action. I certainly don’t want overenthusiastic people with guns to storm the Capital or anything like that!
Oh please, everyone likes to think they are above this. Your leftist community is no different. I made a single comment unknowingly in lemmygrad and was accused of being a colonialist for being a social Democrat. They used racial slurs against me, they accused me of saying things I never said, and acted like I was the evil that invaded their space. They didn’t block me, but holy fuck were they a toxic cesspit of leftist rage because I wasn’t “left” enough.
You want social change that doesn’t end in anarchy and countless deaths, societal change needs to happen slowly and they couldn’t find reason in that. They want/expect some sort of paradigm shift and anyone that doesn’t fight for this is “the enemy”.
Fuck them entirely and communist horse they rode in on.
Seriously? We’re cherry picking what’s considered a slur? When I get called out for the color of my skin, how is that not considered a racial slur? That literally as dumb as saying black people can’t be racist. Come on now…are you being serious?
Institutional Racism? Yeah, I can probably agree with you there. But racism towards one individual? No, you are flat out wrong. By redefining what “racism” is, you don’t get to just give yourself a free pass on racial slurs and insults. It’s not okay for people to do it to you, and fuck you if you think it’s okay to do it to other people. A big fuck you.
Defining “racism” as being determined primarily by systemic power as a whole is odd, to say the least, and creates even more odd assumptions. Does that mean if a minority non-white population gains a controlling, majority power in the US, that white people are no longer racist in the US? Yeah, that sounds kinda retarded, don’t it? Can a Hispanic person be racist to a black person? Or is there some sort of grading formula that determines what’s okay and not okay to you?
The definition of racism by the dictionary: *Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, **typically *one that is a minority or marginalized.
By that very definition, your usage of “cracker” is every bit as “racist” as calling any other ethnicity any other racial, derogatory word. And your community is not doing itself any favors when you single out people that are somewhat supportive of your view points.
It must awfully convenient when you just get to pick your own meaning and interpretations on words.
No, it really isn’t. There’s institutional racism, or racism built into laws and rulings, and systemic racism that’s built into traditions, beliefs, and opinions.
I’m going by the standard definition and your going by whatever it is that leftists would like to define things as. Then again we’re arguing semantics. I’ll never think that it’s okay for you guys to be derogatory, discriminateling assholes just because I’m white, just like I’ll never think it’s okay for literally anyone else to discriminate against any other ethnicity.
Whiteness has to be abolished, not coddled. It’s not an ethnicity; there are white ethnicities but whiteness, itself, is an artificial construction of colonialism. It was literally invented to justify slavery and genocide, to stop race mixing, and to enable superexploitation of nonwhite peoples.
You have never thought seriously about racism or what it is or where it comes from or why it’s bad. Grow up.
It’s frustrating when you see someone doing a fantastic job of pushing the party further to the left, and doing everything they can to be a voice of reason and logic when there seems to be so little and then seeing someone like you going, “They aren’t doing enough.” Mate, what are YOU doing?
Calling for , encouraging and even organizing a peaceful protest isn’t “pulling a Trump “. Encouraging people to physically harm others to prevent vote counting and the peaceful transfer of power is what Trump did. Please don’t conflate legitimate protests with insurrection and attempted coups.
I don’t know if the progressives within the DNC could really mobilize a multi million person protest but if they could organize a general strike then that would get shit done. I’ve heard that if about 10% of workers strike then that has enough impact on the investor class to actually have leverage. Of course, the US isn’t France and the average person has no union, no savings and no access to a social safety net, so I’m not holding my breath.
It’s not bad, it’s performative. It’s an act, like Nancy Pelosi kneeling with an African scarf. Meaningless, ineffective action that prevents effective and meaningful action.
They can request a hearing in front of the House Judiciary Committee or the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss the matter, or they can attempt to introduce new legislation which creates an independent committee to investigate.
I don’t think the Senate has authority over the Court. That’s purely in the purview of the House, which is controlled by the fascist party and so requests and letters are a dead end. It’s gotta be something more aggressive than that.
If only the Democrats had the will to expand the house with a simple majority, back when they had the majority. Given how many people there are in left leaning states and cities, it’s absurd that the current GOP should ever be able to take the house. But, as usual , the only party that isn’t completely fascist seem incapable (or unwilling) to do what it takes to secure any power for the people they supposedly represent. We needed to expand the house and expand the Supreme Court ages ago.
This is why I pray for there to be an afterlife, I would just love to sit in a Celestial break room sipping tea with a long dead friend with whom I’ve been reunited, and just thank God that it’s all over.
Because the way they see it, you’d have to take their money through wages in order to afford stuff. If their only liquidity is through perpetually revolving loans against the equity they hold, then their only job is to make that equity ever increase. The less those companies pay, the higher the profit. The higher the profit, the greater the dividends. They greater the dividends, the higher the stock price. The higher the stock price, the larger the valuation. Ever increasing collateral = perpetual revolving borrowing patterns = cheat code for unlimited money.
But if it ever falls apart they’ll be on the hook for a loan so big they might not be able to pay it back if they liquidate everything. So they MUST win at all costs. This is the deal with the devil. Ultimate power, but you must keep the plates spinning. One wrong move and you are collected.
A friend of mine had this saying, that if you know someone who is greedy, you don’t really know someone who is greedy you know someone who is stupid.
If your company encourages a strong well paid Workforce that can afford to take their earnings and invest it back into the company, then you’re going to be doing all right for yourself. But if you continuously try to squeeze blood from a Stone, everyone is going to hate you for it and no one is going to be able to afford your product.
Like seriously these businessmen need to look up Henry ford, and how he couldn’t sell cars, he asked his employees why they weren’t buying cars, when they told him that they couldn’t afford cars he gave them raises and told them to buy cars. This actually worked because a consumer based economy can only work if the consumers can afford to consume.
Now take that to the extreme and make it a worker-owned company, where everyone has a vested interest in the company succeeding and control over company decisions.
Unfortunately it’s a myth that Ford treated his employees well. Yes, he greatly raised pay, but that was to reduce employee turnover. For example, in 1913 Ford hired 52,000 people to keep a workforce of 14,000. Ford literally had his own secret police who would monitor employees and beat ones who were caught slacking. On top of that, the increase in pay was about half a bonus for meeting “character requirements” enforced by the Socialization Organization.
This was a committee that would visit the employees’ homes to ensure that they were doing things the “American way.” They were supposed to avoid social ills such as gambling and drinking. They were to learn English, and many (primarily the recent immigrants) had to attend classes to become “Americanized.” Women were not eligible for the bonus unless they were single and supporting the family. Also, men were not eligible if their wives worked outside the home.
You know the Democratic Party isn’t a monolith right? It’s voters decide mostly who is in charge. If people want a candidate other than Biden they can vote for them in the primary.
Since no viable candidates have shown up, Biden is the best option for now
Cool, but we have FPTP elections, so the choice will always be the lesser evil of the two front runners. Of course a real alternative would be preferable, but until we have a fundamentally different voting paradigm, ultimatums are a mathematical certainty.
They know that. They plan for it. They don’t want any actual liberals to run so the game is rigged against them from the start
Fuck them. They have absolutely no incentive to pass meaningful change and so the country will continue to swing further and further to the right, as bit by bit the conservatives sweep more of the government under their control.
It is true that the game is rigged. The DNC has a pretty good grip on its own primary process. That said, Bernie made pretty amazing headway into their ranks despite the rigging largely due to people actually engaging the process instead of sitting on their ass whining about how unfair the process it.
You don’t like how the system is being run, join any one of the many coalitions who’ve formed up to change it. Or start your own. And if you aren’t up do doing that much, then go the fuck to the poles and vote for who they choose because otherwise the GOP wins and takes over the god damned country in the name of racism, religious hegemony, and oligarchy.
Having a different opinion is fine, sitting there whining about how awful the Democratic party is well bemoaning the horrors that the Republican party is visiting upon our country and people while doing absolutely fucking nothing to help stop any of it is just pathetic.
Throw all your weight behind the Democrats if you like, it will only delay an inevitable descent to the fascist religious hegemony the Republicans clearly want. The current state of the DNC is such that no meaningful legislation is possible, no leftward progress will happen.
The game is rigged against you. The ruling class like it that way. As long as you’re in the working class, if you’re playing by the rules they’ve set it for you, you’re playing to lose.
You’re saying that we must join coalitions whose intent is to change the system or we must vote for the Democratic nominee, otherwise we are supporting the GOP?
If not voting for the Democratic nominee is support for the GOP then how isn’t joining a coalition to undermine DNC power support for the GOP?
Oh they want liberals. Remember, liberals are just “moderates”, making them conservative-lite. The don’t want progressives. That’s why they buried Bernie
it is a monolith though. Courts ruled after 2016 that the DNC can’t defraud voters or candidates because they aren’t required to have a fair primary. Their lawyers argued in court that they should be allowed to select a winner undemocratically, and won.
That’s because the party isn’t a government institution, and candidates can run as independent (which does lower their chances, but the law don’t care about that part)
Then show up. You’d be better than what we’ve got. Lord knows that since 4 of my neighbors told me independently of each other that I should run for city council, I’m looking into running for city council, and I would be the first to tell you that I am not qualified, which seems to be exactly why they think I am qualified.
Already volunteering in local county politics to push my little slice of the democrats to be more radical, about a third of them already support Bernie in the rural south so I’d like to think it’s going well.
Will most likely run soonish but that’s a tall task down here.
Not to mention, thanks to the electoral college there are only 5 to 8 states that actually get to decide who is President. My current State has voted for a Republican every year since 1964. I would have had to have been born in 1943 to have a fraction of my vote count nationally. I still vote, but I live in a State where I might as well write in someone I believe in for President. If Biden wins, that’s better than Trump, but it’s still so bad. As my body is breaking down at a job that doesn’t pay for a house I can’t afford, asking us to wait 4 years for someone better is insulting.
Agreed, but with one caveat. You are the better candidate. Stop waiting for someone else to take the job, they all have imposter syndrome too, so fucking go for it and keep the fascists out at the local levels, not just the federal.
I am putting my money where my mouth is and self funding my campaign for city council in 2026.
I am absolutely not the better candidate. I’m not leadership material at all, and I’m probably as bad as Trump at receiving criticism. The difference is that I recognize my flaws.
You don’t want the job because of the incredible weight of responsibility? You have the ability to recognize your weaknesses? Shit man that’s better than I’ve seen in all my voting years. Im for StarServal in 2024
Why don’t you do better, democracy is not “them up there”, it needs everyone. You are as responsible as any one else. You know better, why aren’t you in the ballot?
Look. Am I going to vote for whoever the democratic nominee is? Yeah.
Am I going to be saying the democratic party is generally also racist, transobobic, capitalist, and don’t really give a shit about you? Also yes.
The republican party being more racist, transobobic, and capitalist doesn’t mean the democratic party isn’t. And I’m sick of people pretending otherwise.
The system is rigged, hence the only choice is between evils.
No wonder american politicians are constantly harping about how the US is such a “Great Democracy” - it’s to compensate just how much the mathematically rigged for political duopoly american system fails to represent the will of the average citizen, unlike an actual Democracy.
This right here folks, goddamned right. Organize, talk to your friends, and go vote every single election, participate. Get involved, canvas for local people you like, run for something; you'd be surprised how many city council seats or streets commissioner slots are completely vacant. The deck is stacked against us, the Republican party has been cultivating their bigoted base for 70 years and it's moved the entire country significantly right. We need to begin doing the same thing now if we want to win against the strain of Christo-fascism/Corporatocracy growing here in the U.S. There are only three boxes: soap, ballot, and bullet. We obviously all love using our soapbox, I'd recommend trying the ballot as well. The other box likely ends badly for a lot of people and should be avoided while the other two are still options. If we organize and vote we can absolutely drag the country back to left.
…. You watch republicans force kids to detransition and say “yeah but the dems are just as bad”?
Like I get that they’re not perfect but holy fuck shit jesus are the republicans a bunch of ghouls. Not a single candidate even acknowledged that climate change is happening at their debate; I got kids who will have to grow up in this world dude.
Both sides my ass, only one is trying to make gilead a reality and just because the other doesn’t pass leftist purity testing doesn’t put them on the same level as actual fascists.
its right here in this sentence (ill make it bold for you):
The republican party being more racist, transobobic, and capitalist doesn’t mean the democratic party isn’t.
the word ‘more’ in that sentence means they’re in fact not saying dems are just as bad, or on the same level as actual fascists, theyre explicitly and literally saying democrats are not as bad
Kinda doing some heavy lifting don’t you think? One side is banning books written by minorities and replacing them with pragerU propaganda, the other is…. not doing that? And you’re painting them with the same brush?
its right here in this sentence (ill make it bold and italicised for you, and put arrows around it):
The republican party being -> more <- racist, transobobic, and capitalist doesn’t mean the democratic party isn’t.
the word ‘more’ in that sentence means they’re in fact not painting democrats and republicans with the same brush, theyre explicitly, literally and unambiguously saying democrats are not as bad
‘democrats are not as bad as republicans’ is not painting them with the same brush
likewise, ignoring racism and transphobia or demanding others do so because its your team doing it is not protecting minorities, its actually just accepting racism and transphobia as the price of doing business, which is horrible
We’re staring down the barrel of theocratic fascism and you’re purity testing the only viable alternative.
They’re saying “they’re both sons of bitches but one is more so than the other”, that’s painting them with the same brush.
It’s like saying “someone with a billion dollars is more wealthy than someone with a million” - like yeah it’s semantically true but it completely disregards magnitude. Plenty of people make a million by working hard and paying taxes, but you only make a billion by fucking people over.
ignoring racism and transphobia or demanding others do so because its your team doing it is not protecting minorities, its actually just accepting racism and transphobia as the price of doing business, which is horrible
ignoring or defending exploitation of the poor because its your team doing it is not helping the poor, its actually just further ignoring, defending and normalising their exploitation
It’s like saying “someone with a billion dollars is more wealthy than someone with a million” - like yeah it’s semantically true but it completely disregards magnitude. Plenty of people make a million by working hard and paying taxes, but you only make a billion by fucking people over.
your comparison of ‘democrats actively pushing discriminative and explotative policies’ to ‘poor millionaires who got their millions by just working very hard and who arent hurting no one’ is hilariously tone deaf, thank you
During the civil war, the north was still pretty fucking racist. In the 60s, people were routinely fired for being gay and same sex marriage was unthinkable.
Do you know what the Overton window is?
The millionaire thing was an example that apparently you missed the point of. Doctors, pilots, and other people in high-skill, well paying professions routinely clear a million in net worth on W2 income as honestly as you can in this country. The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is about a billion dollars. To say that billionaires and millionaires are both wealthy, but billionaires are just more wealthy, is semantically accurate but completely misrepresents the magnitude of difference between the two.
During the civil war, the north was still pretty fucking racist.
careful there, thats basically saying the south and north were just as bad
It’s not the fucking same.
you missed the word ‘more’
its right here in this sentence (ill make it bold and italicised for you, and put arrows around it which i will similarly bolden and italicise):
The republican party being -> more <- racist, transobobic, and capitalist doesn’t mean the democratic party isn’t.
the word ‘more’ in that sentence means they’re in fact not saying democrats and republicans are the same, theyre explicitly, literally and unambiguously saying democrats are not as bad
Then run. I am. Not because I wanted to, it wasn’t my idea. My neighbors keep telling me that I should. If I can take the seat away from the fascist that currently holds it, in the 2026 election, I’ll consider that the only real win I need.
The top 50 billionaires could pool 99% of their wealth without it changing their quality of life at all, and have enough money to quite literally solve most of the world’s problems. We’re talking trillions of dollars that could be put to use for good.
They don’t because that’s not how psychopaths work.
Most of the world’s major problems literally cannot be solved by an injection of funds alone.
I’m acutely reminded of when that guy said $6 billion would solve world hunger, Musk basically replied “prove how and I’ll give you the money right now”, and the response was a combination of impotent sputtering and backpedaling about how it would now help, but not solve.
Also, the majority of that “wealth” is a price tag, not cash dollars. If you bought a baseball card for $5 and it’s now worth $100, you didn’t create $95, you know.
Most of the world’s major problems literally cannot be solved by an injection of funds alone.
It’s about what that amount of money would go towards: education, healthcare, housing, food security, environmental protection, wildlife preservation, social programs, etc.
… how it would now help, but not solve.
We can solve these problems with targeted funding that gets to the root of the problem. For example, rather than simply distributing food, you educate and equip communities with the ability to grow their own. Even low-cost water purification in some parts of the world can make a massive difference to literally millions of people.
Lifting people out of poverty, even by having a universal basic income, would solve a ton of issues facing those populations: low education, poor health, food security, programs for kids/teens, more equitable transportation, etc.
We’re not talking about sending off grands for a few thousand dollars or even several million. We would have TRILLIONS to use towards implementing solutions. And that money would continue to come, because these rich assholes collect and hoard money faster than anyone can spend it.
We literally have enough food to feed everyone. But there are people who will prevent everyone from being fed because having control over the food gives them power (e.g. warlords in Africa).
The bottom line is, you can’t solve world hunger until you solve world peace, and the fact is that you can’t buy peace.
We literally have enough food to feed everyone. But there are people who will prevent everyone from being fed because having control over the food gives them power (e.g. warlords in Africa).
Food distribution (and the costs associated with it) have always been the root cause of food poverty, but that’s only if you stay in such a rigid, master/slave dynamic.
Empowering communities to be self-sufficient in their food production and energy production can very effectively end the supply problem.
… you can’t solve world hunger until you solve world peace, and the fact is that you can’t buy peace.
Peace can only come when there is no need to be greedy, especially among a handful of billionaires.
When people’s needs are met, and there’s no reward to take more than you could ever need, there’s peace. When you have fewer people with more power than they should ever have, there’s next to no chance for war, either.
In an equitable society, peace is pretty much the default. Using money wisely can give you a societal return on investment that can come through no other means; it pays for resources, education, and technology to get us there.
But at the very least, use the current state of the world and the recent examples of wealth hoarding as an example of how NOT to do things.
Peace can only come when there is no need to be greedy, especially among a handful of billionaires.
The implication that all conflict originates in resource scarcity is incredibly naive.
You subtly dropped your mask, there, but I know enough to recognize your ideology. We’re just a few exchanges from “all struggles are power struggles where one is the oppressor and the other is the oppressed, and will inevitably culminate in violence”.
Save it for someone more gullible. I’m exiting this thread.
Bottom line: billionaires are not the cause of poverty. Ironically, the increase in billionaires is correlated with a decrease in poverty in the population at large. You would not be any less poor if Amazon never existed.
The implication that all conflict originates in resource scarcity is incredibly naive.
Scarcity? I said greed. The rich are among the greediest, and they are far from living in scarcity.
What I’m saying is that there would be no need for conflict if everyone’s needs were met. Although billionaires contradict this statement, I tend to exclude psychopaths and mentally unstable people when referring to the whole of society.
Bottom line: billionaires are not the cause of poverty.
The business model that created billionaires is exactly what causes hard-working people to not have enough to afford to retire.
Please don’t fool yourself into thinking that a system that incentivizes wealth hoarding is not a major part of the problem.
Literally an NPR article on the subject, outlining how that sum could solve world hunger.
In response to Musk’s request for details, Beasley (head of the World Food Program) tweeted him the math: “$.43 x 42,000,000 x 365 days = $6.6 billion.”
That’s how much it would cost to provide one meal a day for one year to this population in need, says WFP. The agency would deliver this “meal” in the form of food aid, cash or vouchers.
The food aid, says WFP, consists of commodities such as rice, maize and high-energy biscuits.
Musk estimated in December that he would pay “over $11 billion” in 2021 taxes. A large donation could help to offset that price tag.
So it looks like Musk was looking for a large tax write-off, not a cure-all for world hunger. And when he found a viable place to dump his money, he took it. This wasn’t about food aid at all. It was about Musk figuring out what he could buy for the price of a tax cut.
I’m not here to simp for billionaires, but, how could you expect them to be competant ebough to do the organizing required to spend the money in am effective way as to solve all the worlds problems. Like, really break down what you’re asking. Do you think the softest people on the planet have what it takes? The governments of the world need to step up, sieze these assets, and use them to solve the problems of the world, not John Dipshits, grandson of billionaire.
how could you expect them to be competant ebough to do the organizing required to spend the money in am effective way as to solve all the worlds problems.
I don’t expect them to.
The governments of the world need to step up, sieze these assets, and use them to solve the problems of the world
Yes, a global, unified governmental body who’s sole purpose is to better life on this planet, would be a good start. Give them a trillion dollars and see how dramatically better our existence can become.
Really, another way of putting is that if wealth was distributed more effectively (i.e. no such thing as billionaires and nobody is poor), then everyone would have a common goal to keep things balanced, lest they lose it all to a handful of rich guys.
and have enough money to quite literally solve most of the world’s problems
That’s true-ish from a strict finances perspective.
But consider the island of Haiti. We could “solve” the problem of chronic poverty on the island by simply showing up with boatloads of food and clothing and other consumer goods. But it would be a temporary fix, at best. A real investment - just on this tiny island - would mean large scale infrastructure improvements. And that takes an enormous amount of materials plus labor plus the logistics to move it all and assemble it.
What we’re describing isn’t strictly a monetary problem. Its an engineering - and, to a greater extent - economic organization problem. Showing up with bricks of cash would be less beneficial than dredging their harbors and building out new power plants and fixing all the damage done by the last big earthquake. And that latter bit requires real engineering, which requires education, which requires skilled professionals willing to bring Haitians in and train them in the work necessary to improve the island.
And while we probably could perform a project like this across Haiti, by employing the Billionaire Money + Excuse Unused Capacity of global industry, I question whether we could do it globally. Not without reorienting an enormous amount of our existing infrastructure towards these tasks.
When people talk about “market economy v command economy”, this is the kind of problem they’re really facing off against. Not just “how do we pay for food?” but “how do we organize the supply chain from the farms/fisheries to the dinner tables?”
We could “fix” Haiti’s problems with far less than we’re currently spending to control their population. But that would mean building large earthquake resilient housing, energy, and transport components. And those buildings would divert the labor supply from making cheap textiles and agricultural goods. And that would mean people who buy cheap from Haiti’s functionally-still-enslaved population wouldn’t get to 100x mark-up the end products when they were sold in the US at American retail rates.
That’s what we’re really discussing when we talk about “billionaire wealth” versus “solving the world’s problems”.
Do Haitians get to live for themselves? Or do they spend all their waking hours making life cheaper for other people?
Connect your circle of thought. If we buy Haiti a bunch of food and deliver it, we have created the jobs and infrastructure to solve the issue precisely in the manner you describe. We have redirected the economy to solve the problem. You seem to take issue with the idea that the solution did not arise from capitalist market forces. Well no shit, that’s kind of why we have the problem.
If we buy Haiti a bunch of food and deliver it, we have created the jobs and infrastructure to solve the issue precisely in the manner you describe.
We’ve created an import market, which is good for folks who aren’t Haitian who are shipping to the island.
But we haven’t created points on the island to receive the new cargo (their port system is in shambles) or distribute it (roads still wrecked from the earthquake, very few warehouses or retail facilities to distribute to local populations) or use it (no reliable electricity or housing).
You seem to take issue with the idea that the solution did not arise from capitalist market forces.
Just the opposite. I believe capitalist market forces are a big reason why Haiti remains poor. Keeping the majority of the population clustered along the coast and forced to compete for sweatshop jobs at the lowest conceivable bidding rate means foreign firms have monopolized the labor capacity of the island while denying them the ability to develop their own domestic capital (roads, power, housing, etc).
Getting construction materials to the island, along with skilled engineers to both rebuild shattered infrastructure and train up locals to maintain/expand on what was built, is the only real path to prosperity. And its denied to the Haitian people deliberately, in order to keep them subservient and to enrich the folks exporting their labor product off the island for pennies on the dollar.
Showing up with bricks of cash would be less beneficial than dredging their harbors and building out new power plants and fixing all the damage done by the last big earthquake.
Show up with bricks of cash, and harbor-dredgers, electric generators, and construction companies will be racing each other to figure out how to get them from you.
… 10 billion dollars is still a billionaire. Or is this a comment that nobody has 10 billion dollars?
Or is maybe this a misread of the OP? By “pool 99 percent of their wealth” they mean the other direction. As in the billionaires keep at most 10 billion and the rest goes to better the world.
You know what, let’s do it. These fuckers apparently need a reminder that the alternative to unions and the NLRB is sabotage, riots, bombings and murders.
You can’t violence your way into efficient human labor without repealing the 13th Amendment.
Let’s see if the SCOTUS says that the slavery clause only applies to individual people that congress specifically designates as free, a la the wholly made up rules on the insurrection clause of the 14th amendment.
I’d like to agree with you, but I’d like to note that the 13th amendment of the US constitution specifically states slavery is allowed as a punishment for a crime.
So all you need to do is manufacture laws which make something common criminal and put heavy sanctions on it.
Like say… draconian drug laws around cannabis, or making abortion carry the same sentences as murder. Criminalising trans healthcare. Three strike laws in which you can sentence someone to prison for life for stealing $14.
Thats how the US subsidises labour. Enslaved prisoners.
So you can violence your way into efficient human labour without repealing the 13th amendment. Perhaps there’s a point at which it won’t work anymore, but seems to have worked fine for the past 50-70 years or so
I’d make the argument that slavery provides a higher quantity of workers, but since it’s against the workers’ wills, it is not as efficient (units of work per unit of time).
Do an investigation into the entire supreme court.
I don’t care if they are left or right, lib or Con. Investigate them all.
in fact there should be a special government agency dedicated to monitoring and constantly investigating Federal/Supreme court judges in the interests if ethics and impartiality.
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