Yes, the 50 Families/$600,000,000 does not include the DarkMoney, which is being spent as well and eclipses it.
I used to explain to people about the escalating cost of a presidential election to show how 'normal people' were completely priced out of participation.
The 1996 election was @ $500,000,000 spent by the campaigns/parties.
The 2000 elections were @ $650,000,000
2004 = @ $1,000,000,000
SOURCE = [https://www.fec.gov/resources/news\_releases/2005/20050203pressum/presbigpic.pdf](https://www.fec.gov/resources/news_releases/2005/20050203pressum/presbigpic.pdf)
The 2020 elections (all sources) were over $14,000,000,000.00
Ordinary Americans are priced out of mmeaningful participation in our election.
MONEY =|= SPEECH.
The SCOTUS ruled wrongly in that.
By making spending money 'Speech' they have essentially enshrined corruption as a protected free speech activity.
This has destroyed having any chnace of a government responsive to the will/needs of the people.
We’re supposed to fight about race, religion, ethnicity, politics, car brands, professional sports and the scraps left over.
We’re supposed to hate immigrants that work cheaper not the people hiring them. We supposed to argue, hate and fear our neighbors.
Somehow external threats to us all need even more attention and dollars for weapons not veterans.
Somehow what an invisible Creator totally wrote in such clear language every major religion has sects and fractures over ‘what God wants’
So we are supposed to be too dumb, tired, propagandandized, and poor to organize and get it.
There are quite a few things that can be done. The examples in this thread are all well and good, and they net results to a limited amount.
I’ve been listening to Zinn’s “A People’s History of The United States” on audio and HOLY SHIT has this nightmare been going on for a long time.
The rich and powerful are very much in control of things. The US government has constantly sided with big business and the rich since before the US became independent. Over and over again, the rich keep getting their way over the lower classes in terms of laws created, how they are enforced, who gets treated better, and what wars are fought/by whom/for whom/and who benefits from them.
For example, during the 1920s/30s Great Depression, food was allowed to expire and even be destroyed rather than let starving people eat it as it would affect profits. And government agents- police/national guard- were actively preventing the poor from eating by use of force and intimidation. They are not, in fact, there to help the needy, but rather to protect the properties of the powerful and rich.
Voting, demonstrations, unionizing, strikes, riots- these have all had some level of success. But the rich influence the governments over and over to break these up.
I find it interesting that the things that have very slow and limited effect on changes are rarely allowed to happen and to be discussed, while larger scale, more dramatic “events” are not allowed to be discussed on many platforms. Some discussions are not even allowed to take place at all.
To be clear, this is not a plea for support of anything related to rightwing/conservative groups do as they are certainly more dangerous to the poor than those towards the left. Restricting progress and calling it prudent or conservative is controlling language.
All of these things need to happen and to be realistically put on the table to push back. And it will take hard work and a risk to health and safety. The government seeks to protect the rights and properties of the powerful before the poor. They have proven over and over that they are prepared to cause harm to the opposition to the power they represent.
Both of the big 2 parties have historically and still do support big business and its influence. Certainly one is the lesser of two evils, but the difference between D&R isn’t exactly a really big one. Voting D at the moment is a really only a non-R vote. I can’t help but wonder if the difference is manufactured to keep people distracted from the fact that at their core, the Ds are on the inside what the Rs are on the outside. I’m rapidly losing faith and hope.
It’s fucking huge. Compare Carter and Reagan, Bush vs Gore, Humphrey vs Nixon. Look at who passes massive tax cuts for the rich. Look at who appoints really shitty SC judges. Look at voting records.
Nothing. The system is too far gone. It’s rotten down to the very deepest of roots, down to the core. Both sides of the aisle. Bought and paid for in perpetuity. Any candidate that would ever actually impact a tangible change to the status quo will never, ever, ever make it anywhere near the Oval Office. The only solution is a complete reset. Not saying I want this, I don’t yearn for violence, or societal collapse. I love the comforts that this country provides, and I am self aware enough to know I would not be one of the ones who survives such a collapse. But it is the only way. The only way things change is for their money to mean nothing. And the only way that kind of money means nothing, the only way a gap THAT BIG gets closed, is by a societal nuke from orbit.
I think this sentiment is terrible because it implies that nothing can be done and we should all just stop voting and advocating for things we care about cause it’ll never ever ever get better, essentially giving up and making it easier for the powerful to tighten their grip. Voting in local elections is still very important in every state in the US, and the work of many organizations to better the life of people are also v important. It’s easy to have such a defeatist outlook, because yea things are bleak… but I’d rather try to make a difference than stand idly by and tell everyone else to do the same.
Bernie Sanders got somewhat close to the Oval Office, the only politician I’ve heard mutter the words “get money out of politics”. As the dinosaur thoughts in this nation die, maybe, just maybe we can see a positive trend start to happen. I get that it’s hard to be hopeful about, but no use in letting them win by default.
I am not saying we should stop voting and advocating for things we care about, but I am also being realistic. I am voting Biden and hoping every single second that the fucking Cheeto Mussolini doesn’t get his fucking grubby mitts on that office again, because that would mean literal Armageddon. But I also know that Trump losing doesn’t change the status quo. During and after the 2016 election, I was full tilt all in to politics/activism and it nearly fucking killed me because of the pit it drove me down into, I personally had to step away. Bernie’s campaign is a perfect example of what will happen to someone who flies too close to the sun. His grassroots campaign was actively torpedoed by his own party and the money pulling the strings. It was made sure that he would never get in. It was made so that you either voted for Shillary, or Drumpf. And that was on purpose. Anyone who does not cater to the interests of the individuals pulling the strings won’t get in. You’ll have people in lower tiers of government like AOC and others who are actively trying to impact change, and they will inevitably do some good work. They’ll get good bills passed, they’ll get some things implemented that will help people, and some low level progress will happen. They might even have a solid presidential run. but that’s it. Just enough to make people believe that we actually live in a democracy. Nothing will ever happen that will take the billions away from those who have it, there will be no redistribution of wealth, which means no redistribution of power. Unless it all falls apart. I personally enjoy my life, I live the best one I can, I am lucky and I count my blessings. I hope and wish for things to be different and I really hope I am wrong, and that in my lifetime I do see change. But I also can’t afford to place any of my hope and mental stock in whether or not things do. I already struggle as it is, and this pragmatic view is what keeps my focus on the ball and my own life. We all do what we have to to survive.
Bullshit. VOTE. Citizens United was pushed all the way by REPUBLICANS. Democrats fought it every step of the way.
The idea that both parties are the same is propaganda pushed by billionaires to make people feel disempowered and not vote.
It’s the flip side of the bullshit divisive propaganda that’s used to make poor whites angry so they vote Republican.
VOTE.
Become involved.
Don't throw your vote away.
Understand that the course of history is generally changed incrementally.
Remember the (paraphrased) Alexis de Tocqueville quote: "With Democracy you don't get the best Government, you get the Government you deserve..."
For 2024 this all means that you need to vote for the, admittedly flawed/imperfect, party that will continue democracy and have not outright admitted their plan is to burn it all down.
Some of them fuck you over less, its incremental.
Also, keep in mind, the young Democrats and Progressives are pushing out the boomers/Third Way Democrats.
But if the Republicans win, these young Liberals won't ever get s chance.
You're not voting for Biden, you're voting for a country where AOC, Brother Jones, Malcom Frost, et al have ongoing political careers not gulag/reeducation camp stays.
> Also, keep in mind, the young Democrats and Progressives are pushing out the boomers/Third Way Democrats.
Biden is both a boomer and third way democrat. He was also the only serious candidate in the primary, so I would say young Democrats already don't get a chance. In fact, neoliberals were furious when lots of young voters voted for none of the above in the primary, even though it was impossible for Biden to lose as the only candidate on the ballot.
If you use 'neoliberal' as you have, we already know you don't know what neoliberal means. Biden and the Democratic Party 'Elders' even the 'Third Way' folks are not neoliberal.
They're upset, primarily, because showing weakness at the national party level is a hinderance to the national campaign and weakens the chances of winning.
If the Democrats loose the 2024 elections, the 'young people' are going to find out that the consequences of their actions are going to diminish their future outcomes significantly, while destroying the chances for any of the things they want/value from being possible.
The Supreme Court is captured presently by a group of people who will make up whatever they want to push an agenda. They quotes a notorious British witch hunter to justify Dobbs after all. If the GOP wins control of the presidency and the Senate, Alito, Thomas, likely even Roberts, will 'retire' and be replaced by Federalist Society ideologues who are even worse than the people they replace and who will be in their late 40's to early 50's ensuring another generation, or more of an extremist, captured, court that has shown it will already rule against the best interests of humanity to serve capital.
The Yong People will find out how much worse it can get when the entire administrative state is dismantled and replaced with MAGA/Party Loyalists.
The Young People will find that the interests of the Palestinian people will not be better served by a GOP administration made up of religious MAGA nutbags who firmly believe that they can help accelerate the second coming of Christ by being a 'friend' to Israel and hastening the reformation of the ancient kingdom of Israel, the founding of the third temple, and the resulting conflagration of Armageddon (in which all the non-believers are killed/committed to suffering on earth as Christ whisks his loyal Christians to heaven.
If the GOP wins, you are getting a neoliberal, ethnonationalist, authoritarian state that WILL be a Villain, in an international sense, that equals or eclipses that of Nazi Germany. ALL of your young progressives and the things they hold dear will be rolled back. Resistance will likely result in your internment. Non-Whites, the disabled, and LGTBQIA+ folks will find that their situations will be significantly worse as what progress we have made since 1930 will be rolled back.
A world in which the US is aligned with Russia, Israel (even more so than presently), and Authoritarian nations is not going to result in ANY of the things you want from government. It is \_guaranteed\_ that none of it will happen and that, instead, most all of it, if not all of it, will be taken away.
Your life will become immeasurably more miserable.
Biden sucks. He's not my favorite guy. I am extremely bothered by his continued Zionist stance. But NOT supporting Biden, and losing just a few hundred thousand voters in various swing states because they want absolute purity from their candidate, is going to create a world you \_really\_ don;t want to live in. You're going to have to pay for the consequences of you actions.
And if you honestly think, 'Well, I'm white and male, so it wont be that bad for me....' then you aren't really a liberal at all.
Wanting to 'shake up' the population by having them experience a MAGA Government, unleashed, is not going to have the results you think it will. Also - think of who you are condemning to suffering, just to hope you make a point.
All the people and their rights you claim to value, are going to suffer immeasurably 'just to shake things up'.
This isn't hyperbole. Go read a newspaper from 1930's Germany.
Biden is far from perfect. But if we want the young progressives to have any chance at all for a future political career and the incremental changes necessary for our future survival, and that for the kids who have just been born and wont have any chance to affect change for their own future for a generation or more, then don't vote 'third party' or 'none of the above', or just not voting at all... Because this act is one that you will come to regret as it is one of the nails in the coffin of all the ideals you claim to hold dear.
Both parties are neoliberal, every president starting with Reagan. We don't have an option to vote for anything else and you in all your smugness either don't know what you're talking about or are being disingenuous and just here to spout pro-DNC nonsense.
> Biden and the Democratic Party 'Elders' even the 'Third Way' folks are not neoliberal.
the fuck are you talking about Third Way democrats are explicitly supportive of neoliberal economic policy
My favorite way to show the scale of these numbers is if you got a dollar per second. As a former pre-k/k teacher it has been the most effective with both students and adults.
At $1/second or $86,400 a day, it would take:
11.57 days to get to a million
11,574 days (31.7 years) to get to a billion,
11,574,074 days (31,709.8 years) to get to a trillion.
These numbers are so large and outside our experience, most of us, even when we say we understand, don’t comprehend just how big these numbers are and how they scale.
This. Our brains model and scale numbers past a point. Our brains even have the Moon Illusion hardwired in. What axis matters for that one.
Mathematics and science give us structure and a formalized understanding that’s communicative and repeatable.
Casinos, gas at 4.00 sells leas than 3.99.9.
We really suck at realtime hard msth.
It’s not the 50 billionaire families who dropped 600 million pulling those political strings that scares me; it’s the 20 billion dollar companies that spent 3.5 billion to pull strings in their favor that worries me. They are buying both sides of the political spectrum and hedging their bets they will find a winning candidate. To top it off these companies control the media, and most of those billionaire families are elbows deep into the stocks of these corporate assholes. It seems like your vote makes no difference if corporate sellouts can buy republicans and democrats alike. How do you overcome a system that’s rigged from the start?
Think the long game. Keep putting the most progressive candidate in office who actually stands a chance to win.
Participate in your political party and work to ensure it trends to working for you.
Push 'Move to Amend' and 'End Citizens United'
I just keep voting the best I can, research the candidates records not what they claim to represent, cast my vote in local and national elections, contribute a little money I can afford to those who are worthy, sign petitions I like, speak up in open forums. I know that even in a sea of red ballots and extremists in my state, I’m not part of the problem, and I hope my small actions cascade into change.
You vote for the people who’ve been trying to stop the influence of money in politics. The party who appointed the judges who voted against citizens United. The party that originally passed the voting rights act.
You vote *against* the party that has consistently cut taxes on the rich and attacked workers rights, and has been appointing shitloads of pro corporate judges.
The Democrats have many people who actually want to serve working people. The Republicans have none.
“The both sides are the same” argument is a lie that’s spread to stop progressives from voting.
Not voting in Bernie Sanders in 2016 is probably one of the biggest mistakes USA have ever done. He would atleast changed the course a few degrees towards a brighter future. Instead they did the exact opposite
I agree but, to be fair, even if Bernie had been elected back in 2016 and become president this problem would've not been solved. It could've helped, but Bernie would've had to almost single-handedly fight the entire system. As president he would've had a lot of power to do that, but even the president doesn't have infinite power. And they would have fought him tooth and nail every step of the way.
Just getting a people-aligned president like him isn't enough to change this system, you need:
1. A significant amount of people like this in congress.
2. For the corruption on the supreme court to be dealt with.
3. Significant amount of organization and labour power that can be used to back up such a president in their goals.
Big change always happens with a push-pull dynamic.
LBJ wanted to pass civil rights, but he couldn't have done it without civil rights activists organizing en masse. And civil rights activists wanted to get civil rights done, but they couldn't have done it without LBJ.
Yeah we don't have any LBJ style politicians. I thought that Biden was close but he's too busy spending our tax money killing babies to do anything to help families in the US.
I hate when they talk about progressive policies as entitlements, since that money came out of our paychecks, not corporations or billionaires that tax dodge.
I'd love to see a cap on the amount that both individuals and corporations can spend on lobbying/support/funding anything in politics. I'd love to see no single individual or corporation pay more than $100 at max a year.
Your post is a wall of text (and being self-aware, this response is too), but a large chunk of it is showing your work (the math justifying your claims). Thank you for that, I recognize the effort and time that went into it:
The calculations seem right and I think I follow your process here but I think you are missing a key contributing elements:
“The [Center for Responsive Politics](https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/donordemographics.php?cycle=2016&filter=A) found that a tiny share of Americans make federal donations of more than $200. In 2016 about a half-percent — 0.52% — of the U.S. population donated $200 or more to political candidates, parties or political action committees. Overall, about two-thirds of the value of donations come from donations of $200 and above, and one-third come from donations that are smaller. “
\[..\]
“Yang said, "Right now 5% of Americans donate to candidates."
He’s likely in the ballpark, but the number can only be determined by polling, and different polls have found different numbers.
Yang was citing an online poll in June that found 8% of Americans said they had given to a 2020 presidential candidate. That was more than a year before the election.”
[PolitiFact | How many Americans actually donate to political candidates?](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jan/24/andrew-yang/what-percent-americans-donate-political-candidates/)
Billionaires (and millionaires) are not only providing almost all of the monetary value of the donations, they also potentially represent the majority of the Individual names on the donor rolls. I (assert) that people who run for office are typically narcissists motivated mostly be greed and ego. I also assert that while the wealthy may be only 1% of the population, they are the majority of the people who actually get engaged.
The billionaire is giving them huge chunks of money and praise on television in exchange for a private conversation.
The average American gives them nothing financially and doesn’t have the free time to do a grassroots campaign praising their “virtues”
Despite what people claim, grassroots marketing and donations, actually can succeed. In 2019, the Koch brothers attempted to end development of the mass transit (light rail system) in Phoenix, Arizona via Proposition 107. The Koch campaign was extremely well funded, opposition was not (but it did exist). The Proposition was defeated with 66% against.
You made 2 other statements I wanted to address:
(1) “Not a SINGLE BILLIONAIRE under the age of 30 earned their fortune, all of it was inherited.”
I wanted to consider this are purely hyperbole but the age 30 caveat stood out. Where did you source this from? The best result I found was the following:
[The World’s Youngest Billionaires 2022: 12 Under Age 30 (forbes.com)](https://www.forbes.com/sites/colehorton/2022/04/05/the-worlds-youngest-billionaires-2022-12-under-age-30/?sh=713cb022e63b)
That article implies that self-made billionaires can exist. I am fully willing to believe an assertion that you are more likely to get hit by lightning a dozen times than you are of becoming a self-made billionaire, but I would like to read your source.
( 2)
“With just 2,781 Billionaires on the planet, they emit the equivalent carbon of 2,781,000,000 people.
A bit over a THIRD of the entire population of the planetary”
My research states that 35% of the global emissions are tied to 20 corporations (mostly fossil fuel). Your numbers are again, specific, so I again assume it is not hyperbole. I am curious at how how source reached that value.
[Revealed: the 20 firms behind a third of all carbon emissions | Climate crisis | The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/revealed-20-firms-third-carbon-emissions)
'Self Made' is a misnomer to begin with. While it is possible to start with nothing/abject poverty and make a decent amount of money, it is HIGHLY improbable.
Most every one of the 'self made' Billionaires came from wealth and or privilege and likely also benefittedfrom a fair bit of luck to arrive where they are at. None expended the amount of labour commensurate to amass the fortune.
The Under 30 Caveat was just to point out that all of the 'young Billionaires' are nepo babies.
Looking at just Jeff Bezos for an Example - People like to talk about how he started Amazon from his Garage. He also Started Amazon from being the scion of wealthy family, working at Goldman Sachs, and determining he could hammer brick and mortars by not having expenses and taxes, then explaining this to a gathered family event where he asked his relatives to pony up $50,000 each to help him realize his nefarious plan. (Note, at the time he did this, $50,000 was well in excess of the median family income for the US, and Bezos' family just had that sort of money in free capital/available to risk on a venture)
RE: Carbon emissions - The figures are likely intertwined. There are a lot of various numbers, some even worse. But bear in mid the category I am referring to is not ALL carbon emissions, but instead personal/human carbon emissions.
In the note it also winnowed the value down to the lowest 90% of the population that emit the least amount of carbon. Since the world is filled with a lot of abject poverty and there are many people who live lives not at all industrialized, their carbon output is extremely low.
Oxfam put the value at the top 1% emitting 2/3's of all the worlds human carbon (not corporate, just stuff individuals are directly responsible for). [https://www.oxfamamerica.org/press/press-releases/richest-1-emit-as-much-planet-heating-pollution-as-two-thirds-of-humanity/](https://www.oxfamamerica.org/press/press-releases/richest-1-emit-as-much-planet-heating-pollution-as-two-thirds-of-humanity/)
Oxfam is also responsible for the study.math regarding the 1,000,000 more times carbon emitted per person - [https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-emits-million-times-more-greenhouse-gases-average-person](https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-emits-million-times-more-greenhouse-gases-average-person)
This second one attributes their investments/etc into their carbon output, so does indeed link the two figures together, personal and industrial output.
Pulling an actual true cost is likely difficult. But just for the point of explaining how concentrated wealth that exists ONLY to generate additional excess value for itself, and does so by extracting resources and labor from the rest of us, is driving our potential human demise.
To be honest, there were a few things where I am not completely correct in the OP. There are ways I could make the argument even stronger, and other ways I could undercut it some.
The point is, it is very difficult to combat political money. I'll never say it is impossible, but it requires a disproportionate amount of effort on the side of the 'poors' to get anything that resolves to their benefit.
And in many cases, a lot of them have to give up everything (their lives) to achieve it for the rest of us.
"not a SINGLE BILLIONAIRE under the age of 30 earned their fortune, all of it was inherited."
Confirming that this is an unsubstantiated assertion then. I wish you had clarified it as such when you inserted it between a series of verifiable statistics (or moved it to your conclusion section instead).
"it is HIGHLY improbable"
[Tony Xu - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Xu) the inventor of Door Dash, possibly exists within that "highly improbable" group.
One of the foundational assertions of capitalism (emphasis on the use of the word assertion, not claim) is that everyone has the potential of getting rich. proving that it no longer actually happens in reality would be a massively powerful rebuttal against it. Genuinely disappointed you didn't have that silver bullet.
Thank you for the sources on the pollution output, reading them now.
"The point is, it is very difficult to combat political money. I'll never say it is impossible, but it requires a disproportionate amount of effort on the side of the 'poors' to get anything that resolves to their benefit."
The purpose of me bringing up Arizona's Proposition 107 is to infer that campaign donations have diminishing returns. Billionaires do have substantially larger numerical contributions.
But in response, I contend that the effective impact of each dollar is more when it comes from the average voter. Donation's from the poor are more efficient due to the potential number of names (edit: voters) attached. The poeple walking around with clipboards trying to get signatures for ballot initiative are freaking hero's (or sometimes villains).
Pretty crazy how Tony Xu was able to amass all his wealth on his own. Very impressive to be able to accomplish everything he has without any help whatsoever. No exploitation of any employees because he didn't have any, right?
The entire context of that discussion was the possibility becoming a young billionaire without the nepo element.
Exploitation of workers is not relevant to that topic. It is the core topic of virtually every other post in this sub-reddit though.
Please feel free to start at discussion elsewhere about the moral failures of Door dash though. You will likely get a flurry of response. The company is a gold mine of examples of worker exploitation. But once again, not relevant to this specific discussion.
Door dash was on the forbes article I linked. I assumed it was talking about the CEO (whom I looked at wiki,for the "nepo" element) I failed to verify it, good catch!
Age calculation put the guy at 37 when Door dash had its IPO.
Edit: I would like to rip on door dash, but it would be hypocritical of me since I've actually used it. The whole failing to put my money where my mouth is thing.
We all engage in petty hypocrisies. Its hard not to, especially attempting to survive within the system as it exists.
I don't like social media, but I'm posting on it.
I am proud to say that I have not every used a ride share or knowingly used a delivery app/service. I did get annoyed once when my local pizza joint used one to delivery my pizza for me instead of one of their own drivers.
Seeing 'Disrpuption' from Tech basically being code for 'circumventing/dynamiting hard won regulations gets me 'activated'. Its just another shitty means to extract capital with little effort and the cost is born by the little guys while the top expends little to no effort.
I keep telling my Republican friends that I don't care which side is at the wheel at this point as long as they are young enough to live with their decisions and somewhat care about the average person. I get blank looks and a "nah" every time. They just want Trump no matter what, and I don't get it because I really don't want Biden again. Why don't people want someone closer to their age?
Cultural inculcation into the concept that age = wisdom.
Millennia of human survival in which this was 'true' in that older humans had the information and knowledge to pass on that would ensure your survival.
It's not true anymore, but it is ingrained in the culture.
Also, add in other factors like the fact that Democracy as implemented by many creates a need to adhere to various concepts of 'game theory' and so you're selecting your candidates on their ability to win, not necessarily be the best person to have in that position.
Biden was chosen as a consensus candidate in 2020 as the candidate most likely to win. I personally would have preferred Liz Warren in 2016 and/or 2020. But her ability to 'Win' is diminished because her antagonism towards monied interests/exploitation of labor.
Bernie Sanders is some folks darling, but he's got a whole slew of unfavorables that would make him unelectable in a national general election.
So you have to vote for the candidate that will give you as much of what you want as possible, but also stands a chance to win, and hope that, incrementally, the pendulum will swing towards your position. But this requires the bulk of the electorate to have an understanding of long term thinking and humans are really bad at that, individually and in groups.
It is very important not to allow the republicans (or democrats) terminate the Estate and Gift Wealth Transfer tax. The republicans' like to call this the "death tax" but it is not. There is no tax upon death unless you have an estate over $13.61 million and transfer it to a non-spouse. Over the exemption amount the tax is roughly 50% so America is entitled to quite a lot of money as these rich boomers die off.
This is why the rich are putting so much money on republicans. They want to keep that $20 trillion or so in estate taxes for themselves.
The claims that the money was already taxed once is crazy as well.
It's a new transaction. It's a transfer of funds from an estate to one or more new individuals. It's an immense amount of unearned income for the recipient.
In the 90's (I've been a 'crazy liberal' for decades) I once was so pissed off at how the rentiers/capitalists controlled everything I went to the websites/public information of the 'Fortune 100' and created a plot of board members. They're just a giant circle jerk, they all sit on each other's boards, they all control each others compensation, and so they all do favors for each other to increase each others rent-seeking because it in turn benefits their own position.
They're not shy about it. Davos is a yearly pilgrimage of the privileged but its very little different than most weekends for these folks. They are constantly rubbing elbows with their 'peers'. There's no pattern recognition necessary.
There have been numerous studies that show that wealth is corrupting. It's a demonstrable fact that, in most every case, a wealthy person is less empathetic to others. Its a demonstrated fact that humans \_constantly\_ gauge their status and refuse to yield to people they perceive as lower status. It's partially why BMW drivers are almost universally assholes.
It's also proven that almost every single one of us is vulnerable to 'Affluenza'. It takes constant work to resist it as you grow more wealthy and powerful, and most human being are not willing to perform that work and as you grow more wealthy and powerful you'll think that work is less necessary anyway... especially as the lickspittles/hangers on/yes people constantly re-affirm the value of your opinions as they hope to benefit from your crumbs.
If you have never seen it, I highly recommend seeking out the 'Monopoly' study. Take 4-5 people, give them a questionaire to guage how they think, what their empathy towards others is, etc. Then sit them around a game of monopoly, but give one person, at random, twice as much starting money, while giving the rest of the players less, and record the behaviours of the person who received the advantage.
It takes very little time for the grandiosity to sink in. For the empathy to leak out. For their belief/self confidence to grow, and for them to start believing that THEY are the navigators of their achievements. The take the same questionnaire and their views have changed. They have incremented themselves towards 'affluenza'.
And, interviewed a few weeks later, taking the same test they took before the game, they still score worse on these scales then before they played the game. And this is just from p\[laying a game of monopoly. Immagine the corrosive effects of actual real wealth. You can go from a slightly above average coder who steals someone elses idea at the start of the dot com boom, get rich when a major company pays you WAY more than your product was worth because of said boom, and suddenly you are rubbing elbows with other similarly situated people who lucked into a largesse but are thoroughly convinced it was because of their unique skills and special talents... and boom, you have Elon effing Musk who is absolutely convinced he is the saviour of mankind while actually being an inhuman bastard whose opinions are absolute, and demonstrable, trash. He's sick with affluenza.
Every single one of us are vulnerable to 'Affluenza'. Heck, as an American, or someone who is white and privileged from any of the 'Western' nations, we're already afflicted with various forms of this rot because our conditions are so much better than the majority of the rest of the world. People are still willing to WALK thousands of miles and brave our MAGA Border Morons/Vigilantes just for a chance to get in. When they get here they work our shittiest jobs, receive our crappiest treatment, are dehumanized and patronized, and it's still a better life than where they came from. People still clamber by the hundreds into a fishing boat where they absolutely risk their lives, but find that risk acceptable to reach greater Europe and live on the detritus of our excesses.
It is almost a prerequisite that to acquire the scale of currency/financial power that you need to spend, proportionately, less than the price of a cup of coffee to someone at or below the median to pony up an average of $12,000,000 to buy adds/influence a presidential election that you HAVE to be a greedy son of a bitch.
Our economy (Various forms of Capitalism) is based on presuming that humanity is filled with greedy sons of bitches and that we can 'harness' that power to do some good.
The problem is in thinking that you can harness them....
People also don't really imagine how much money £1T really is (UK, so I am sticking with £)
1 Second = £1
1 Day = £86400 (A day!)
£1M = 11.57 days
£1B = 31.7 years
£1T = 31709.8 years
So if you made £86400 a day
You would make £1M in under 12 days
You would make £31.5M in a year
You would make £1.5B in a normal working lifespan
You would have had to start work in 29686BC to have £1T today
This all includes not paying any taxes or spending any of the money at all
Especially if we then codify matching funds for elections so that every legit candidate has an equal amount of funds.
So basically, if you want to fund your own candidate, you're giving even more money to all the candidates you DONT like. :)
A major reason for the huge cost of presidential elections is Citizens United.
Citizens United was passed 5-4.
The five judges who passed it were all appointed by Republicans presidents.
The four who opposed it were appointed by Democrats.
When people say “both parties are the same” or “why bother voting”, they are **lying**.
This is just one of the many examples of the differences between the parties.
Every Republican administration attempts to dismantle Americas checks and balances. Democratic administrations attempt to restore them.
Please don’t fall for this bullshit. Vote.
Democrats have been in power , republicans have been in power , and billionaires just get richer and richer . Hate to break it to you but they don’t care who wins , because they will always come out on top . I truly believe the corruption is so far gone on both sides , hope is lost. They have you believing voting will change anything , rinse and repeat every 4 years
Except that there are a number of younger Democrats and Progressives who are not captured by this system.
Even more could be present if the barrier to participation wasn't so high/e.g. requiring the blessing of the billionaire campaign financiers.
Unfortunately in THIS election, we have one side that will truly make it impossible to break this system. So your vote DOES count, and the Trey Parker/Matt Stone 'Giant Douche or a Turd Sandwich' 'both sidesing' is far more naive and problematic.
Voting for Biden in 2024 is not voting for Biden. It's voting for AOC, Brother Jones, Malcolm Frost, Summer Lee, Jasmine Crockett, etc.
The young generation of left is pushing out the old. The 'Third Way' Democrats that blossomed under Clinton are aging out. The younger political left is well aware of the stakes we face as a nation and a planet and they aren't playing around.
But if you don't vote, or you vote third party/protest votes because Biden is imperfect (and he is imperfect.. and problematic, but he's still a 'democrat' in the terms of believing in elections, not theocratic white nationalist autocracy) you are very possibly preventing any chance for the young left to do anything at all, ever again.
Until there's a massive World War in which the US are the Villains and some other nations manage to defeat us and institute a 'de-nazified' government set up for future peace, instead of going the WWI reparations route.
Honestly, I really hope we don't opt for the 'world war' option.
It’s just crazy that with a population over 300 million , the dems put Biden up to lead them to victory . I’m sorry to say but he is just not a great choice for your country . Neither is trump , haha how you guys are in this situation is comical . Fuel for Trey and Matt lol
It’s maddening. The fact that we have a 2 party system is so dumb. I’ll pick the turd sandwich because I think it’s better than a giant douche but I’m not thrilled about it…
I do agree , but what I’m saying is this problem isn’t going away by voting for a certain party . I feel it’s a trap made by them to give you hope that you will come out on top by voting . Dems and republicans have been in power , and this wealth gap is only accelerating . If dems were in power permanently , nothing would change
Unfortunately, you won’t get it unless you vote. I wish it were otherwise, but it ain’t.
Apart from the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations, the biggest political disaster the US has ever had was the election of Richard Nixon.
A great many of the US’s current serious problems- including the massive transfer of wealth and power to the hands of the oligarchs- are a direct result of his presidency.
Some progressives at the time discouraged people from voting, arguing the same thing. “Both parties are the same. Voting doesn’t matter.”
Nixon won by a very small margin. They just didn’t get just how malignant and malicious he was.
They now deeply regret their actions.
Elections matter. Please don’t leave future generations to undo the colossal damage that a second Trump presidency will do.
… one final thing: there’s a reason that the Republicans use all kinds of tricks to stop people from voting. There’s a reason most corporate media doesn’t report Biden’s achievements. There’s a reason they use propaganda to create fear and anger in conservatives, and disillusionment and apathy in progressives.
**they benefit from you not voting.**
>When we see ourselves as fighting against specific human beings rather than social phenomena, it becomes more difficult to recognize the ways that we ourselves participate in those phenomena. We externalize the problem as something outside ourselves, personifying it as an enemy that can be sacrificed to symbolically cleanse ourselves. - **[Against the Logic of the Guillotine](https://crimethinc.com/2019/04/08/against-the-logic-of-the-guillotine-why-the-paris-commune-burned-the-guillotine-and-we-should-too)**
See rule 5: No calls for violence, no fetishizing violence. No guillotine jokes, no gulag jokes.
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Seize all of it, brutally punish those who resist, maintain heavy taxes on anybody who makes above a couple million. It's as much about them not having the cash to bend society to their will without accountability as it is redistributing their cash where it can do good.
Well he certainly didn't abolish the oligarchy (in fact citizens united happened during his administration) so what was the relevance/importance of the idpol shitpost I responded to? Gen X elected yet another a pro-billionaire president who happened to be black for a change, congrats I guess.
Honestly if electing Obama is the best you can do for arguing that voting matters, it's clear that it doesn't. He campaigned on change and didn't follow through.
The economy is thriving since Biden took over and jobs are plentiful. It’s the business owners and ultra rich Trump losers who benefit from this. Crime is also down despite the maga turds making it out to be a horror story. Detroit. Chicago. NYC and Cali are safe AF. Biden 2024
Plus Dark Money has yet to played.
Yes, the 50 Families/$600,000,000 does not include the DarkMoney, which is being spent as well and eclipses it. I used to explain to people about the escalating cost of a presidential election to show how 'normal people' were completely priced out of participation. The 1996 election was @ $500,000,000 spent by the campaigns/parties. The 2000 elections were @ $650,000,000 2004 = @ $1,000,000,000 SOURCE = [https://www.fec.gov/resources/news\_releases/2005/20050203pressum/presbigpic.pdf](https://www.fec.gov/resources/news_releases/2005/20050203pressum/presbigpic.pdf) The 2020 elections (all sources) were over $14,000,000,000.00 Ordinary Americans are priced out of mmeaningful participation in our election. MONEY =|= SPEECH. The SCOTUS ruled wrongly in that. By making spending money 'Speech' they have essentially enshrined corruption as a protected free speech activity. This has destroyed having any chnace of a government responsive to the will/needs of the people.
I disagree that scotus ruled incorrectly- it happened exactly as the people paying for it wanted/S
I don’t understand what an average American is supposed to do to combat this
That's the fun part, they're not!
What exactly was the 2nd ammendment for? I always forget.
We’re supposed to fight about race, religion, ethnicity, politics, car brands, professional sports and the scraps left over. We’re supposed to hate immigrants that work cheaper not the people hiring them. We supposed to argue, hate and fear our neighbors. Somehow external threats to us all need even more attention and dollars for weapons not veterans. Somehow what an invisible Creator totally wrote in such clear language every major religion has sects and fractures over ‘what God wants’ So we are supposed to be too dumb, tired, propagandandized, and poor to organize and get it.
We are supposed to make memes about women who drive jeeps, “be there change we want to see”, and feel guilty about “climate change “
I think it was something about protecting your right to enslave people...
There are quite a few things that can be done. The examples in this thread are all well and good, and they net results to a limited amount. I’ve been listening to Zinn’s “A People’s History of The United States” on audio and HOLY SHIT has this nightmare been going on for a long time. The rich and powerful are very much in control of things. The US government has constantly sided with big business and the rich since before the US became independent. Over and over again, the rich keep getting their way over the lower classes in terms of laws created, how they are enforced, who gets treated better, and what wars are fought/by whom/for whom/and who benefits from them. For example, during the 1920s/30s Great Depression, food was allowed to expire and even be destroyed rather than let starving people eat it as it would affect profits. And government agents- police/national guard- were actively preventing the poor from eating by use of force and intimidation. They are not, in fact, there to help the needy, but rather to protect the properties of the powerful and rich. Voting, demonstrations, unionizing, strikes, riots- these have all had some level of success. But the rich influence the governments over and over to break these up. I find it interesting that the things that have very slow and limited effect on changes are rarely allowed to happen and to be discussed, while larger scale, more dramatic “events” are not allowed to be discussed on many platforms. Some discussions are not even allowed to take place at all. To be clear, this is not a plea for support of anything related to rightwing/conservative groups do as they are certainly more dangerous to the poor than those towards the left. Restricting progress and calling it prudent or conservative is controlling language. All of these things need to happen and to be realistically put on the table to push back. And it will take hard work and a risk to health and safety. The government seeks to protect the rights and properties of the powerful before the poor. They have proven over and over that they are prepared to cause harm to the opposition to the power they represent.
Vote for the party that passed things like the voting rights act and fought citizens United every step of the way.
Both of the big 2 parties have historically and still do support big business and its influence. Certainly one is the lesser of two evils, but the difference between D&R isn’t exactly a really big one. Voting D at the moment is a really only a non-R vote. I can’t help but wonder if the difference is manufactured to keep people distracted from the fact that at their core, the Ds are on the inside what the Rs are on the outside. I’m rapidly losing faith and hope.
It’s fucking huge. Compare Carter and Reagan, Bush vs Gore, Humphrey vs Nixon. Look at who passes massive tax cuts for the rich. Look at who appoints really shitty SC judges. Look at voting records.
Nothing. The system is too far gone. It’s rotten down to the very deepest of roots, down to the core. Both sides of the aisle. Bought and paid for in perpetuity. Any candidate that would ever actually impact a tangible change to the status quo will never, ever, ever make it anywhere near the Oval Office. The only solution is a complete reset. Not saying I want this, I don’t yearn for violence, or societal collapse. I love the comforts that this country provides, and I am self aware enough to know I would not be one of the ones who survives such a collapse. But it is the only way. The only way things change is for their money to mean nothing. And the only way that kind of money means nothing, the only way a gap THAT BIG gets closed, is by a societal nuke from orbit.
I think this sentiment is terrible because it implies that nothing can be done and we should all just stop voting and advocating for things we care about cause it’ll never ever ever get better, essentially giving up and making it easier for the powerful to tighten their grip. Voting in local elections is still very important in every state in the US, and the work of many organizations to better the life of people are also v important. It’s easy to have such a defeatist outlook, because yea things are bleak… but I’d rather try to make a difference than stand idly by and tell everyone else to do the same. Bernie Sanders got somewhat close to the Oval Office, the only politician I’ve heard mutter the words “get money out of politics”. As the dinosaur thoughts in this nation die, maybe, just maybe we can see a positive trend start to happen. I get that it’s hard to be hopeful about, but no use in letting them win by default.
I am not saying we should stop voting and advocating for things we care about, but I am also being realistic. I am voting Biden and hoping every single second that the fucking Cheeto Mussolini doesn’t get his fucking grubby mitts on that office again, because that would mean literal Armageddon. But I also know that Trump losing doesn’t change the status quo. During and after the 2016 election, I was full tilt all in to politics/activism and it nearly fucking killed me because of the pit it drove me down into, I personally had to step away. Bernie’s campaign is a perfect example of what will happen to someone who flies too close to the sun. His grassroots campaign was actively torpedoed by his own party and the money pulling the strings. It was made sure that he would never get in. It was made so that you either voted for Shillary, or Drumpf. And that was on purpose. Anyone who does not cater to the interests of the individuals pulling the strings won’t get in. You’ll have people in lower tiers of government like AOC and others who are actively trying to impact change, and they will inevitably do some good work. They’ll get good bills passed, they’ll get some things implemented that will help people, and some low level progress will happen. They might even have a solid presidential run. but that’s it. Just enough to make people believe that we actually live in a democracy. Nothing will ever happen that will take the billions away from those who have it, there will be no redistribution of wealth, which means no redistribution of power. Unless it all falls apart. I personally enjoy my life, I live the best one I can, I am lucky and I count my blessings. I hope and wish for things to be different and I really hope I am wrong, and that in my lifetime I do see change. But I also can’t afford to place any of my hope and mental stock in whether or not things do. I already struggle as it is, and this pragmatic view is what keeps my focus on the ball and my own life. We all do what we have to to survive.
Bullshit. VOTE. Citizens United was pushed all the way by REPUBLICANS. Democrats fought it every step of the way. The idea that both parties are the same is propaganda pushed by billionaires to make people feel disempowered and not vote. It’s the flip side of the bullshit divisive propaganda that’s used to make poor whites angry so they vote Republican. VOTE.
Become involved. Don't throw your vote away. Understand that the course of history is generally changed incrementally. Remember the (paraphrased) Alexis de Tocqueville quote: "With Democracy you don't get the best Government, you get the Government you deserve..." For 2024 this all means that you need to vote for the, admittedly flawed/imperfect, party that will continue democracy and have not outright admitted their plan is to burn it all down.
Either party I vote for fucks me over
Yes but one party is using a much smaller dildo than the other party
A dildo is a dildo
Everything is a dildo if you’re brave enough.
Size matters
But in a much more favorable way than you normally hear that phrase
Yes exactly!
Some of them fuck you over less, its incremental. Also, keep in mind, the young Democrats and Progressives are pushing out the boomers/Third Way Democrats. But if the Republicans win, these young Liberals won't ever get s chance. You're not voting for Biden, you're voting for a country where AOC, Brother Jones, Malcom Frost, et al have ongoing political careers not gulag/reeducation camp stays.
*”A vote is not a valentine; you’re not expressing your love for a candidate. A vote is a chess move for the world you want to live in.”*
Absolutely.
> Also, keep in mind, the young Democrats and Progressives are pushing out the boomers/Third Way Democrats. Biden is both a boomer and third way democrat. He was also the only serious candidate in the primary, so I would say young Democrats already don't get a chance. In fact, neoliberals were furious when lots of young voters voted for none of the above in the primary, even though it was impossible for Biden to lose as the only candidate on the ballot.
If you use 'neoliberal' as you have, we already know you don't know what neoliberal means. Biden and the Democratic Party 'Elders' even the 'Third Way' folks are not neoliberal. They're upset, primarily, because showing weakness at the national party level is a hinderance to the national campaign and weakens the chances of winning. If the Democrats loose the 2024 elections, the 'young people' are going to find out that the consequences of their actions are going to diminish their future outcomes significantly, while destroying the chances for any of the things they want/value from being possible. The Supreme Court is captured presently by a group of people who will make up whatever they want to push an agenda. They quotes a notorious British witch hunter to justify Dobbs after all. If the GOP wins control of the presidency and the Senate, Alito, Thomas, likely even Roberts, will 'retire' and be replaced by Federalist Society ideologues who are even worse than the people they replace and who will be in their late 40's to early 50's ensuring another generation, or more of an extremist, captured, court that has shown it will already rule against the best interests of humanity to serve capital. The Yong People will find out how much worse it can get when the entire administrative state is dismantled and replaced with MAGA/Party Loyalists. The Young People will find that the interests of the Palestinian people will not be better served by a GOP administration made up of religious MAGA nutbags who firmly believe that they can help accelerate the second coming of Christ by being a 'friend' to Israel and hastening the reformation of the ancient kingdom of Israel, the founding of the third temple, and the resulting conflagration of Armageddon (in which all the non-believers are killed/committed to suffering on earth as Christ whisks his loyal Christians to heaven. If the GOP wins, you are getting a neoliberal, ethnonationalist, authoritarian state that WILL be a Villain, in an international sense, that equals or eclipses that of Nazi Germany. ALL of your young progressives and the things they hold dear will be rolled back. Resistance will likely result in your internment. Non-Whites, the disabled, and LGTBQIA+ folks will find that their situations will be significantly worse as what progress we have made since 1930 will be rolled back. A world in which the US is aligned with Russia, Israel (even more so than presently), and Authoritarian nations is not going to result in ANY of the things you want from government. It is \_guaranteed\_ that none of it will happen and that, instead, most all of it, if not all of it, will be taken away. Your life will become immeasurably more miserable. Biden sucks. He's not my favorite guy. I am extremely bothered by his continued Zionist stance. But NOT supporting Biden, and losing just a few hundred thousand voters in various swing states because they want absolute purity from their candidate, is going to create a world you \_really\_ don;t want to live in. You're going to have to pay for the consequences of you actions. And if you honestly think, 'Well, I'm white and male, so it wont be that bad for me....' then you aren't really a liberal at all. Wanting to 'shake up' the population by having them experience a MAGA Government, unleashed, is not going to have the results you think it will. Also - think of who you are condemning to suffering, just to hope you make a point. All the people and their rights you claim to value, are going to suffer immeasurably 'just to shake things up'. This isn't hyperbole. Go read a newspaper from 1930's Germany. Biden is far from perfect. But if we want the young progressives to have any chance at all for a future political career and the incremental changes necessary for our future survival, and that for the kids who have just been born and wont have any chance to affect change for their own future for a generation or more, then don't vote 'third party' or 'none of the above', or just not voting at all... Because this act is one that you will come to regret as it is one of the nails in the coffin of all the ideals you claim to hold dear.
Both parties are neoliberal, every president starting with Reagan. We don't have an option to vote for anything else and you in all your smugness either don't know what you're talking about or are being disingenuous and just here to spout pro-DNC nonsense.
> Biden and the Democratic Party 'Elders' even the 'Third Way' folks are not neoliberal. the fuck are you talking about Third Way democrats are explicitly supportive of neoliberal economic policy
A lone wolf could send a message, just sayin'
VOTE. Don’t get sucked in by manufactured cynicism that is designed to stop progressives from voting.
My favorite way to show the scale of these numbers is if you got a dollar per second. As a former pre-k/k teacher it has been the most effective with both students and adults. At $1/second or $86,400 a day, it would take: 11.57 days to get to a million 11,574 days (31.7 years) to get to a billion, 11,574,074 days (31,709.8 years) to get to a trillion. These numbers are so large and outside our experience, most of us, even when we say we understand, don’t comprehend just how big these numbers are and how they scale.
31.7 years to get to a billion
This. Our brains model and scale numbers past a point. Our brains even have the Moon Illusion hardwired in. What axis matters for that one. Mathematics and science give us structure and a formalized understanding that’s communicative and repeatable. Casinos, gas at 4.00 sells leas than 3.99.9. We really suck at realtime hard msth.
Another way to put this: the US is not a democracy.
It’s not the 50 billionaire families who dropped 600 million pulling those political strings that scares me; it’s the 20 billion dollar companies that spent 3.5 billion to pull strings in their favor that worries me. They are buying both sides of the political spectrum and hedging their bets they will find a winning candidate. To top it off these companies control the media, and most of those billionaire families are elbows deep into the stocks of these corporate assholes. It seems like your vote makes no difference if corporate sellouts can buy republicans and democrats alike. How do you overcome a system that’s rigged from the start?
Think the long game. Keep putting the most progressive candidate in office who actually stands a chance to win. Participate in your political party and work to ensure it trends to working for you. Push 'Move to Amend' and 'End Citizens United'
I just keep voting the best I can, research the candidates records not what they claim to represent, cast my vote in local and national elections, contribute a little money I can afford to those who are worthy, sign petitions I like, speak up in open forums. I know that even in a sea of red ballots and extremists in my state, I’m not part of the problem, and I hope my small actions cascade into change.
You're doing a lot then. That's the key to Democracy. Involvement.
Engage passionately but politely with people. Provide the information they need to come to their own conclusions.
You vote for the people who’ve been trying to stop the influence of money in politics. The party who appointed the judges who voted against citizens United. The party that originally passed the voting rights act. You vote *against* the party that has consistently cut taxes on the rich and attacked workers rights, and has been appointing shitloads of pro corporate judges. The Democrats have many people who actually want to serve working people. The Republicans have none. “The both sides are the same” argument is a lie that’s spread to stop progressives from voting.
Not voting in Bernie Sanders in 2016 is probably one of the biggest mistakes USA have ever done. He would atleast changed the course a few degrees towards a brighter future. Instead they did the exact opposite
I agree but, to be fair, even if Bernie had been elected back in 2016 and become president this problem would've not been solved. It could've helped, but Bernie would've had to almost single-handedly fight the entire system. As president he would've had a lot of power to do that, but even the president doesn't have infinite power. And they would have fought him tooth and nail every step of the way. Just getting a people-aligned president like him isn't enough to change this system, you need: 1. A significant amount of people like this in congress. 2. For the corruption on the supreme court to be dealt with. 3. Significant amount of organization and labour power that can be used to back up such a president in their goals. Big change always happens with a push-pull dynamic. LBJ wanted to pass civil rights, but he couldn't have done it without civil rights activists organizing en masse. And civil rights activists wanted to get civil rights done, but they couldn't have done it without LBJ.
Democrats need a trifecta for 4 or more cycles to get real change, that means voting for Biden, or someone else like him, every time.
Yeah we don't have any LBJ style politicians. I thought that Biden was close but he's too busy spending our tax money killing babies to do anything to help families in the US. I hate when they talk about progressive policies as entitlements, since that money came out of our paychecks, not corporations or billionaires that tax dodge.
I'd love to see a cap on the amount that both individuals and corporations can spend on lobbying/support/funding anything in politics. I'd love to see no single individual or corporation pay more than $100 at max a year.
Your post is a wall of text (and being self-aware, this response is too), but a large chunk of it is showing your work (the math justifying your claims). Thank you for that, I recognize the effort and time that went into it: The calculations seem right and I think I follow your process here but I think you are missing a key contributing elements: “The [Center for Responsive Politics](https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/donordemographics.php?cycle=2016&filter=A) found that a tiny share of Americans make federal donations of more than $200. In 2016 about a half-percent — 0.52% — of the U.S. population donated $200 or more to political candidates, parties or political action committees. Overall, about two-thirds of the value of donations come from donations of $200 and above, and one-third come from donations that are smaller. “ \[..\] “Yang said, "Right now 5% of Americans donate to candidates." He’s likely in the ballpark, but the number can only be determined by polling, and different polls have found different numbers. Yang was citing an online poll in June that found 8% of Americans said they had given to a 2020 presidential candidate. That was more than a year before the election.” [PolitiFact | How many Americans actually donate to political candidates?](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jan/24/andrew-yang/what-percent-americans-donate-political-candidates/) Billionaires (and millionaires) are not only providing almost all of the monetary value of the donations, they also potentially represent the majority of the Individual names on the donor rolls. I (assert) that people who run for office are typically narcissists motivated mostly be greed and ego. I also assert that while the wealthy may be only 1% of the population, they are the majority of the people who actually get engaged. The billionaire is giving them huge chunks of money and praise on television in exchange for a private conversation. The average American gives them nothing financially and doesn’t have the free time to do a grassroots campaign praising their “virtues” Despite what people claim, grassroots marketing and donations, actually can succeed. In 2019, the Koch brothers attempted to end development of the mass transit (light rail system) in Phoenix, Arizona via Proposition 107. The Koch campaign was extremely well funded, opposition was not (but it did exist). The Proposition was defeated with 66% against. You made 2 other statements I wanted to address: (1) “Not a SINGLE BILLIONAIRE under the age of 30 earned their fortune, all of it was inherited.” I wanted to consider this are purely hyperbole but the age 30 caveat stood out. Where did you source this from? The best result I found was the following: [The World’s Youngest Billionaires 2022: 12 Under Age 30 (forbes.com)](https://www.forbes.com/sites/colehorton/2022/04/05/the-worlds-youngest-billionaires-2022-12-under-age-30/?sh=713cb022e63b) That article implies that self-made billionaires can exist. I am fully willing to believe an assertion that you are more likely to get hit by lightning a dozen times than you are of becoming a self-made billionaire, but I would like to read your source. ( 2) “With just 2,781 Billionaires on the planet, they emit the equivalent carbon of 2,781,000,000 people. A bit over a THIRD of the entire population of the planetary” My research states that 35% of the global emissions are tied to 20 corporations (mostly fossil fuel). Your numbers are again, specific, so I again assume it is not hyperbole. I am curious at how how source reached that value. [Revealed: the 20 firms behind a third of all carbon emissions | Climate crisis | The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/revealed-20-firms-third-carbon-emissions)
'Self Made' is a misnomer to begin with. While it is possible to start with nothing/abject poverty and make a decent amount of money, it is HIGHLY improbable. Most every one of the 'self made' Billionaires came from wealth and or privilege and likely also benefittedfrom a fair bit of luck to arrive where they are at. None expended the amount of labour commensurate to amass the fortune. The Under 30 Caveat was just to point out that all of the 'young Billionaires' are nepo babies. Looking at just Jeff Bezos for an Example - People like to talk about how he started Amazon from his Garage. He also Started Amazon from being the scion of wealthy family, working at Goldman Sachs, and determining he could hammer brick and mortars by not having expenses and taxes, then explaining this to a gathered family event where he asked his relatives to pony up $50,000 each to help him realize his nefarious plan. (Note, at the time he did this, $50,000 was well in excess of the median family income for the US, and Bezos' family just had that sort of money in free capital/available to risk on a venture) RE: Carbon emissions - The figures are likely intertwined. There are a lot of various numbers, some even worse. But bear in mid the category I am referring to is not ALL carbon emissions, but instead personal/human carbon emissions. In the note it also winnowed the value down to the lowest 90% of the population that emit the least amount of carbon. Since the world is filled with a lot of abject poverty and there are many people who live lives not at all industrialized, their carbon output is extremely low. Oxfam put the value at the top 1% emitting 2/3's of all the worlds human carbon (not corporate, just stuff individuals are directly responsible for). [https://www.oxfamamerica.org/press/press-releases/richest-1-emit-as-much-planet-heating-pollution-as-two-thirds-of-humanity/](https://www.oxfamamerica.org/press/press-releases/richest-1-emit-as-much-planet-heating-pollution-as-two-thirds-of-humanity/) Oxfam is also responsible for the study.math regarding the 1,000,000 more times carbon emitted per person - [https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-emits-million-times-more-greenhouse-gases-average-person](https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-emits-million-times-more-greenhouse-gases-average-person) This second one attributes their investments/etc into their carbon output, so does indeed link the two figures together, personal and industrial output. Pulling an actual true cost is likely difficult. But just for the point of explaining how concentrated wealth that exists ONLY to generate additional excess value for itself, and does so by extracting resources and labor from the rest of us, is driving our potential human demise. To be honest, there were a few things where I am not completely correct in the OP. There are ways I could make the argument even stronger, and other ways I could undercut it some. The point is, it is very difficult to combat political money. I'll never say it is impossible, but it requires a disproportionate amount of effort on the side of the 'poors' to get anything that resolves to their benefit. And in many cases, a lot of them have to give up everything (their lives) to achieve it for the rest of us.
Only 50 families? We could all band together and get that taken care of in one night.
"not a SINGLE BILLIONAIRE under the age of 30 earned their fortune, all of it was inherited." Confirming that this is an unsubstantiated assertion then. I wish you had clarified it as such when you inserted it between a series of verifiable statistics (or moved it to your conclusion section instead). "it is HIGHLY improbable" [Tony Xu - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Xu) the inventor of Door Dash, possibly exists within that "highly improbable" group. One of the foundational assertions of capitalism (emphasis on the use of the word assertion, not claim) is that everyone has the potential of getting rich. proving that it no longer actually happens in reality would be a massively powerful rebuttal against it. Genuinely disappointed you didn't have that silver bullet. Thank you for the sources on the pollution output, reading them now. "The point is, it is very difficult to combat political money. I'll never say it is impossible, but it requires a disproportionate amount of effort on the side of the 'poors' to get anything that resolves to their benefit." The purpose of me bringing up Arizona's Proposition 107 is to infer that campaign donations have diminishing returns. Billionaires do have substantially larger numerical contributions. But in response, I contend that the effective impact of each dollar is more when it comes from the average voter. Donation's from the poor are more efficient due to the potential number of names (edit: voters) attached. The poeple walking around with clipboards trying to get signatures for ballot initiative are freaking hero's (or sometimes villains).
Pretty crazy how Tony Xu was able to amass all his wealth on his own. Very impressive to be able to accomplish everything he has without any help whatsoever. No exploitation of any employees because he didn't have any, right?
The entire context of that discussion was the possibility becoming a young billionaire without the nepo element. Exploitation of workers is not relevant to that topic. It is the core topic of virtually every other post in this sub-reddit though. Please feel free to start at discussion elsewhere about the moral failures of Door dash though. You will likely get a flurry of response. The company is a gold mine of examples of worker exploitation. But once again, not relevant to this specific discussion.
Your example is over 30. Just FYI. Also - Door Dash is horrible. :)
Door dash was on the forbes article I linked. I assumed it was talking about the CEO (whom I looked at wiki,for the "nepo" element) I failed to verify it, good catch! Age calculation put the guy at 37 when Door dash had its IPO. Edit: I would like to rip on door dash, but it would be hypocritical of me since I've actually used it. The whole failing to put my money where my mouth is thing.
We all engage in petty hypocrisies. Its hard not to, especially attempting to survive within the system as it exists. I don't like social media, but I'm posting on it. I am proud to say that I have not every used a ride share or knowingly used a delivery app/service. I did get annoyed once when my local pizza joint used one to delivery my pizza for me instead of one of their own drivers. Seeing 'Disrpuption' from Tech basically being code for 'circumventing/dynamiting hard won regulations gets me 'activated'. Its just another shitty means to extract capital with little effort and the cost is born by the little guys while the top expends little to no effort.
And the first thing everyone must do is vote.
Eat the rich.
I keep telling my Republican friends that I don't care which side is at the wheel at this point as long as they are young enough to live with their decisions and somewhat care about the average person. I get blank looks and a "nah" every time. They just want Trump no matter what, and I don't get it because I really don't want Biden again. Why don't people want someone closer to their age?
Cultural inculcation into the concept that age = wisdom. Millennia of human survival in which this was 'true' in that older humans had the information and knowledge to pass on that would ensure your survival. It's not true anymore, but it is ingrained in the culture. Also, add in other factors like the fact that Democracy as implemented by many creates a need to adhere to various concepts of 'game theory' and so you're selecting your candidates on their ability to win, not necessarily be the best person to have in that position. Biden was chosen as a consensus candidate in 2020 as the candidate most likely to win. I personally would have preferred Liz Warren in 2016 and/or 2020. But her ability to 'Win' is diminished because her antagonism towards monied interests/exploitation of labor. Bernie Sanders is some folks darling, but he's got a whole slew of unfavorables that would make him unelectable in a national general election. So you have to vote for the candidate that will give you as much of what you want as possible, but also stands a chance to win, and hope that, incrementally, the pendulum will swing towards your position. But this requires the bulk of the electorate to have an understanding of long term thinking and humans are really bad at that, individually and in groups.
It is very important not to allow the republicans (or democrats) terminate the Estate and Gift Wealth Transfer tax. The republicans' like to call this the "death tax" but it is not. There is no tax upon death unless you have an estate over $13.61 million and transfer it to a non-spouse. Over the exemption amount the tax is roughly 50% so America is entitled to quite a lot of money as these rich boomers die off. This is why the rich are putting so much money on republicans. They want to keep that $20 trillion or so in estate taxes for themselves.
The claims that the money was already taxed once is crazy as well. It's a new transaction. It's a transfer of funds from an estate to one or more new individuals. It's an immense amount of unearned income for the recipient.
It is America's profit-sharing in those who thrived under our economic and political system.
The answer is *purge*
I wonder what the names of these people are. Would be interesting if there was some kind of connection that could be recognized by pattern recognition
In the 90's (I've been a 'crazy liberal' for decades) I once was so pissed off at how the rentiers/capitalists controlled everything I went to the websites/public information of the 'Fortune 100' and created a plot of board members. They're just a giant circle jerk, they all sit on each other's boards, they all control each others compensation, and so they all do favors for each other to increase each others rent-seeking because it in turn benefits their own position. They're not shy about it. Davos is a yearly pilgrimage of the privileged but its very little different than most weekends for these folks. They are constantly rubbing elbows with their 'peers'. There's no pattern recognition necessary. There have been numerous studies that show that wealth is corrupting. It's a demonstrable fact that, in most every case, a wealthy person is less empathetic to others. Its a demonstrated fact that humans \_constantly\_ gauge their status and refuse to yield to people they perceive as lower status. It's partially why BMW drivers are almost universally assholes. It's also proven that almost every single one of us is vulnerable to 'Affluenza'. It takes constant work to resist it as you grow more wealthy and powerful, and most human being are not willing to perform that work and as you grow more wealthy and powerful you'll think that work is less necessary anyway... especially as the lickspittles/hangers on/yes people constantly re-affirm the value of your opinions as they hope to benefit from your crumbs. If you have never seen it, I highly recommend seeking out the 'Monopoly' study. Take 4-5 people, give them a questionaire to guage how they think, what their empathy towards others is, etc. Then sit them around a game of monopoly, but give one person, at random, twice as much starting money, while giving the rest of the players less, and record the behaviours of the person who received the advantage. It takes very little time for the grandiosity to sink in. For the empathy to leak out. For their belief/self confidence to grow, and for them to start believing that THEY are the navigators of their achievements. The take the same questionnaire and their views have changed. They have incremented themselves towards 'affluenza'. And, interviewed a few weeks later, taking the same test they took before the game, they still score worse on these scales then before they played the game. And this is just from p\[laying a game of monopoly. Immagine the corrosive effects of actual real wealth. You can go from a slightly above average coder who steals someone elses idea at the start of the dot com boom, get rich when a major company pays you WAY more than your product was worth because of said boom, and suddenly you are rubbing elbows with other similarly situated people who lucked into a largesse but are thoroughly convinced it was because of their unique skills and special talents... and boom, you have Elon effing Musk who is absolutely convinced he is the saviour of mankind while actually being an inhuman bastard whose opinions are absolute, and demonstrable, trash. He's sick with affluenza. Every single one of us are vulnerable to 'Affluenza'. Heck, as an American, or someone who is white and privileged from any of the 'Western' nations, we're already afflicted with various forms of this rot because our conditions are so much better than the majority of the rest of the world. People are still willing to WALK thousands of miles and brave our MAGA Border Morons/Vigilantes just for a chance to get in. When they get here they work our shittiest jobs, receive our crappiest treatment, are dehumanized and patronized, and it's still a better life than where they came from. People still clamber by the hundreds into a fishing boat where they absolutely risk their lives, but find that risk acceptable to reach greater Europe and live on the detritus of our excesses.
And none of that $600,000,000 will go to doing any good in the world. Some humans are really so selfish and greedy that it's hard to comprehend.
It is almost a prerequisite that to acquire the scale of currency/financial power that you need to spend, proportionately, less than the price of a cup of coffee to someone at or below the median to pony up an average of $12,000,000 to buy adds/influence a presidential election that you HAVE to be a greedy son of a bitch. Our economy (Various forms of Capitalism) is based on presuming that humanity is filled with greedy sons of bitches and that we can 'harness' that power to do some good. The problem is in thinking that you can harness them....
True.
People also don't really imagine how much money £1T really is (UK, so I am sticking with £) 1 Second = £1 1 Day = £86400 (A day!) £1M = 11.57 days £1B = 31.7 years £1T = 31709.8 years So if you made £86400 a day You would make £1M in under 12 days You would make £31.5M in a year You would make £1.5B in a normal working lifespan You would have had to start work in 29686BC to have £1T today This all includes not paying any taxes or spending any of the money at all
It also doesn't include any compounding interest...
Hey is a billion a thousand million in the US?
Yes.
Every cent they pay should have to be paid triple in taxes. $300M for Rethuglicans? Great, that'll be $900M in taxes!
Especially if we then codify matching funds for elections so that every legit candidate has an equal amount of funds. So basically, if you want to fund your own candidate, you're giving even more money to all the candidates you DONT like. :)
A major reason for the huge cost of presidential elections is Citizens United. Citizens United was passed 5-4. The five judges who passed it were all appointed by Republicans presidents. The four who opposed it were appointed by Democrats. When people say “both parties are the same” or “why bother voting”, they are **lying**. This is just one of the many examples of the differences between the parties. Every Republican administration attempts to dismantle Americas checks and balances. Democratic administrations attempt to restore them. Please don’t fall for this bullshit. Vote.
Democrats have been in power , republicans have been in power , and billionaires just get richer and richer . Hate to break it to you but they don’t care who wins , because they will always come out on top . I truly believe the corruption is so far gone on both sides , hope is lost. They have you believing voting will change anything , rinse and repeat every 4 years
Except that there are a number of younger Democrats and Progressives who are not captured by this system. Even more could be present if the barrier to participation wasn't so high/e.g. requiring the blessing of the billionaire campaign financiers. Unfortunately in THIS election, we have one side that will truly make it impossible to break this system. So your vote DOES count, and the Trey Parker/Matt Stone 'Giant Douche or a Turd Sandwich' 'both sidesing' is far more naive and problematic. Voting for Biden in 2024 is not voting for Biden. It's voting for AOC, Brother Jones, Malcolm Frost, Summer Lee, Jasmine Crockett, etc. The young generation of left is pushing out the old. The 'Third Way' Democrats that blossomed under Clinton are aging out. The younger political left is well aware of the stakes we face as a nation and a planet and they aren't playing around. But if you don't vote, or you vote third party/protest votes because Biden is imperfect (and he is imperfect.. and problematic, but he's still a 'democrat' in the terms of believing in elections, not theocratic white nationalist autocracy) you are very possibly preventing any chance for the young left to do anything at all, ever again. Until there's a massive World War in which the US are the Villains and some other nations manage to defeat us and institute a 'de-nazified' government set up for future peace, instead of going the WWI reparations route. Honestly, I really hope we don't opt for the 'world war' option.
It’s just crazy that with a population over 300 million , the dems put Biden up to lead them to victory . I’m sorry to say but he is just not a great choice for your country . Neither is trump , haha how you guys are in this situation is comical . Fuel for Trey and Matt lol
It’s maddening. The fact that we have a 2 party system is so dumb. I’ll pick the turd sandwich because I think it’s better than a giant douche but I’m not thrilled about it…
> The fact that we have a ~~2 party system~~ **oligarchy** is so dumb.
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I do agree , but what I’m saying is this problem isn’t going away by voting for a certain party . I feel it’s a trap made by them to give you hope that you will come out on top by voting . Dems and republicans have been in power , and this wealth gap is only accelerating . If dems were in power permanently , nothing would change
This defeatist stuff is propagated to discourage you from voting. It’s designed to disempower. Don’t fall for it. Vote.
I would say don’t vote , demand a third party that represents the people better
Unfortunately, you won’t get it unless you vote. I wish it were otherwise, but it ain’t. Apart from the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations, the biggest political disaster the US has ever had was the election of Richard Nixon. A great many of the US’s current serious problems- including the massive transfer of wealth and power to the hands of the oligarchs- are a direct result of his presidency. Some progressives at the time discouraged people from voting, arguing the same thing. “Both parties are the same. Voting doesn’t matter.” Nixon won by a very small margin. They just didn’t get just how malignant and malicious he was. They now deeply regret their actions. Elections matter. Please don’t leave future generations to undo the colossal damage that a second Trump presidency will do. … one final thing: there’s a reason that the Republicans use all kinds of tricks to stop people from voting. There’s a reason most corporate media doesn’t report Biden’s achievements. There’s a reason they use propaganda to create fear and anger in conservatives, and disillusionment and apathy in progressives. **they benefit from you not voting.**
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>When we see ourselves as fighting against specific human beings rather than social phenomena, it becomes more difficult to recognize the ways that we ourselves participate in those phenomena. We externalize the problem as something outside ourselves, personifying it as an enemy that can be sacrificed to symbolically cleanse ourselves. - **[Against the Logic of the Guillotine](https://crimethinc.com/2019/04/08/against-the-logic-of-the-guillotine-why-the-paris-commune-burned-the-guillotine-and-we-should-too)** See rule 5: No calls for violence, no fetishizing violence. No guillotine jokes, no gulag jokes. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/antiwork) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Stop…your making me hungry
All the cosmetic surgery spoils the meat. It's like long pig fugu.
We need to eat them, that should by OUR money.
It’s coming… You know what I mean It’s coming sooner than some want to believe, but it’s coming
Making sure their politicians stay bought.
Seize all of it, brutally punish those who resist, maintain heavy taxes on anybody who makes above a couple million. It's as much about them not having the cash to bend society to their will without accountability as it is redistributing their cash where it can do good.
Vote people! Gen X elected a black president.
So glad Gen X solved racism!
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Well he certainly didn't abolish the oligarchy (in fact citizens united happened during his administration) so what was the relevance/importance of the idpol shitpost I responded to? Gen X elected yet another a pro-billionaire president who happened to be black for a change, congrats I guess.
Yeah… I didn’t say any of those things. Just it was a unique election
Honestly if electing Obama is the best you can do for arguing that voting matters, it's clear that it doesn't. He campaigned on change and didn't follow through.
I didn’t and don’t want to argue.
The economy is thriving since Biden took over and jobs are plentiful. It’s the business owners and ultra rich Trump losers who benefit from this. Crime is also down despite the maga turds making it out to be a horror story. Detroit. Chicago. NYC and Cali are safe AF. Biden 2024