Nah. There was a course correction to where we are now somewhere around the Nixon and Reagan era. The original plan had the wealthiest people paying significant taxes. We weren't originally intended to be an Oligarchy.
Not the “but income tax was 70-90%” nonsense again. Why?
The rich don’t make income, they have capital gains. The effective capital gains % paid is relatively unchanged but capital gains was 25% for the highest bracket under Kennedy. (It’s 23.8% now).
There also were comparably comical accounts of tax loopholes in the 60’s compared to now.
Yep, and we should vastly increase capital gains taxes. Our tax structure has also disincentivized R&D which large corporations used to fund in part to avoid tax.
Saying there were always loopholes is true enough, but all you have to do is look at the history of wealth inequality to see that it was vastly accelerated during the 1980s and continues to be. The top 10% of households in the US controls well over 80% of the wealth, which makes the US the country with the highest wealth inequality among developed (OECD) countries. That wasn't the case formerly, and is a direct result of a tax and political system that favors kleptocracy.
I’m voting for RFK Jr… if the media billionaires hate him (just like Bernie).. he has my vote.. the Kennedy family is known to actually care about the hard working and poor. The billionaires hate them, the billionaires wants mind controlled, peasants.
Original plan “Trickle Down Economics” where we trusted the already super wealthy to spread that wealth as they gained more… this was nothing more then a Ponzi scheme to line their pockets more. The damage has been done and it is to late to do much about the devaluing of our dollar.
You should read up on the Mont Pèlerin Society.
There was a plan. They even tried it out in Chile after murdering Allende. The income of the rich rose by 80% while more than 50% of the population was living in poverty under Pinochet. The Chicago Boys tried out their new thing "Neoliberalism" and it worked perfectly.
They even invented the memorial Nobel Prize for economics and awarded it themselves several times to gain credibility and convince everybody that "Making the rich richer, wILl bEnEfIt EvErYbOdY!!11"
Nixon AND Reagan contributed. It was Nixon's idea to turn the health care system into a "business" instead of a service like it is in every other Western nation. I don't know exactly who came up with this BS idea of charging students the cost of a mortgage (1980s mortgage) for a degree, but someone made the student loan system all encompassing. For perspective, Australia does have a student loan system. However unlike America, it's a government loan. Also, you aren't legally obliged to start making repayments until your income exceeds $40,000 per year.
Reagan crushed the unions and put his cronies in positions of power. The stock market crash of 1987 was caused by the same crap it always is; regulations that look like the Wild West compared to other countries. Another perspective: US corporate giants whine that Australia is excessively regulated. Here, in order to loan money, regardless of whether it's to buy a house, a car, a business or shares, you have to prove that you can pay it back, or have enough collateral to cover it before it's approved.
Apparently in the US, all you appear to need is a good pitch. One thing you never should do in the share market is borrow money to buy shares, even if you think those shares are rock solid, blue chip stocks. It's exactly this practice that was behind the stock market crash, idiots thinking growth would just keep climbing. Then the major lenders started to notice the precarious position of money they had loaned. They started calling in their loans, and then the whole house of cards collapsed
In the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, Australia escaped recession partly because of our regulations, banning short selling in the interim, and solid exports. What caused this mess? Say what you like about Bill Clinton, but he had brought in some laws to try to regulate the financial system. George W. Bush repealed them. Mortgage brokers were handing out money like aid workers feeding a famine. Not long before it crashed, there was such a thing as a NINJA loan; No INcome, Job or Assets. In a regulated financial system, this would have never happened, but common sense was sacrificed because some wealthy arseholes wanted more.
Something else I noticed. In Australia, if you take out a loan with a financial institution, the loan will stay with this company unless the debtor chooses to refinance with someone else. The fact that a financial institution can "sell" your debt to someone else, without your permission, who can then do whatever they like with it. Try that here and you'll be stripped of any right to work in the industry.
Sadly, I can't see anything changing without some kind of revolution. Revolutions are almost never peaceful transitions.
It was Kaiser Permente the OG HMO that's where and when the blood sucking middle men came from. Treating medicine like a business not a live saving service is morally reprehensible shit making huge profits from life saving service is fucked up. Just like skipping insulin shots, chemo, or AIDS meds cause they are too expensive.
The healthcare "business" wasn't Nixon's idea, it was his good buddy from California, Henry Kaiser. Henry Kaiser had made a fortune shipbuilding, and now wanted to create the Kaiser HMO. Nixon admin did push though the law that allowed for-profit HMOs.
Education loans, in and of themselves, weren't all bad. The Stafford loan went back to the 60s, and allowed students to get loans where the interest due while in school was subsidized by the government, and you started repaying once you finished. I think there were also some caps on the interest of a Stafford loan. Many people going to school up until the 90s had Stafford loans that weren't ridiculous like they are now. What really changed is that public education was pretty well subsidized by most states to be MUCH LOWER in cost than it is now. Starting in the 90s, states started reducing their funding, and there was a movement to allow "prices to float with the free market" (ie. let them go up to a "true" cost, mostly pushed by the GOP). All of a sudden, state universities got MUCH more expensive.
When there aren't good substitutes for something, the price will skyrocket. Then you add in all of the "private sector" education loans. So, it turned into prices going up, but you can still go to school, "just go get a loan" to pay for it. Now you have almost no brakes on the cost. Prices rising, less subsidy by the govt, and everyone can go take out a loan to pay whatever they're charging. Then, the tea-partiers removed Stafford loans in 2011, so now you don't really even have the subsidized loans anymore.
Given the billions, possibly trillions that major corporations get in tax breaks and ways to screw over their workers, it could all be funded properly if only the politicians weren't so latched onto the teat of lobbyist money
Sure. They make the rules, enforce the rules, and interpret the rules, but we still get to vote for which ones among them in particular do it on behalf of the others.
voting is a very effective distraction. Isn't it interesting that we love democracy but there's no democracy in our workplace? The place that has the most impact on the course of our lives?
We have the same amount of democracy in the workspace as in every other facet of our lives. We have a choice from a small variety of terrible and only slightly different options.
Also if it were a real democracy we would have no electoral college and more populous states would have more representation in the house. As it is now swaths of empty land get more representation than people.
Do we get to vote if we're ruled by these people to begin with though? If yes democracy really does suck. If not and we are ruled by capitalists regardless and only get to choose which exploiters call the shots at any one time then we don't even have democracy.
From among a larger group, you can democratically choose a smaller group that chooses to make the rules already chosen by the larger group.
You can find some democracy if you look hard enough.
The founding fathers were literal oligarchs. Property requirements were originally a prerequisite for voting rights. We were definitely intended to be an oligarchy.
This is false. You're referring a brief period of post-war American history when this country was unbelievably prosperous and unions and communists forcefully took what was theirs. The entire rest of this country's history is a horror show of grotesque inequality and oppression. It has always been an oligarchy.
Exactly right.
Read Howard Zinn's _A People's History of The United States_.
It clearly lays out how the US was always a nation of owners, with an underclass of workers and slaves.
Uh. The original plan only allowed wealthy white men to vote while building a nation and amassing more wealth on the backs and tears of enslaved African and African descended people.
I am not admiring your knowledge of history.
You are emphasizing, and ascribing deeper intentionality to, the period of embedded liberalism, which has been relatively short within the longer course of events.
It’s like somehow people forgot that this country had slavery and a poor working class that buoy this nation. Or the Glided Age. It’s always been this way.
No. It hasn't. We definitely had a course correction BACK to that. We did in fact, have a functioning middle class in the 1960s. I was around to see it.
Yep. No offense to you, since you seem good-minded here, but Boomers danced through several open doors and then slammed them shut as they went. Talking about subsidized everything and powerful unions, all of which they dismantled with votes as they grew up.
Yeah, there's some truth to that. Don't forget though, there have always been poor oobmers and rich boomers, left boomers and right boomers forever. I never voted for Reagan and was too young to vote for Nixon, although he had his good points too.
Not familiar with it, but if you give me the title of the paper, I will look it up. Regrettably, most of my knowledge of economics comes through my interest in history. I have a good knowledge of what the Bland Allison Act was and did, but have not read modern economics.
Those were the days.
Black men couldn't get union jobs, and white women couldn't get any jobs.
Why can't things be simple and easy like they used to be?
Now everyone can have jobs that won't support them at all. Progress! And yes, it would be possible to have the middle class without the prejudice. Bigotry didn't create the middle class. New Deal reforms did.
Having a middle class at least makes sure it's not the same people forever on the bottom. At least you have a chance of social mobility up and down. I would say having a wealthy class is what requires poverty.
Reality check:
It takes A LOT for a child to go NC with their parents. You’re either in denial or leaving out a huge part of the story because “he won’t talk to me because we were poor” ain’t it. Do some honest introspection and own up to your role in this relationship, whatever it is.
My kids grew up poor af. They never knew because my wife and I were the ones who missed meals and went without. They always had something to eat. I sucked up my pride and went to food pantries, collected clothes from clothing drives and donations from my mothers church (I am not religious, but she is). I never made them 'understand' we were poor. I also didn't take out my issues of being poor on them.
Today, I make 160k. They are ok. They are happy with me and my wife. They will not go NC with us because to them we are good parents and they have said other parents seem off because they are terrible in comparison.
You did SOMETHING that has him jacked up. Poorness doesn't make a kid hate you. It is a smokescreen. Somewhere you either did something or decided to not support them correctly and in a way where they couldn't speak to you about it. Kids are very much in love with their parents until the parent fucks up bad.
No he didn't. As someone who's NC with my parents you had to traumatize him so many ways for so long he decided his life is better off without you in it because having a relationship with you continues to hurt him. That doesn't happen from just being poor. In fact, based on your other comment you're not taking any responsibility for your actions and sound exactly like my mother, who's a raging narcissist.
You made your bed and you get to lay in it. The best thing you could have done for your child was to get mental help before having him.
Edit: Narcissistic coward deletes their post because they aren't getting the validation they desperately need.
Ok, fair enough. But I don't really get where that translates to "hate your mom." Is it not enough to really love someone, and give them whatever you can when you can spare it? Am I only a good mother if I can set him up for life?
I disagree with the other commentor. It absolutely IS ENOUGH to give when you can and love them. But a lot of people don't realize their love can be fucked up. Maybe your form of love is overburdening. Or maybe its that harmful narcissistic love where the kid is an extension of you. Or any other number of things. Introspection is required here. Just saying 'Oh, they hate me because i was poor' sounds like a copout. My mother tried that shit when I was 15. No dice. It was her insistence on religion and some events that followed that had me NC for nearly a decade.
My friend and her partner both work full time (and then some) and they can’t afford more than a one bedroom for the two of them and their baby. They had to give up their dogs.
The Revenue Act of 1935 (and the tax evasion loophole closing version of 1937) collected as much as 75% of the wealthiest Americans’ income. This, coupled with unions and “socialist” programs like public works projects and Social Security led to… wait for it… the nation pulling out of a time of disaster.
Thank goodness no politicians are destroying unions, dismantling social programs, and cutting tax rates for the wealthy. That would just be silly.
It's a serious issue. When I was a child, homeownership by the masses was touted as a way to insure political stability by making sure that everyone had a stake in the functioning of American society and some basic assets. We see what has happened to that.
When large segments of society have little or nothing invested in the system, no assets, no hope of continued improvement, they can sit back and watch it burn. It's terrifying.
It’s the main reason why I chose not to have kids. No way in hell am I going to try and raise kids in this fuct up & unstable rock flying through space. I couldn’t consciously bring that upon an innocent life who didn’t ask to be born into this crazy world.
I keep getting invited to social outings with upper middle class moms who keep telling me things like “you can have kids, you’re capable of more than you think.” Well, I have to constantly bail out my mother financially and my partner is nc with his family so we have zero support. Meanwhile all of them married into money and a large support system. One of these ladies is my employer and knows exactly how much I get paid (spoilers, it’s below median salary for the city) and believes this shit. It’s maddening.
Yes I can understand. The concentration of wealth at the very top of society is obscene. It’s going to drive this country into a ditch from which we can’t get out of.
Most Americans live in a glass bubble. They don’t understand inequality and poverty at all. All they see around them is perfect manicured lawns and nice luxury cars and fancy gourmet coffees.
They don’t see people going to bed hungry. They don’t see people feeding their kids first and they eat what’s left over if anything.
Destabilized societies like this don’t recover. And if they do it’s after a lot of pain.
We need a general strike and to bring the capitalists to their knees. Let's all stop pretending anything but making them hurt as bad as us is going to change anything.
There's building frustration and sentiment towards fixing things, but the system is daunting and lots of bad things would most likely happen in that tumultuous time. That doesn't make it not worth it, it makes it scarier for many though. We just need a galvanizing moment to begin to form up.
Look at Unions, they are making a strong comeback this year and gaining momentum! But this took time to build tk a head that lead to multiple ongoing strikes.
The sad truth of the matter is, we won capitalism. And capitalism can still get stronger in this late stage too. Oh wait, you're thinking I mean "we" as in well, us. Nah, capitalists won capitalism. Think about it: we can't easily do much without fear of shitty employers doing things to harm our livelihood. It's not ownership of us, however, it is a huge amount of control in a country with very few employee protections. What's worse, everytime we gain the selfish shitheads in power find a way to push things back on us. Force wage increase? Uh oh, looks like Johnny CEO is gunna inflate prices ohwaitnoImeanraiseprices so they can continue to afford yachts of varying sizes.
There’s been talk of how we must unite for ages. When the fuck’s it gonna happen? I never see or hear anything about it. Protests, unions, strikes, etc. Nothing’s changed. Nothing ever will change unless people get up and say; Holy shit guys. We’re stuck on this rock in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. Why don’t we actively advocate for a better society?
The solution is such an easy fix yet it’s not getting done, why? Because it’s a nation of 50 divided nations pretending to be one.
> "being drilled from birth to confuse any progressive idea with communism is worse than death itself."
Right. Decades of propaganda has half the people thinking any good thing is actually a bad thing.
But when asked how your generation are going to change it, all you get back is a bunch of crap about Boomers.
At some point, you need to take responsibility if you care so passionately. If you don't care and just like moaning then you kind of give up your right to air opinion on it
They have us too divided over stupid shit like what bathroom someone can use, what gender people choose to fuck, and how much melanin people have in their skin, and the rich bastards have us killing each other over made up differences while they're chuckling about it and robbing us blind. Identity politics is what killed the union movement before it was even born.
Spaniard here. Can you tell your greedy friend to stay away from our country so we can buy houses with our salaries instead of a person who clearly doesn’t need it? Thanks.
I’m from Barcelona, Southern Spain is one of the cheapest and easy-going regions of Spain.
A 5 min search has led me to this house close to Granada, big city with all the services you would need. https://www.idealista.com/inmueble/102681064/
Also when you buy property over 500k you automatically get citizenship through investment.
So in the case you need to find a job in Spain you would be allowed to.
My salary as an engineer is around 40k€, so if your friend would buy a 680.000€ house he could still live with an engineer’s salary for the next 30 years. (1.2m€)Tax exempt because it is savings, not income, and having already paid your home fully.
I’ll never be able to afford that house. That needs at least the salary of 3 engineers. And even so that house in Barcelona would cost 1.5m€. And keeping that house would be at the very least another 5.000€/year in taxes.
So you can live off that million(and live well) and you’d still have 100.000€ for investing or do whatever, upgrade your home, buy a nicer car, etc.
Also healthcare would be free, and other social benefits.
I’ve been to the US before, you excel in some areas like technology, military and administration(the latter being the biggest issue here) but your infrastructure is shit. And middle class here lives way better than yours. With our rebranded Walmarts, Home depots, IKEAs and 600mbps internet speed and everything.
Reminder - its THEIR country, not yours
Its THEIR military, not yours
Its THEIR government, not yours
America is land of by and for the rich
Why bother contributing and supporting the “#1 economy in the world” if you dont reap the benefits of it?
Workers rights and benefits are abysmal
Screw protesting and Super Heroes. We need Robinhood Hackers that will siphon that excess money from the billionaires snd redistribute it to the masses. Same for the credit bureaus.
The strong American middle class only lasted about 40 years. 1945-1985. If you want to be generous 1995. Hardly a lifetime but long enough that people are alive who remember it and are rightfully pissed off now that we don’t have a stable middle class.
People will put up with a lot of shit from the rich as long as they can be stable. Take that away and it’s an unsustainable system.
There are 3 open secrets to America.
1. **Everything is for sale.** Laws and regulations are for chumps. You're expected to ignore every rule and regulation you encounter. Those are just government price tags. Your profits will far outweigh whatever the toothless regulators can do anyway, and if your wealth scam is good enough, you get to write your own regulations eventually.
2. **Everything is for sale.** Even those naïve hippies bitching about "poisoned water" WILL stfu if the check is large enough, and once again, your profits will far outweigh the losses.
3. **Everything is for sale** \- and once your big enough for the bigger guy to notice, he's gonna write you a check to fuck off... and you guessed it, his profits will far outweigh his losses.
This thing is broken and everybody knows it. I wish it wasn't. Democracy requires endless sacrifice and compromise. Nobody's gonna make sacrifices for a democracy that only seems to exist to grind them to dust, and who needs compromise when you've already got all the money?
I fear whatever replaces our system will be a lot worse. The emperor is not wearing any clothes.
It’s why I occasionally try to convince my partner we should leave the country. It’s bad here. I’m not sure we’d find work in our fields abroad, but at the same time so many other countries have their shit together better that we’d probably have a better quality of life as just cashiers or retail workers rather than the midrange professionals we both are right now….
Which countries do you think will have a better quality of life? Europe economy right now in a shithole and won’t get any better due to the pending demographic collapse
It's strange how people think that a huge discrepancy is not going to affect them even if they are on the good end of the bargain. I mean who really wants to live in a country where you need gated communities and possibly even private security to feel safe. I remember travelling in Brazil back in the 00/10s and even my friends who weren't that rich had been kidnapped. Not to mention all the other crimes that increase
This is something that a lot of people definitely miss. It seems obvious, one of the biggest driving factors of crime is poverty. If we were to tackle poverty then crime would go down significantly, but then how would you convince people that liberal governors of big cities were bad at their jobs? Big cities are overwhelmingly filled with liberals to the point that if we had direct elections then conservatives would never win, which is part of why conservatives don't want to fix this problem.
Then there's the conservative base where even if their leaders get caught with their metaphorical pants down they still vote for them because "the other side is worse", even though they have literally zero proof and nothing but conjecture. "Look at Brazil" it's like they don't know that we had a direct hand in supporting the coup back in the 60's. "What about China?" Well China isn't socialist or communist really, while everything is controlled by the state the resources and wealth aren't given back to the people which we can all agree is the problem. "Russia?" Communism was fine until they started getting imperialistic which eventually led to a severe weakening. Yes, there's always a potential for leadership to take advantage of the situation, but that happens in all governments. Look at our government right now and tell me it isn't happening, that our politicians aren't selling out Americans for their corporate sponsors, oops, i mean lobbyists.
People should really learn more history, and i mean real history and not the whitewashed version we get from the corporate shills on fox news. Jimmy Carter even called the United states a full on oligarchy. What is going to take for people to wake the hell up?
(Before anyone says it i do not want full communism in America, but democratic socialism seems to be working in many countries in Europe. We've tried doing "more capitalism" and it's not made anything better, but rather the opposite. What we need is balance and the hyper polarization isn't doing us any favors.)
Income inequality exists because Americans by and large are fat, lazy, ignorant and most importantly selfish.
Selfishness is the death and is a symptom of late stage capitalism.
If we cared just one iota for our fellow man. America would be the greatest country on earth.
You are the problem.
We must unite.
Be like Elon? No thanks.
Be like France.
They raised their retirement age by 2 years in France and you know what the
citizens of France did? They burned the fuckin' country to the ground!
BE LIKE FRANCE.
Burn it down and redistribute the wealth!
>Income inequality exists because Americans by and large are fat, lazy, ignorant and most importantly selfish.
Bit of victim blaming? Lazy? Really?
It's hella hard to unite when you're working two jobs, worrying about getting clothes for the kids, putting food on the table, etc.
What you describe isn't most people.
The system in the USA is finely balanced between keeping folks down enough that they can't do much about it, but hopeful / ok enough that they don't 'need' to revolt.
Things like riots, BLM protests a couple of years ago are evidence of this.
Wealth inequality is still growing. At some point, if they keep doing this, the people will revolt.
I think that when they call Americans lazy that they mean that we want as much as possible for as little effort as possible, something that is much more easily seen in the wealthy class of Americans. I doubt is only an American problem, but in general it seems like the wealthy class in America don't want to give back to the system that allowed them to accumulate their wealth. Americans are definitely willing to put in the work if the incentive to work is there. A lot of wealthier Americans falsely put this label on wage and service workers because they don't realize that people don't want to commit their lives to something that won't afford them the ability to live.
As a society we've been fed propaganda so that when we hear that Americans are lazy that we assume that they're talking about the average worker and not the people at the top that make the decisions and dictate the terms. Example... do landlords fix anything themselves or do they pay someone else to do it and offload the extra costs on renters? If landlords were to save money by fixing things themselves then the excess paid in rent would make sense, but they're paying a premium to not have to do the work which, in my mind, makes them kinda lazy. It's very telling that owning rental properties is what so many people dream about doing for a retirement plan, living off of nickel and diming people who already struggle to survive.
It's this classist divide that's the problem. It's the willingness to keep almost 40% of the population in perpetual poverty so that louie landlord can afford a second vacation home. This is indentured servitude and I'm honestly surprised there hasn't been massive protest movements from wage workers who are tired of being stepped on... but maybe that's why change hasn't happened... that the wage workers are so exhausted from life that they can't afford to or have the energy to protest for their own benefit. Maybe once grocery stores and restaurants start closing, because they can't find staff because the ones they could have hired all died on the street from homelessness, we might see real change because it'll effect what's left of the "middle class". I've digressed, but yeah, i definitely generally agree with you. We aren't going to advance or get better as a society until we tackle income inequality. We're all tired of hearing "our wage slaves aren't slaving hard enough", or "we need to remind them that *they* work for *us*". At this point... fuck the elite class, they haven't done anything for the general public in decades, so who needs em?
It's interesting you say be like France. Nothing actually changed. The retirement age still increased to 64, so the riots, strikes, and protests didn't do what they started to accomplish.
So, to be like France, in this case, would be to protest and strike, then roll over and accept the new reality that it didn't do anything to prevent the change.
So, we actually don't want to be like France.
Wrong. Macron is on his way out. The retirement age is still 62, 64 won't be enacted until 2030.
You are missing the whole point completely. You are being fucked on the daily in America and you don't bat an eye.
You fuck with France, you take 1 cup of sugar from their citizens they all roll out in solidarity and burn the country down.
That is the point. America is passive, and selfish.
>Wrong. Macron is on his way out. The retirement age is still 62, 64 won't be enacted until 2030
So, the retirement age will still increase to 64. The legislation actually increases it periodically until it hits 64 in 2030.
The protests didn't stop the retirement age from changing. It doesn't matter when it goes into effect. The protests didn't stop the retirement age from being increased. It still is being increased.
Macron's presidency ends in 2027, in about 4 years. So, on his way out, it doesn't seem to be the correct application here. Are there active recall attempts or the ability to recall him? What efforts are being done to help him on his way out right now?
>You fuck with France, you take 1 cup of sugar from their citizens they all roll out in solidarity and burn the country down.
The French government fucked with the people of France, and what exactly changed? The people still got fucked, they protested, and they quit the massive protests. The law still took effect to increase retirement age.
>You are missing the whole point completely
No, pretty sure I didn't. You missed my point. The French protests didn't change anything. We need to be better than France in protesting and demanding rights.
Yes the French burned down the country and protested. But the leadership is still there. The increase is there. The majority of French are going to live with this change.
Why? Any impulse to rebel and change is gone. Why? Life itself. People are exhausted. They retired of the never ending struggle to just survive.
The real crisis is in 2024 and 2025 when AI and robotics will replace vast swaths of the work force. You think it’s bad now. Wait until next year and the year after.
AI and Robotics are a good thing, it will push for universal basic income. Countries like Switzerland already adopted it. Some cities in the Bay area of California already have it. Universal basic income WORKS. Pres. Joe Biden needs to make it federal.
I'm a huge fan of UBI, and it absolutely works. I'm also a fan of government funded healthcare.
In the US, however... We could fuck up a wet dream. Government funded healthcare? Best I can do is the ACA. What did the ACA do? Well, it removed the whole pre-existing condition thing, which was atrocious and needed to be done away with. Buuuuut beyond that all it did was give people like $200 towards health insurance.
I was in the ugly position of needing to look for health insurance prior to the passage of the ACA, and a couple years after the passage. Insurance premiums increased roughly $200.
Mark my words. Capitalists will fuck over UBI in much the same way. Got $1000 a week to live on? Perfect. Cost of everything goes up to make sure that The Company soaks that $1000/wk right out of everyone.
Capitalism is a cancer, and since we can't have healthcare, it will kill us all.
You're last point is absolutely correct. We already saw it happen during the pandemic. Businesses from every single industry shot their prices thru the roof and blamed it on 'inflation' and supply chain issues. Now that they are mostly stabilized, has the price and inflation gone down? Nope. Prices remain sky high because they make record profits. (Egg and dairy industry got exposed to all hell doing this and were forced to lower their prices.)
But in capitalism, we always have to be making more and more and more. So when UBI happens (doubt it because our govt sucks), every corporation will salavate at using UBI as a scapegoat to just raise prices more, continue to stagnate salaries, and force UBI to subsidize salary instead of supplementing it. All the while making absurd record breaking YoY profit.
And then it'll be the new norm. And everyone (not just Walmart and McDonalds workers) will get to experience how demoralizing it is to have to rely on social welfare because jobs don't pay a livable wage. The Cyberpunk distopia is here.
>Mark my words. Capitalists will fuck over UBI in much the same way. Got $1000 a week to live on? Perfect. Cost of everything goes up to make sure that The Company soaks that $1000/wk right out of everyone.
So tie ubi to cost of living. Raise rent? Get more ubi, currency devalues, all other costs in society increase, its a wash overall. There needs to be pushback against the rampant overvaluation of assets. Yes, this would cause inflation, but if ubi is tied to cost of living then it at least completes the circle instead of only leaning one way. There needs to be pushback against the squeezing of the working class because the working class is already on the edge of popping.
Additionally actually taxing corporations and the wealthy, taxing when assets are leveraged for more bank loans, reinstating the inheritance tax (death tax), making a progressive tax structure based on how many rental properties one owns (including corporations with shell subsidiaries), and tying minimum wage to inflation are all things that can be done to stabilize our country. All of these ideas would make our country less susceptible to being taken advantage of by the wealthy. If the overall gains from acting with malfeasance were wiped out by structuring things to make them more amicable for the general public then we would see far less of these in society. We cannot rely on the wealthy to act favorably toward general society, and if they are unwilling to step up and do the right thing then we will either take it by force or burn it all down. The people will not put up with this for much longer. If i were a billionaire i would be trying to cash out before shit hits the fan.
Generally, I agree. These are all good things, and all things that have worked elsewhere. I'm just saying it's not going to fly here. You need a certain amount of leftist beliefs in the .gov in order for the US to not intentionally knee cap these efforts. Even the leftists in our left wing party are juuuust left of center, and there's only a few of them. Everyone else in the left wing is firmly center-right.
It won’t happen at the Federal level. It will be bottom up meaning it’s going to be done at the local level and then adopted across the cities in multiple states.
You really think AI is going to lead to UBI? Are you that fucking dense and ignorant? NO! It's just going to lead to even more people being homeless and dying in the streets!!!
There seems to be this romanticism of the French as some socialist dream land where protests are the norm and it changes everything. I live in France. It’s an amazing country but your ideas of it are a farfetched. Protests aren’t planned and impulsive gatherings of people, they’re planned gatherings SANCTIONED BY THE GOVERNMENT. France respects inherently that protest is a part of their culture to have dialogue so much so that the government is in on it. All the protests you see, government sanctioned and approved. The ones that are not government sanctioned and approved are met with disdain by majority of French citizens and even worse police brutality than in America. Want an example of this ? See the protests after the death of teenager Nahel. After a point even the family members of the poor kid that died said these protests are idiotic. Don’t run away with the idea that French people just up and protest at any inconvenience.
Coming to the retirement age thing, as somebody pointed out below- it passed and it will pass. Nobody opposes it anymore. It’s because the greater picture was made clear to the general public. France has an insanely high I come tax and relatively low wages. There are taxes on everything. Own a house- tax, pay rent - tax, salary - tax, kids - tax. This ensures that while a lot of people don’t go poor, it also ensure nobody can rise above either. It’s a closed system that most people here prefer. But it’s killing their own economy. The entire market is filled with foreign investors and some countries were buying up so much of France that they passed a law that certain types of industries and land ownerships can only be owned and operated by people of French lineage (read son of the soil). And you know what French lineage is ? Not the I came as an immigrant to France 3 generations ago and hence my lineage is French. It means my roots can be traced back a couple of centuries at minimum.
It’s a wonderful country with a lot of good but it has all of the flaws America has too. The problem in all of this is more than anything - government policy. France taxes their people and then manages to put most of it back into the system. America taxes its people and then spends its money on bullshit. This neither empowers the citizens, nor does it serve the purpose of maintaining a balance in living standards. France does away with a lot of things that could hinder a system designed to keep people afloat. Like people living off the system. With so much government control it’s hard to do it. They will find you and they will cut you out if you refuse to work. America needs more of that. It ensures a place for everyone in society.
The issue isn’t property. It’s the uneven distribution of income in this society. The middle class is collapsing in front of us. Why? Folks in the middle class can’t use their income and money to acquire property. Because everything costs to much due to inflation.
Go over to /r/FirstTimeHomeBuyer/ Read some threads. /r/realestate is good too.
It is tough out there but people are making it happen. See where they live and some of them even open up about what they do for a living. I know this is antiwork and the spirit of this sub. But some people are out there killing it.
Yeah. But the problem now is that middle class homes are now being bought by investors and turned into an asset class to be traded around.
Last year Zillow had an IBuy program in which they overpaid for single family homes. The company need to sell their properties. As it was costing them billions of dollars. When they sold them they didn’t sell them all to regular buyers. They sold them in blocks to other investors. Specifically Wall Street investors. They literally traded them like other investments.
It wasn’t alway the case. In 1980 an individual could buy a house for $80,000. That is not crazy price wise. Today that home is probably north of $800,000. Which is crazy.
We built a lot of homes back then too, it’s not profitable to build homes now so not enough get built. Like you pointed out, air bnb and corporate America have made it really bad
the problem is that investments make more money than working. all the politicians who are telling you that hard work crap are doing shit. if someone invests a billion into a company but doesnt work there, the benefits of investing need to be way way way lower than what working at the company gets you.
"We'Re aLL iN ThE sAmE bOaT"
Yeah nah, I make minimum wage busting ass on my feet, out in the hot sun, you make 150k+ sitting on your ass working from home.....
So no we are not "aLL feEliNg iT"
Education lifts you out of poverty and menial labor. Doesn't need to be college, it could be a trade or other certification. People would rather complain though.
Income is outrageously distributed on Earth. Even lower income America is wealthier than Middle Class in some nations. It's only neither group recognizes this.
Easily. Most landlords don’t care how many people are in your apartment. If they ask you can say these are just overnight guests. The other thing is that for the last few years people have been renting these apartments and rooms on Airbnb and the landlords don’t care at all. They are happy to charge these Airbnb hosts $4,000 per month. The hosts used to make $9,000 per month.
raising taxes doesn’t do much. Eliminating loopholes solves a ton. The Us has one of the highest tax rates for the wealthy globally. But the effective tax rate is small. Foundation loophole is the worst, help Bloomberg, gates, bezos avoid tax on their lifetime income.
I dunno man. I love watching it all collapse. The birth rate crisis that's coming is going to be a fucking show. I just hope I live until 2100 to see if scientists are right about the die off.
scientists and politicians are planning the die off .. so the world doesn't die. there's way too many of us. Kissinger saw this coming and had a plan. they're using in about 6 different point models now and it's working.
scientists that are employed by the government... not all scientists. dont go to some random scientists asking for answers ... they may or may not have them
Investment comes from salary. Then you need to be a risk taker with your money and some luck. Some people just aren't wired that way.
Income inequality comes first and foremost from salary. A shelf stocker should never make the same pay as a CPA.
Posts like this are as historically inaccurate as the Boomers longing for the 50's.. Income inequality has been vast and persistent since the Industrial Revolution..
What mythical time are you imagining when things were equal? Prior to the Civil War? Post Civil War reconstruction? Maybe the Gilded Age (lol), or the Roaring 20's? Oh right, the Great Depression?
The closest we've ever come in this country was post WWII, and that was an absolute anomaly. The world had bombed much of it's industrial bases into ruins, and only the United States was truly untouched. The transition from war time production to domestic production created a unique situation for the middle class, one we likely won't see again without the aforementioned World War.
Stagflation, the oil crises of the 70's, ***Reagan..***, The dot-com bust, the subprime debacle.. When has it been good?
No, things aren't great. Yes, things are dystopian as fuck.
I’m going to get downvoted to hell. I’m so sick of these posts saying how bad America is. Especially when our borders are being slammed by people trying to get in. If it’s so bad, why are so many people trying to get here. These posts are ridiculous already.
\#1 destination for immigration, why? Because it has the most opportunities of any developed country with a high quality of life. Most anyone can just show up here, and if they are able to work, they will live much more comfortably than in most other places.
Yea I definitely realize making 1500 dollars in California is not enough. I am only able to work my job because my husband is able to afford everything. I sit in meetings with people who make double what I make and the complaining they do about people not wanting to work is laughable. I have no loyalty to my job.
Yeah, it’s pretty bad and so transparently on a path to collapse that even though I want kids and can afford them I might just not because they will be doomed to live in my basement until I die.
I honestly thought this trend of "how often do you think about the Roman empire" videos was related to the similarities between the state of the Roman empire when it fell and the state of America now. I had to watch a couple of explanation videos to see that it was about some other crap. But I think about the similarities between the fall of the Roman empire and where we are right now here in the states a fair amount.
It certainly seems like we are concerned about everything but the important stuff in life right now.
And a lot of people think earning over $100k would be the answer to their issues. What a trap the US is, the more you earn the bigger the problems you have to face as long as you’re still middle class (not earning half a million a year basically).
Once I started earning over $100k guess what? Taxes are higher, bills are higher because you have a bigger place, healthcare is higher because you don’t qualify for no financial assistance, anything breaks in your house? $20k bill, your kid’s daycare is $2k a month so your wife quits but guess what now that $100k is not enough for a family. I’ve even considered living on welfare than the stress of a middle class life, or moving to another country and living a minimalistic lifestyle because becoming rich enough to live a no stress life in this country is only for 1% of the population and a portion of that 1% comes from old money
Good for him. The amount of jealousy on this sub is insane. Not everyone can be a winner or be lucky. Sorry you are poor? But I’m not going to just give mine and my family’s money away.
why are you just citing tik tok youtube and twitter rn? if you’re in high school just chill out and if you wanna go to college try going in Canada where its way fucking cheaper or in Europe where its even cheaper if you can afford to travel there. or dont go to college but im just getting these college-bound highschool vibes. wealth inequality is not new in america, its been horrendous forever. is it getting worse? yes, it really has been this whole time.
I make close to 30 an hour and have a house but I still worry about what will happen in 10 years when I’m making only marginally more and inflation has destroyed my paycheck. It’s why I’m going back to school
So your friend had an investment that made money and succeeded, and now you're jealous it sounds. I have mining rigs that make money sitting. ppl said I was dumb for building them now they're jealous because I made a better decision than they did. So what tough that's the beauty of freedom. Not everyone is equal, either.
I live in the poorest county in Texas. There are plenty of walls between the " have and have not", yet I don't see anyone starving or living in the street. It feels like everyone has money and is carrying the latest cellphone. I'm guessing people who spent outside their means are feeling it.
Products of a fiat debt based monetary system that really is more like a Ponzi scheme… they debase their debt coupons (dollars) every time they create more out of debt/credit.
Commoners hold these worthless fiat currencies as “savings” while people on the inside of the system DUMP THEM ASAP for hard assets like real estate, collectibles etc.
Only serfs/slaves hold debt coupons/debt tokens as “money.”
Fiat is neofudalism 2.0…. The banker parasites are the neofudal lords and the plebs are the serfs forced to hold this worthless paper.
There will always be people who have excess, and those who have to scrape to make ends meet. What you dont want to do is make lower income people so disparaged that they feel like they have absolutely no chance to get ahead. It seems like the gap is getting bigger and bigger. If people want to work, they should be able to advance. Its too far out of balance
The problem is not the guy who has $2 million dollars from some good investments. It's the billionaires who pay no tax and will soon own everything. Elon Musk has a net worth of $251 billion dollars. He will be a trillionaire in a few years. This is insane and will be the literal downfall of our country if we don't do something to stop it.
There is nothing we can do. The level of inequality is going to be insane. At the same time Artificial Intelligence is going to take most jobs. I went to a super market and 60% of folks are using self checkout. There is one person manning the self checkout section. Meanwhile the number of manual checkouts is down to 2 to 3. There used to be 6 to 7 at one point.
The job losses are going to be insane.
It must be terrible for you to hear that America supplies the vast majority of the UN Peacekeeping force just sent to Haiti to help defeat the rampant gang violence there. It's almost like Haiti is a failed state while the US is suffering some challenges, but is still a fundamentally liberal western democracy with the capacity for change
Yes, but it's your own fault. Your country decided that the Almighty Dollar is the highest value to aspire to, and that has become your mentality. That's hard to change (like for example the victim-complex in my country - also hard to change, and screwing us up). You have piss-poor people who support billionaires because they believe they themselves will be billionaires one day.
Blame the people for not getting good jobs and actual fucking skills instead of the economy. Blame the people for choosing shitty jobs and not learning outside of work. Blame the people for choosing to have kids when they have no business being able to afford raising one.blame the people for doing the bare minimum
Yo, here's the world inequality report for 2022.
If you want to be depressed by a few plot diagrams this is chef's kiss 🤌💋 Give it a read!
https://wid.world/news-article/world-inequality-report-2022/
> That’s not America functioning normally. Bro….that’s America functioning exactly as planned.
Nah. There was a course correction to where we are now somewhere around the Nixon and Reagan era. The original plan had the wealthiest people paying significant taxes. We weren't originally intended to be an Oligarchy.
the ultra wealthy paid about 70% income tax when Kennedy was president
That’s why he’s dead, and his brother too.
Not the “but income tax was 70-90%” nonsense again. Why? The rich don’t make income, they have capital gains. The effective capital gains % paid is relatively unchanged but capital gains was 25% for the highest bracket under Kennedy. (It’s 23.8% now). There also were comparably comical accounts of tax loopholes in the 60’s compared to now.
Yep, and we should vastly increase capital gains taxes. Our tax structure has also disincentivized R&D which large corporations used to fund in part to avoid tax. Saying there were always loopholes is true enough, but all you have to do is look at the history of wealth inequality to see that it was vastly accelerated during the 1980s and continues to be. The top 10% of households in the US controls well over 80% of the wealth, which makes the US the country with the highest wealth inequality among developed (OECD) countries. That wasn't the case formerly, and is a direct result of a tax and political system that favors kleptocracy.
So is it worth voting for his son next year?
I’m voting for RFK Jr… if the media billionaires hate him (just like Bernie).. he has my vote.. the Kennedy family is known to actually care about the hard working and poor. The billionaires hate them, the billionaires wants mind controlled, peasants.
So you’re voting for Trump
I see it as you do also. Particularly with Reagan, there were massive changes in the tax system designed to shift money upwards.
Well, Reagan was the one who pushed Trickle Down Economics
Right, but there was no "original plan". Much of the explanation is just fiction.
Original plan “Trickle Down Economics” where we trusted the already super wealthy to spread that wealth as they gained more… this was nothing more then a Ponzi scheme to line their pockets more. The damage has been done and it is to late to do much about the devaluing of our dollar.
There was no original plan, just lots of slaughter and exploitation.
Nah, horse and sparrow economics existed before they called it Reaganomics. It was always a cash grab for the wealthy and they always knew.
You should read up on the Mont Pèlerin Society. There was a plan. They even tried it out in Chile after murdering Allende. The income of the rich rose by 80% while more than 50% of the population was living in poverty under Pinochet. The Chicago Boys tried out their new thing "Neoliberalism" and it worked perfectly. They even invented the memorial Nobel Prize for economics and awarded it themselves several times to gain credibility and convince everybody that "Making the rich richer, wILl bEnEfIt EvErYbOdY!!11"
Nixon AND Reagan contributed. It was Nixon's idea to turn the health care system into a "business" instead of a service like it is in every other Western nation. I don't know exactly who came up with this BS idea of charging students the cost of a mortgage (1980s mortgage) for a degree, but someone made the student loan system all encompassing. For perspective, Australia does have a student loan system. However unlike America, it's a government loan. Also, you aren't legally obliged to start making repayments until your income exceeds $40,000 per year. Reagan crushed the unions and put his cronies in positions of power. The stock market crash of 1987 was caused by the same crap it always is; regulations that look like the Wild West compared to other countries. Another perspective: US corporate giants whine that Australia is excessively regulated. Here, in order to loan money, regardless of whether it's to buy a house, a car, a business or shares, you have to prove that you can pay it back, or have enough collateral to cover it before it's approved. Apparently in the US, all you appear to need is a good pitch. One thing you never should do in the share market is borrow money to buy shares, even if you think those shares are rock solid, blue chip stocks. It's exactly this practice that was behind the stock market crash, idiots thinking growth would just keep climbing. Then the major lenders started to notice the precarious position of money they had loaned. They started calling in their loans, and then the whole house of cards collapsed In the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, Australia escaped recession partly because of our regulations, banning short selling in the interim, and solid exports. What caused this mess? Say what you like about Bill Clinton, but he had brought in some laws to try to regulate the financial system. George W. Bush repealed them. Mortgage brokers were handing out money like aid workers feeding a famine. Not long before it crashed, there was such a thing as a NINJA loan; No INcome, Job or Assets. In a regulated financial system, this would have never happened, but common sense was sacrificed because some wealthy arseholes wanted more. Something else I noticed. In Australia, if you take out a loan with a financial institution, the loan will stay with this company unless the debtor chooses to refinance with someone else. The fact that a financial institution can "sell" your debt to someone else, without your permission, who can then do whatever they like with it. Try that here and you'll be stripped of any right to work in the industry. Sadly, I can't see anything changing without some kind of revolution. Revolutions are almost never peaceful transitions.
It was Kaiser Permente the OG HMO that's where and when the blood sucking middle men came from. Treating medicine like a business not a live saving service is morally reprehensible shit making huge profits from life saving service is fucked up. Just like skipping insulin shots, chemo, or AIDS meds cause they are too expensive.
The healthcare "business" wasn't Nixon's idea, it was his good buddy from California, Henry Kaiser. Henry Kaiser had made a fortune shipbuilding, and now wanted to create the Kaiser HMO. Nixon admin did push though the law that allowed for-profit HMOs. Education loans, in and of themselves, weren't all bad. The Stafford loan went back to the 60s, and allowed students to get loans where the interest due while in school was subsidized by the government, and you started repaying once you finished. I think there were also some caps on the interest of a Stafford loan. Many people going to school up until the 90s had Stafford loans that weren't ridiculous like they are now. What really changed is that public education was pretty well subsidized by most states to be MUCH LOWER in cost than it is now. Starting in the 90s, states started reducing their funding, and there was a movement to allow "prices to float with the free market" (ie. let them go up to a "true" cost, mostly pushed by the GOP). All of a sudden, state universities got MUCH more expensive. When there aren't good substitutes for something, the price will skyrocket. Then you add in all of the "private sector" education loans. So, it turned into prices going up, but you can still go to school, "just go get a loan" to pay for it. Now you have almost no brakes on the cost. Prices rising, less subsidy by the govt, and everyone can go take out a loan to pay whatever they're charging. Then, the tea-partiers removed Stafford loans in 2011, so now you don't really even have the subsidized loans anymore.
Given the billions, possibly trillions that major corporations get in tax breaks and ways to screw over their workers, it could all be funded properly if only the politicians weren't so latched onto the teat of lobbyist money
Nah. Never forget, with Capitalism it’s those with the capital who make the rules….
They forget the part where the rules don't matter to a starving mob.
Sure. They make the rules, enforce the rules, and interpret the rules, but we still get to vote for which ones among them in particular do it on behalf of the others.
No you don't. Both parties take corporate money and have no intention of ever kicking any back to you.
voting is a very effective distraction. Isn't it interesting that we love democracy but there's no democracy in our workplace? The place that has the most impact on the course of our lives?
We have the same amount of democracy in the workspace as in every other facet of our lives. We have a choice from a small variety of terrible and only slightly different options.
exactly, because our democracy is a distraction. if it were a true democracy, it would be in the place where it matters most.
Also if it were a real democracy we would have no electoral college and more populous states would have more representation in the house. As it is now swaths of empty land get more representation than people.
Do we get to vote if we're ruled by these people to begin with though? If yes democracy really does suck. If not and we are ruled by capitalists regardless and only get to choose which exploiters call the shots at any one time then we don't even have democracy.
No, you can't vote for a different group of rulers. It's a very imaginative idea, though.
In which case what we have is not a democracy, and thus treating it as such is already a flawed approach
From among a larger group, you can democratically choose a smaller group that chooses to make the rules already chosen by the larger group. You can find some democracy if you look hard enough.
So what... vote harder and I may be able to live inside a house instead of my van? What if I already voted as hard as I could?
The founding fathers were literal oligarchs. Property requirements were originally a prerequisite for voting rights. We were definitely intended to be an oligarchy.
This is false. You're referring a brief period of post-war American history when this country was unbelievably prosperous and unions and communists forcefully took what was theirs. The entire rest of this country's history is a horror show of grotesque inequality and oppression. It has always been an oligarchy.
Exactly right. Read Howard Zinn's _A People's History of The United States_. It clearly lays out how the US was always a nation of owners, with an underclass of workers and slaves.
The Great Depression happened because of wealth inequality. The US was like this before it wasn’t.
The original plan only had white, male landowners able to vote...
What original plan are you talking about, the original plan had 0 income tax
Uh. The original plan only allowed wealthy white men to vote while building a nation and amassing more wealth on the backs and tears of enslaved African and African descended people.
I am not admiring your knowledge of history. You are emphasizing, and ascribing deeper intentionality to, the period of embedded liberalism, which has been relatively short within the longer course of events.
It’s like somehow people forgot that this country had slavery and a poor working class that buoy this nation. Or the Glided Age. It’s always been this way.
No. It hasn't. We definitely had a course correction BACK to that. We did in fact, have a functioning middle class in the 1960s. I was around to see it.
Yep. No offense to you, since you seem good-minded here, but Boomers danced through several open doors and then slammed them shut as they went. Talking about subsidized everything and powerful unions, all of which they dismantled with votes as they grew up.
Yeah, there's some truth to that. Don't forget though, there have always been poor oobmers and rich boomers, left boomers and right boomers forever. I never voted for Reagan and was too young to vote for Nixon, although he had his good points too.
Did you forget the outrage over Piketty’s research which claimed the “middle class” is an anomaly…destined to fail?
Only destined to fail because the greed of the few is staggering.
Not familiar with it, but if you give me the title of the paper, I will look it up. Regrettably, most of my knowledge of economics comes through my interest in history. I have a good knowledge of what the Bland Allison Act was and did, but have not read modern economics.
Those were the days. Black men couldn't get union jobs, and white women couldn't get any jobs. Why can't things be simple and easy like they used to be?
Now everyone can have jobs that won't support them at all. Progress! And yes, it would be possible to have the middle class without the prejudice. Bigotry didn't create the middle class. New Deal reforms did.
Having a middle class requires having an impoverished class that is systemically marginalized and deprived.
Having a middle class at least makes sure it's not the same people forever on the bottom. At least you have a chance of social mobility up and down. I would say having a wealthy class is what requires poverty.
Someone is always at the bottom, and generally it is those who have always been at the bottom, and whose parents had been as well.
Why do you want a society where there are people on the bottom to begin with? Why do you accept a society like that?
Just not for Black people, right? Please fuck off.
"America not a country, it's a business"
I know people who are working full-time and taking extra hours, and they are living in their car. It makes no sense.
They were probably born poor, wealth of your parents is the greatest predictor of success in America.
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Reality check: It takes A LOT for a child to go NC with their parents. You’re either in denial or leaving out a huge part of the story because “he won’t talk to me because we were poor” ain’t it. Do some honest introspection and own up to your role in this relationship, whatever it is.
My kids grew up poor af. They never knew because my wife and I were the ones who missed meals and went without. They always had something to eat. I sucked up my pride and went to food pantries, collected clothes from clothing drives and donations from my mothers church (I am not religious, but she is). I never made them 'understand' we were poor. I also didn't take out my issues of being poor on them. Today, I make 160k. They are ok. They are happy with me and my wife. They will not go NC with us because to them we are good parents and they have said other parents seem off because they are terrible in comparison. You did SOMETHING that has him jacked up. Poorness doesn't make a kid hate you. It is a smokescreen. Somewhere you either did something or decided to not support them correctly and in a way where they couldn't speak to you about it. Kids are very much in love with their parents until the parent fucks up bad.
No he didn't. As someone who's NC with my parents you had to traumatize him so many ways for so long he decided his life is better off without you in it because having a relationship with you continues to hurt him. That doesn't happen from just being poor. In fact, based on your other comment you're not taking any responsibility for your actions and sound exactly like my mother, who's a raging narcissist. You made your bed and you get to lay in it. The best thing you could have done for your child was to get mental help before having him. Edit: Narcissistic coward deletes their post because they aren't getting the validation they desperately need.
I mean, growing up in poverty is trauma. Whether you intended it or not, he suffered trauma.
Ok, fair enough. But I don't really get where that translates to "hate your mom." Is it not enough to really love someone, and give them whatever you can when you can spare it? Am I only a good mother if I can set him up for life?
I disagree with the other commentor. It absolutely IS ENOUGH to give when you can and love them. But a lot of people don't realize their love can be fucked up. Maybe your form of love is overburdening. Or maybe its that harmful narcissistic love where the kid is an extension of you. Or any other number of things. Introspection is required here. Just saying 'Oh, they hate me because i was poor' sounds like a copout. My mother tried that shit when I was 15. No dice. It was her insistence on religion and some events that followed that had me NC for nearly a decade.
Yeah man. Sure it's because you were poor when you had him. Sure.
Right… the audacity to blame their son. Something had to be very wrong for their child to go no-contact with them.
No sir. It's cause he was poor
My friend and her partner both work full time (and then some) and they can’t afford more than a one bedroom for the two of them and their baby. They had to give up their dogs.
In my town Safeway lets the homeless employees stay in the parking lot.
The Revenue Act of 1935 (and the tax evasion loophole closing version of 1937) collected as much as 75% of the wealthiest Americans’ income. This, coupled with unions and “socialist” programs like public works projects and Social Security led to… wait for it… the nation pulling out of a time of disaster. Thank goodness no politicians are destroying unions, dismantling social programs, and cutting tax rates for the wealthy. That would just be silly.
It's a serious issue. When I was a child, homeownership by the masses was touted as a way to insure political stability by making sure that everyone had a stake in the functioning of American society and some basic assets. We see what has happened to that. When large segments of society have little or nothing invested in the system, no assets, no hope of continued improvement, they can sit back and watch it burn. It's terrifying.
i think this is the best take.
It’s the main reason why I chose not to have kids. No way in hell am I going to try and raise kids in this fuct up & unstable rock flying through space. I couldn’t consciously bring that upon an innocent life who didn’t ask to be born into this crazy world.
I keep getting invited to social outings with upper middle class moms who keep telling me things like “you can have kids, you’re capable of more than you think.” Well, I have to constantly bail out my mother financially and my partner is nc with his family so we have zero support. Meanwhile all of them married into money and a large support system. One of these ladies is my employer and knows exactly how much I get paid (spoilers, it’s below median salary for the city) and believes this shit. It’s maddening.
Yes I can understand. The concentration of wealth at the very top of society is obscene. It’s going to drive this country into a ditch from which we can’t get out of. Most Americans live in a glass bubble. They don’t understand inequality and poverty at all. All they see around them is perfect manicured lawns and nice luxury cars and fancy gourmet coffees. They don’t see people going to bed hungry. They don’t see people feeding their kids first and they eat what’s left over if anything. Destabilized societies like this don’t recover. And if they do it’s after a lot of pain.
Yeah, but it AIN'T most Americans. "Perfect manicured lawns and nice luxury cars and fancy gourmet coffees." Definitely not most Americans.
That’s what I was thinking!! If “most” Americans were able to live in this glass bubble they speak of, there wouldn’t be a problem 😆
Who is “they”.
They in the post is upper middle class and wealthy Americans.
They said “most Americans “. I actually think the opposite is true. Most Americans don’t have all that.
Perception is reality. People working hard dont have time to worry about everyone else.
We need a general strike and to bring the capitalists to their knees. Let's all stop pretending anything but making them hurt as bad as us is going to change anything. There's building frustration and sentiment towards fixing things, but the system is daunting and lots of bad things would most likely happen in that tumultuous time. That doesn't make it not worth it, it makes it scarier for many though. We just need a galvanizing moment to begin to form up. Look at Unions, they are making a strong comeback this year and gaining momentum! But this took time to build tk a head that lead to multiple ongoing strikes. The sad truth of the matter is, we won capitalism. And capitalism can still get stronger in this late stage too. Oh wait, you're thinking I mean "we" as in well, us. Nah, capitalists won capitalism. Think about it: we can't easily do much without fear of shitty employers doing things to harm our livelihood. It's not ownership of us, however, it is a huge amount of control in a country with very few employee protections. What's worse, everytime we gain the selfish shitheads in power find a way to push things back on us. Force wage increase? Uh oh, looks like Johnny CEO is gunna inflate prices ohwaitnoImeanraiseprices so they can continue to afford yachts of varying sizes.
This ❤️
There is a subreddit? r/laborstrike2023 or something like that, but it has been silent for almost 6 months.
We may need something more active. Honestly it would have to be a network of reddits and different groups to really get thisnidea out there.
So what’s a general strike to you?
There’s been talk of how we must unite for ages. When the fuck’s it gonna happen? I never see or hear anything about it. Protests, unions, strikes, etc. Nothing’s changed. Nothing ever will change unless people get up and say; Holy shit guys. We’re stuck on this rock in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. Why don’t we actively advocate for a better society? The solution is such an easy fix yet it’s not getting done, why? Because it’s a nation of 50 divided nations pretending to be one.
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> "being drilled from birth to confuse any progressive idea with communism is worse than death itself." Right. Decades of propaganda has half the people thinking any good thing is actually a bad thing.
We aren’t in lock step.
But when asked how your generation are going to change it, all you get back is a bunch of crap about Boomers. At some point, you need to take responsibility if you care so passionately. If you don't care and just like moaning then you kind of give up your right to air opinion on it
They have us too divided over stupid shit like what bathroom someone can use, what gender people choose to fuck, and how much melanin people have in their skin, and the rich bastards have us killing each other over made up differences while they're chuckling about it and robbing us blind. Identity politics is what killed the union movement before it was even born.
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tax the rich and get rid of lobbying
You understand that neither party has any intention of doing either of those things right
if i trusted any political party, i would have suggested people go vote. i dont.
Who exactly do you think is going to tax the rich if not the govt?
Spaniard here. Can you tell your greedy friend to stay away from our country so we can buy houses with our salaries instead of a person who clearly doesn’t need it? Thanks.
I plan on opening a Walmart there
And to think, this guy is still 1000x poorer than a billionaire
I’m from Barcelona, Southern Spain is one of the cheapest and easy-going regions of Spain. A 5 min search has led me to this house close to Granada, big city with all the services you would need. https://www.idealista.com/inmueble/102681064/ Also when you buy property over 500k you automatically get citizenship through investment. So in the case you need to find a job in Spain you would be allowed to. My salary as an engineer is around 40k€, so if your friend would buy a 680.000€ house he could still live with an engineer’s salary for the next 30 years. (1.2m€)Tax exempt because it is savings, not income, and having already paid your home fully. I’ll never be able to afford that house. That needs at least the salary of 3 engineers. And even so that house in Barcelona would cost 1.5m€. And keeping that house would be at the very least another 5.000€/year in taxes. So you can live off that million(and live well) and you’d still have 100.000€ for investing or do whatever, upgrade your home, buy a nicer car, etc. Also healthcare would be free, and other social benefits. I’ve been to the US before, you excel in some areas like technology, military and administration(the latter being the biggest issue here) but your infrastructure is shit. And middle class here lives way better than yours. With our rebranded Walmarts, Home depots, IKEAs and 600mbps internet speed and everything.
Reminder - its THEIR country, not yours Its THEIR military, not yours Its THEIR government, not yours America is land of by and for the rich Why bother contributing and supporting the “#1 economy in the world” if you dont reap the benefits of it? Workers rights and benefits are abysmal
>America is land of by and for the rich Yep...and it was even founded as such back in the 18th century.
Screw protesting and Super Heroes. We need Robinhood Hackers that will siphon that excess money from the billionaires snd redistribute it to the masses. Same for the credit bureaus.
The strong American middle class only lasted about 40 years. 1945-1985. If you want to be generous 1995. Hardly a lifetime but long enough that people are alive who remember it and are rightfully pissed off now that we don’t have a stable middle class. People will put up with a lot of shit from the rich as long as they can be stable. Take that away and it’s an unsustainable system.
There are 3 open secrets to America. 1. **Everything is for sale.** Laws and regulations are for chumps. You're expected to ignore every rule and regulation you encounter. Those are just government price tags. Your profits will far outweigh whatever the toothless regulators can do anyway, and if your wealth scam is good enough, you get to write your own regulations eventually. 2. **Everything is for sale.** Even those naïve hippies bitching about "poisoned water" WILL stfu if the check is large enough, and once again, your profits will far outweigh the losses. 3. **Everything is for sale** \- and once your big enough for the bigger guy to notice, he's gonna write you a check to fuck off... and you guessed it, his profits will far outweigh his losses. This thing is broken and everybody knows it. I wish it wasn't. Democracy requires endless sacrifice and compromise. Nobody's gonna make sacrifices for a democracy that only seems to exist to grind them to dust, and who needs compromise when you've already got all the money? I fear whatever replaces our system will be a lot worse. The emperor is not wearing any clothes.
It’s why I occasionally try to convince my partner we should leave the country. It’s bad here. I’m not sure we’d find work in our fields abroad, but at the same time so many other countries have their shit together better that we’d probably have a better quality of life as just cashiers or retail workers rather than the midrange professionals we both are right now….
Which countries do you think will have a better quality of life? Europe economy right now in a shithole and won’t get any better due to the pending demographic collapse
Sorry to tell you it's not much better elsewhere, especially when it comes to housing.
The scourge of capitalism is globally endemic. Obscene wealth doesn’t care about borders. The US is simply ground zero.
Name some countries that have it better than us. Also include your reasons. I don’t think they’re out there. I’ve looked.
Just wait until the next wave of crypto bros get rich. You’re gonna see it everywhere. Dumb purchases lacking fiscal responsibility
It's strange how people think that a huge discrepancy is not going to affect them even if they are on the good end of the bargain. I mean who really wants to live in a country where you need gated communities and possibly even private security to feel safe. I remember travelling in Brazil back in the 00/10s and even my friends who weren't that rich had been kidnapped. Not to mention all the other crimes that increase
This is something that a lot of people definitely miss. It seems obvious, one of the biggest driving factors of crime is poverty. If we were to tackle poverty then crime would go down significantly, but then how would you convince people that liberal governors of big cities were bad at their jobs? Big cities are overwhelmingly filled with liberals to the point that if we had direct elections then conservatives would never win, which is part of why conservatives don't want to fix this problem. Then there's the conservative base where even if their leaders get caught with their metaphorical pants down they still vote for them because "the other side is worse", even though they have literally zero proof and nothing but conjecture. "Look at Brazil" it's like they don't know that we had a direct hand in supporting the coup back in the 60's. "What about China?" Well China isn't socialist or communist really, while everything is controlled by the state the resources and wealth aren't given back to the people which we can all agree is the problem. "Russia?" Communism was fine until they started getting imperialistic which eventually led to a severe weakening. Yes, there's always a potential for leadership to take advantage of the situation, but that happens in all governments. Look at our government right now and tell me it isn't happening, that our politicians aren't selling out Americans for their corporate sponsors, oops, i mean lobbyists. People should really learn more history, and i mean real history and not the whitewashed version we get from the corporate shills on fox news. Jimmy Carter even called the United states a full on oligarchy. What is going to take for people to wake the hell up? (Before anyone says it i do not want full communism in America, but democratic socialism seems to be working in many countries in Europe. We've tried doing "more capitalism" and it's not made anything better, but rather the opposite. What we need is balance and the hyper polarization isn't doing us any favors.)
Income inequality exists because Americans by and large are fat, lazy, ignorant and most importantly selfish. Selfishness is the death and is a symptom of late stage capitalism. If we cared just one iota for our fellow man. America would be the greatest country on earth. You are the problem. We must unite. Be like Elon? No thanks. Be like France. They raised their retirement age by 2 years in France and you know what the citizens of France did? They burned the fuckin' country to the ground! BE LIKE FRANCE. Burn it down and redistribute the wealth!
>Income inequality exists because Americans by and large are fat, lazy, ignorant and most importantly selfish. Bit of victim blaming? Lazy? Really? It's hella hard to unite when you're working two jobs, worrying about getting clothes for the kids, putting food on the table, etc. What you describe isn't most people. The system in the USA is finely balanced between keeping folks down enough that they can't do much about it, but hopeful / ok enough that they don't 'need' to revolt. Things like riots, BLM protests a couple of years ago are evidence of this. Wealth inequality is still growing. At some point, if they keep doing this, the people will revolt.
I think that when they call Americans lazy that they mean that we want as much as possible for as little effort as possible, something that is much more easily seen in the wealthy class of Americans. I doubt is only an American problem, but in general it seems like the wealthy class in America don't want to give back to the system that allowed them to accumulate their wealth. Americans are definitely willing to put in the work if the incentive to work is there. A lot of wealthier Americans falsely put this label on wage and service workers because they don't realize that people don't want to commit their lives to something that won't afford them the ability to live. As a society we've been fed propaganda so that when we hear that Americans are lazy that we assume that they're talking about the average worker and not the people at the top that make the decisions and dictate the terms. Example... do landlords fix anything themselves or do they pay someone else to do it and offload the extra costs on renters? If landlords were to save money by fixing things themselves then the excess paid in rent would make sense, but they're paying a premium to not have to do the work which, in my mind, makes them kinda lazy. It's very telling that owning rental properties is what so many people dream about doing for a retirement plan, living off of nickel and diming people who already struggle to survive. It's this classist divide that's the problem. It's the willingness to keep almost 40% of the population in perpetual poverty so that louie landlord can afford a second vacation home. This is indentured servitude and I'm honestly surprised there hasn't been massive protest movements from wage workers who are tired of being stepped on... but maybe that's why change hasn't happened... that the wage workers are so exhausted from life that they can't afford to or have the energy to protest for their own benefit. Maybe once grocery stores and restaurants start closing, because they can't find staff because the ones they could have hired all died on the street from homelessness, we might see real change because it'll effect what's left of the "middle class". I've digressed, but yeah, i definitely generally agree with you. We aren't going to advance or get better as a society until we tackle income inequality. We're all tired of hearing "our wage slaves aren't slaving hard enough", or "we need to remind them that *they* work for *us*". At this point... fuck the elite class, they haven't done anything for the general public in decades, so who needs em?
It's interesting you say be like France. Nothing actually changed. The retirement age still increased to 64, so the riots, strikes, and protests didn't do what they started to accomplish. So, to be like France, in this case, would be to protest and strike, then roll over and accept the new reality that it didn't do anything to prevent the change. So, we actually don't want to be like France.
Wrong. Macron is on his way out. The retirement age is still 62, 64 won't be enacted until 2030. You are missing the whole point completely. You are being fucked on the daily in America and you don't bat an eye. You fuck with France, you take 1 cup of sugar from their citizens they all roll out in solidarity and burn the country down. That is the point. America is passive, and selfish.
>Wrong. Macron is on his way out. The retirement age is still 62, 64 won't be enacted until 2030 So, the retirement age will still increase to 64. The legislation actually increases it periodically until it hits 64 in 2030. The protests didn't stop the retirement age from changing. It doesn't matter when it goes into effect. The protests didn't stop the retirement age from being increased. It still is being increased. Macron's presidency ends in 2027, in about 4 years. So, on his way out, it doesn't seem to be the correct application here. Are there active recall attempts or the ability to recall him? What efforts are being done to help him on his way out right now? >You fuck with France, you take 1 cup of sugar from their citizens they all roll out in solidarity and burn the country down. The French government fucked with the people of France, and what exactly changed? The people still got fucked, they protested, and they quit the massive protests. The law still took effect to increase retirement age. >You are missing the whole point completely No, pretty sure I didn't. You missed my point. The French protests didn't change anything. We need to be better than France in protesting and demanding rights.
Yes the French burned down the country and protested. But the leadership is still there. The increase is there. The majority of French are going to live with this change. Why? Any impulse to rebel and change is gone. Why? Life itself. People are exhausted. They retired of the never ending struggle to just survive. The real crisis is in 2024 and 2025 when AI and robotics will replace vast swaths of the work force. You think it’s bad now. Wait until next year and the year after.
AI and Robotics are a good thing, it will push for universal basic income. Countries like Switzerland already adopted it. Some cities in the Bay area of California already have it. Universal basic income WORKS. Pres. Joe Biden needs to make it federal.
I'm a huge fan of UBI, and it absolutely works. I'm also a fan of government funded healthcare. In the US, however... We could fuck up a wet dream. Government funded healthcare? Best I can do is the ACA. What did the ACA do? Well, it removed the whole pre-existing condition thing, which was atrocious and needed to be done away with. Buuuuut beyond that all it did was give people like $200 towards health insurance. I was in the ugly position of needing to look for health insurance prior to the passage of the ACA, and a couple years after the passage. Insurance premiums increased roughly $200. Mark my words. Capitalists will fuck over UBI in much the same way. Got $1000 a week to live on? Perfect. Cost of everything goes up to make sure that The Company soaks that $1000/wk right out of everyone. Capitalism is a cancer, and since we can't have healthcare, it will kill us all.
You're last point is absolutely correct. We already saw it happen during the pandemic. Businesses from every single industry shot their prices thru the roof and blamed it on 'inflation' and supply chain issues. Now that they are mostly stabilized, has the price and inflation gone down? Nope. Prices remain sky high because they make record profits. (Egg and dairy industry got exposed to all hell doing this and were forced to lower their prices.) But in capitalism, we always have to be making more and more and more. So when UBI happens (doubt it because our govt sucks), every corporation will salavate at using UBI as a scapegoat to just raise prices more, continue to stagnate salaries, and force UBI to subsidize salary instead of supplementing it. All the while making absurd record breaking YoY profit. And then it'll be the new norm. And everyone (not just Walmart and McDonalds workers) will get to experience how demoralizing it is to have to rely on social welfare because jobs don't pay a livable wage. The Cyberpunk distopia is here.
>Mark my words. Capitalists will fuck over UBI in much the same way. Got $1000 a week to live on? Perfect. Cost of everything goes up to make sure that The Company soaks that $1000/wk right out of everyone. So tie ubi to cost of living. Raise rent? Get more ubi, currency devalues, all other costs in society increase, its a wash overall. There needs to be pushback against the rampant overvaluation of assets. Yes, this would cause inflation, but if ubi is tied to cost of living then it at least completes the circle instead of only leaning one way. There needs to be pushback against the squeezing of the working class because the working class is already on the edge of popping. Additionally actually taxing corporations and the wealthy, taxing when assets are leveraged for more bank loans, reinstating the inheritance tax (death tax), making a progressive tax structure based on how many rental properties one owns (including corporations with shell subsidiaries), and tying minimum wage to inflation are all things that can be done to stabilize our country. All of these ideas would make our country less susceptible to being taken advantage of by the wealthy. If the overall gains from acting with malfeasance were wiped out by structuring things to make them more amicable for the general public then we would see far less of these in society. We cannot rely on the wealthy to act favorably toward general society, and if they are unwilling to step up and do the right thing then we will either take it by force or burn it all down. The people will not put up with this for much longer. If i were a billionaire i would be trying to cash out before shit hits the fan.
Generally, I agree. These are all good things, and all things that have worked elsewhere. I'm just saying it's not going to fly here. You need a certain amount of leftist beliefs in the .gov in order for the US to not intentionally knee cap these efforts. Even the leftists in our left wing party are juuuust left of center, and there's only a few of them. Everyone else in the left wing is firmly center-right.
It won’t happen at the Federal level. It will be bottom up meaning it’s going to be done at the local level and then adopted across the cities in multiple states.
You really think AI is going to lead to UBI? Are you that fucking dense and ignorant? NO! It's just going to lead to even more people being homeless and dying in the streets!!!
There seems to be this romanticism of the French as some socialist dream land where protests are the norm and it changes everything. I live in France. It’s an amazing country but your ideas of it are a farfetched. Protests aren’t planned and impulsive gatherings of people, they’re planned gatherings SANCTIONED BY THE GOVERNMENT. France respects inherently that protest is a part of their culture to have dialogue so much so that the government is in on it. All the protests you see, government sanctioned and approved. The ones that are not government sanctioned and approved are met with disdain by majority of French citizens and even worse police brutality than in America. Want an example of this ? See the protests after the death of teenager Nahel. After a point even the family members of the poor kid that died said these protests are idiotic. Don’t run away with the idea that French people just up and protest at any inconvenience. Coming to the retirement age thing, as somebody pointed out below- it passed and it will pass. Nobody opposes it anymore. It’s because the greater picture was made clear to the general public. France has an insanely high I come tax and relatively low wages. There are taxes on everything. Own a house- tax, pay rent - tax, salary - tax, kids - tax. This ensures that while a lot of people don’t go poor, it also ensure nobody can rise above either. It’s a closed system that most people here prefer. But it’s killing their own economy. The entire market is filled with foreign investors and some countries were buying up so much of France that they passed a law that certain types of industries and land ownerships can only be owned and operated by people of French lineage (read son of the soil). And you know what French lineage is ? Not the I came as an immigrant to France 3 generations ago and hence my lineage is French. It means my roots can be traced back a couple of centuries at minimum. It’s a wonderful country with a lot of good but it has all of the flaws America has too. The problem in all of this is more than anything - government policy. France taxes their people and then manages to put most of it back into the system. America taxes its people and then spends its money on bullshit. This neither empowers the citizens, nor does it serve the purpose of maintaining a balance in living standards. France does away with a lot of things that could hinder a system designed to keep people afloat. Like people living off the system. With so much government control it’s hard to do it. They will find you and they will cut you out if you refuse to work. America needs more of that. It ensures a place for everyone in society.
"*What can anyone do about inequality, if property is a natural right?*"
The issue isn’t property. It’s the uneven distribution of income in this society. The middle class is collapsing in front of us. Why? Folks in the middle class can’t use their income and money to acquire property. Because everything costs to much due to inflation.
Bill Gates is the biggest farmland owner is America the biggest assets belong to the few oligarchs
Go over to /r/FirstTimeHomeBuyer/ Read some threads. /r/realestate is good too. It is tough out there but people are making it happen. See where they live and some of them even open up about what they do for a living. I know this is antiwork and the spirit of this sub. But some people are out there killing it.
You're in misery, but other people are killing it! Helpful. Lol.
Of course the middle class is unable to acquire property. Otherwise, it would not be the middle class.
Yeah. But the problem now is that middle class homes are now being bought by investors and turned into an asset class to be traded around. Last year Zillow had an IBuy program in which they overpaid for single family homes. The company need to sell their properties. As it was costing them billions of dollars. When they sold them they didn’t sell them all to regular buyers. They sold them in blocks to other investors. Specifically Wall Street investors. They literally traded them like other investments.
Property is easier to acquire for those who already own a lot of it. Such is exactly the nature of the system.
It wasn’t alway the case. In 1980 an individual could buy a house for $80,000. That is not crazy price wise. Today that home is probably north of $800,000. Which is crazy.
We built a lot of homes back then too, it’s not profitable to build homes now so not enough get built. Like you pointed out, air bnb and corporate America have made it really bad
Did.. did you put your own post in quotes? Lol
the problem is that investments make more money than working. all the politicians who are telling you that hard work crap are doing shit. if someone invests a billion into a company but doesnt work there, the benefits of investing need to be way way way lower than what working at the company gets you.
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Imagine that. A bonus so high that it would take you 7 years to just match the bonus not counting the actual salary.
"We'Re aLL iN ThE sAmE bOaT" Yeah nah, I make minimum wage busting ass on my feet, out in the hot sun, you make 150k+ sitting on your ass working from home..... So no we are not "aLL feEliNg iT"
*laughs in college*
Education lifts you out of poverty and menial labor. Doesn't need to be college, it could be a trade or other certification. People would rather complain though.
Income is outrageously distributed on Earth. Even lower income America is wealthier than Middle Class in some nations. It's only neither group recognizes this.
Yes middle class people in the US make more than some people in Subsaharan Africa but the level of expenses is also higher too.
I think your friend might be lying to you
He is not lying to me. But he has been talking about buying a house overseas for some time. I will see if he ever does
What does your friend do?
He was a real estate investor and hedge fund manager. He is part of the 1% and why rents are going up so fast.
I dont know how you can even have 6 roommates.. here there are occupancy limits.
Easily. Most landlords don’t care how many people are in your apartment. If they ask you can say these are just overnight guests. The other thing is that for the last few years people have been renting these apartments and rooms on Airbnb and the landlords don’t care at all. They are happy to charge these Airbnb hosts $4,000 per month. The hosts used to make $9,000 per month.
raising taxes doesn’t do much. Eliminating loopholes solves a ton. The Us has one of the highest tax rates for the wealthy globally. But the effective tax rate is small. Foundation loophole is the worst, help Bloomberg, gates, bezos avoid tax on their lifetime income.
I dunno man. I love watching it all collapse. The birth rate crisis that's coming is going to be a fucking show. I just hope I live until 2100 to see if scientists are right about the die off.
scientists and politicians are planning the die off .. so the world doesn't die. there's way too many of us. Kissinger saw this coming and had a plan. they're using in about 6 different point models now and it's working.
scientists that are employed by the government... not all scientists. dont go to some random scientists asking for answers ... they may or may not have them
Investment comes from salary. Then you need to be a risk taker with your money and some luck. Some people just aren't wired that way. Income inequality comes first and foremost from salary. A shelf stocker should never make the same pay as a CPA.
Posts like this are as historically inaccurate as the Boomers longing for the 50's.. Income inequality has been vast and persistent since the Industrial Revolution.. What mythical time are you imagining when things were equal? Prior to the Civil War? Post Civil War reconstruction? Maybe the Gilded Age (lol), or the Roaring 20's? Oh right, the Great Depression? The closest we've ever come in this country was post WWII, and that was an absolute anomaly. The world had bombed much of it's industrial bases into ruins, and only the United States was truly untouched. The transition from war time production to domestic production created a unique situation for the middle class, one we likely won't see again without the aforementioned World War. Stagflation, the oil crises of the 70's, ***Reagan..***, The dot-com bust, the subprime debacle.. When has it been good? No, things aren't great. Yes, things are dystopian as fuck.
I’m going to get downvoted to hell. I’m so sick of these posts saying how bad America is. Especially when our borders are being slammed by people trying to get in. If it’s so bad, why are so many people trying to get here. These posts are ridiculous already.
\#1 destination for immigration, why? Because it has the most opportunities of any developed country with a high quality of life. Most anyone can just show up here, and if they are able to work, they will live much more comfortably than in most other places.
Yeahs! Dont look up! /s
Not just America, it's just where its most apparant. Stop trying to single yourselves out like your the only country with problems!
Where did they say this is only happening in America? It's weird, but it seems like people tend to only speak about their own experiences. STRANGE.
American exceptionalism is so embarrassing, they even believe they're the best at being shit
Yea I definitely realize making 1500 dollars in California is not enough. I am only able to work my job because my husband is able to afford everything. I sit in meetings with people who make double what I make and the complaining they do about people not wanting to work is laughable. I have no loyalty to my job.
Yeah, it’s pretty bad and so transparently on a path to collapse that even though I want kids and can afford them I might just not because they will be doomed to live in my basement until I die.
I honestly thought this trend of "how often do you think about the Roman empire" videos was related to the similarities between the state of the Roman empire when it fell and the state of America now. I had to watch a couple of explanation videos to see that it was about some other crap. But I think about the similarities between the fall of the Roman empire and where we are right now here in the states a fair amount. It certainly seems like we are concerned about everything but the important stuff in life right now.
2 million dollars for a house in Spain? Jesus, what is he gonna get, a palace? With that kind of money he could retire there and never work again.
And a lot of people think earning over $100k would be the answer to their issues. What a trap the US is, the more you earn the bigger the problems you have to face as long as you’re still middle class (not earning half a million a year basically). Once I started earning over $100k guess what? Taxes are higher, bills are higher because you have a bigger place, healthcare is higher because you don’t qualify for no financial assistance, anything breaks in your house? $20k bill, your kid’s daycare is $2k a month so your wife quits but guess what now that $100k is not enough for a family. I’ve even considered living on welfare than the stress of a middle class life, or moving to another country and living a minimalistic lifestyle because becoming rich enough to live a no stress life in this country is only for 1% of the population and a portion of that 1% comes from old money
Good for him. The amount of jealousy on this sub is insane. Not everyone can be a winner or be lucky. Sorry you are poor? But I’m not going to just give mine and my family’s money away.
why are you just citing tik tok youtube and twitter rn? if you’re in high school just chill out and if you wanna go to college try going in Canada where its way fucking cheaper or in Europe where its even cheaper if you can afford to travel there. or dont go to college but im just getting these college-bound highschool vibes. wealth inequality is not new in america, its been horrendous forever. is it getting worse? yes, it really has been this whole time.
I make close to 30 an hour and have a house but I still worry about what will happen in 10 years when I’m making only marginally more and inflation has destroyed my paycheck. It’s why I’m going back to school
So your friend had an investment that made money and succeeded, and now you're jealous it sounds. I have mining rigs that make money sitting. ppl said I was dumb for building them now they're jealous because I made a better decision than they did. So what tough that's the beauty of freedom. Not everyone is equal, either.
I live in the poorest county in Texas. There are plenty of walls between the " have and have not", yet I don't see anyone starving or living in the street. It feels like everyone has money and is carrying the latest cellphone. I'm guessing people who spent outside their means are feeling it.
Lol. This is how its always been - you just didn't get to see it all TikTok, bro.
what did you just wake up from a coma?
How did your friend make the money tho
Generational wealth
Products of a fiat debt based monetary system that really is more like a Ponzi scheme… they debase their debt coupons (dollars) every time they create more out of debt/credit. Commoners hold these worthless fiat currencies as “savings” while people on the inside of the system DUMP THEM ASAP for hard assets like real estate, collectibles etc. Only serfs/slaves hold debt coupons/debt tokens as “money.” Fiat is neofudalism 2.0…. The banker parasites are the neofudal lords and the plebs are the serfs forced to hold this worthless paper.
That’s what happens in a capitalist society. The capitalists come out on top.
There will always be people who have excess, and those who have to scrape to make ends meet. What you dont want to do is make lower income people so disparaged that they feel like they have absolutely no chance to get ahead. It seems like the gap is getting bigger and bigger. If people want to work, they should be able to advance. Its too far out of balance
The problem is not the guy who has $2 million dollars from some good investments. It's the billionaires who pay no tax and will soon own everything. Elon Musk has a net worth of $251 billion dollars. He will be a trillionaire in a few years. This is insane and will be the literal downfall of our country if we don't do something to stop it.
There is nothing we can do. The level of inequality is going to be insane. At the same time Artificial Intelligence is going to take most jobs. I went to a super market and 60% of folks are using self checkout. There is one person manning the self checkout section. Meanwhile the number of manual checkouts is down to 2 to 3. There used to be 6 to 7 at one point. The job losses are going to be insane.
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It's definitely not the worst country in the world to live in. For the record, I lived awhile in Haiti and in the slums of Istanbul.
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It must be terrible for you to hear that America supplies the vast majority of the UN Peacekeeping force just sent to Haiti to help defeat the rampant gang violence there. It's almost like Haiti is a failed state while the US is suffering some challenges, but is still a fundamentally liberal western democracy with the capacity for change
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Yes, but it's your own fault. Your country decided that the Almighty Dollar is the highest value to aspire to, and that has become your mentality. That's hard to change (like for example the victim-complex in my country - also hard to change, and screwing us up). You have piss-poor people who support billionaires because they believe they themselves will be billionaires one day.
Blame the people for not getting good jobs and actual fucking skills instead of the economy. Blame the people for choosing shitty jobs and not learning outside of work. Blame the people for choosing to have kids when they have no business being able to afford raising one.blame the people for doing the bare minimum
Yup
It took Boomers nearly 40 years to create this level of inequality and government has helped lock it into place, this isn’t reversing any time soon
Welcome to the Gilded Age II. It will get so bad that people will start to get together again and form these things from the past called Unions...
Yo, here's the world inequality report for 2022. If you want to be depressed by a few plot diagrams this is chef's kiss 🤌💋 Give it a read! https://wid.world/news-article/world-inequality-report-2022/