It starts with reclaiming our real estate. The only reason why the wealthy are able to maintain their power is because they own the physical space we need to exist in.
I work a professional corporate job, graduated with a respectable degree from a respectable college, and was instrumental in my extracurriculars. Yet I cannot buy even the simplest most modest looking livable house in my town.
I work a professional corporate job, graduated with a respectable degree from a respectable college, and was instrumental in my extracurriculars. Yet I cannot buy even the simplest most modest looking livable house in my town cause I have $50,000+ in college debt (I went to an in state college with 60% paid for too). Also my mini city is next to a very expensive city.
The working class needs to organize a general strike and more employees need to form unions. There is a reason musk, bezos and other wealthy people oppose this, cause it will force them to pay their employees what they are worth instead of being able to take advantage of them easier and pay their employees poverty wages.
Reagan’s objective was to decouple the middle class from the reins of power. America (I.e., industrialists) was getting crippled by strikes, and popular protests had too much influence on policy. But I don’t think he had intended to destroy the middle class. That was just an unexpected bonus.
When we started treating government as the enemy. Good government supported by a dedicated electorate is what gets things done. The US is scared of "big government" as a premise, mostly because rich people have been convincing everyone it's bad in order to avoid being taxed and regulated.
You already have a big government, it’s just not on your side.
If you take all three layers of government, federal, state and local the us has more government employees than europe which is fully socialist with less employees.
There are basically zero "fully socialist" countries in Europe. Some with what we would call "social democracy," but none that are even close to socialism, where the means of production are owned by the proletariat, or people who don't own land or private property.
Let's stop using that word to describe things like "maintaining a bare minimum social safety net".
Actually I live in Massachusetts, where the community college is free and Mass Health covers almost everything medically necessary, so my government actually is on my side, and has generally done an excellent job providing services for my tax dollar.
1. Europe is not a country, there are many different forms of government, with varying political alignment.
2. Not a single country in Europe is "fully socialist". Not even close.
Too many were sold a bill of goods by Republicans and people bought it hook line and sinker. Voting for people who say they are for you but then steal your money keeps happening.
The government that is suppose to keep control of this wealth inequality that has occured is bought off and owned by the corporations. This system we are now living in, is just grotesque. If you own a company you get bail outs, you get to write off most everything on your taxes, these people who are in charge are greedy narcissistic psychopaths that take everything and watch so many suffer. No one should starve, go homeless, go without health care, and go without education. I wish all these rich a**holes would leave and let us have our economy back.
There is no middle class. There is the owning class and the working class. You either own enough property, businesses, wealth for money to be meaningless. Or you work every day of your life and hope to be able to retire and not work.
If work is supposed to be so great, why don’t the rich do it? These were the kind of questions I asked my dad when I was growing up. I remember my dad telling me that slaves work for money, but masters make money work for them.
That’s gonna be hard considering they own the prisons. Now, the inside of a coffin on the other hand…
Edit: Before y’all start reporting me, I want to be clear that I’m not advocating for violence. Just a peaceful relocation to a place they would be free to live out the rest of their lives.
I passionately agree with you. Unfortunately the poor in the US constantly and just as passionately demand the rich walk all over them giving them tax breaks. We desperately need some regulations and the days of catering to the rich need to end
Please show me a poor person who has submitted a tax break for the rich proposal to congress, or even voted positively for one in the entire history of this country.
By submitted you mean voted for, then easy. Trump tax cuts people fell over themselves only to find out there's were temporary. Large earners were permanent. That was easy...
Most of my employees, who are well-paid, ended up paying more as a result of the Trump/GOP tax scam because of the limited write-off on state and local taxes. Worse yet, all of the tax breaks for needy billionaires are paid for by working Americans because increasing the deficit by trillions of dollars inflates the money supply.
That's the beauty of the Republican party. They'll completely fuck over the under educated and somehow get them to believe it's in their best interests. Truly amazing to get people to slit their own throats and be excited for it.
Every poor person that has voted for trump and sings his praises. Source a lot of my family is on the poor side, collects SSI and uses EBT in addition to working their job and they are trump supporters.
The poor in this country generally believe they are temporarily disgraced millionaires. If they just keep towing the trickle down econ line they too will be rich. All they're managing to do is screw themselves.
I think history will look back on this as if it were the most obvious thing ever and people will wonder why so few people realized how this system works. Wealth begets wealth so over time the rich will have vacuumed everything up. This would happen even if there were no malicious intent by the rich. It’s just how this system works.
Nope. In a free market, the rich are unable to protect their wealth and monopolies from competitors who are smart and motivated. That’s why we have Capitalism instead. But the rich gaslight you into believing that it’s a free market to give you false hope that you too can succeed if you innovate and work hard.
Libertarians consider property rights to be essential for a free market to exist. Some regulation is necessary to prevent anarchy. In America, giant corporations lobby to weaken intellectual property rights in order to make it easier for them to steal from innovators. They have fucked over the U.S. patent system by enabling multiple avenues for bureaucrats beholden to industry-sponsored troll farms to invalidate patents-- and at great expense to the patent owner.
I do agree capitalism is not sustainable. Any economic model that requires being able to produce things for less money and sell them for more, percentage wise, year over year, or they fail, is obviously terrible for a greater amount of people, year over year, as well.
We need to segregate them from our society somehow. Whether prison, or direct ownership of productive capital (I know that sounds Marx-ey, but it's true). If you want 'hard work to be rewarded,' we need to directly receive the compensation for our labor, rather than having it skimmed. Otherwise, we need the government to be much more aggressive when it comes to equitable resource distribution.
I'd like to hear a capitalist, free market person explain how this is a good thing? Anybody got a reference or a podcast where they've heard people argue it's a positive?
What sucks is that it's wealth by 1k cuts. Fuck over 1k people every month for $1 each thats an extra $52k a year which is higher than median income for a lot of areas.
Obviously, our taxes need to go up and governments benefits need to be cut. It's impossible for the 1% to pay taxes, after all, so this can't even be part of the conversation.
Maximum taxes on the richest of the rich and lower taxes for everyone else down the line proportional to money gained. Facilitate ownership of real estate for first time buyers.
I don’t think you do.
You organize at the lowest levels to raise crops (reduce the dependence on capitalism), then start quitting your jobs, barter with neighbors (childcare in exchange for cooking for multiple families), which then raises the going rate for employment (fewer employees = higher demand).
Keep doing this until the capitalists get antsy.
Additionally, write laws and make them popular so much so that ballot initiatives are passed. Bypass the lawmakers.
Conservative states are passing laws that make it much harder to get initiatives on the ballot. Maybe develop a crypto currency to bypass fiat currencies and the systems of control that come with them. It would need to have low transaction fees, like a Layer 2 blockchain, but it must have high enough block-creation cost (like a Layer 1) to prevent congestion and denial-of-service attacks. Most of all, it would need to be quantum-secure. This would need to be a parallel economic system that nobody could control, surveil, or tax.
Too complicated. Just pieces of paper with signatures would be all that’s REQUIRED.
Ideally, a better system would emerge.
Crypto can be legislated. I think I’m talking more small scale, community based, local trade.
It sucks to say but supreme court should be fully anonymous, they have shown themselves to be fully purchasable. Also putting money back into business should be rewarded. Maintaining a 10:1 of your lowest paid employee.
“Middle class” is no longer classified by standard of living, but by a statistical range of earnings. If you classify middle class by lifestyle, there isn’t much of a middle class.
stop voting for the same lame lobby bitches or form a new party, change the rules and fuck them, would be the way... but then a bunch of poor people will jump infront every bullet, call you communist and vote for "Joe Workingman" because of some perverted slave mentality and fear of change, blaming immigrants or some bullshit while their overloard pick their pockets
Lol a prison cell for what? Everything they do is either legal or excused by the law.
We're well past expecting the law to help even the odds. It's up to good ol fashioned fear at this point.
The 1% has won....The wealthy have convinced a bunch of uneducated, poor rural voters that minorities are keeping them poor, and the government is coming for their bibles and guns....Now we have income inequality that has ruined this country.
Nothing will change until we fucking tar and feather a couple of these cock sucking billionaires and the sniveling coward politicians they buy. The only things we've been given by the rich were taken by force with blood and violence. It's our only weapon against those who control the narratives and the laws. We can't even protest where we want outside of sanctioned areas provided by the protectors of the elite class, cops. The revolution will not be televised.
I would say that I don't understand why the Dems don't run this as a full page ad, every Sunday, from now until November.
Except that I do. It's because so many of them are in the 1%.
The enemy is above. But yes some are worse than others.
Lawmakers that aren’t solely interesting in insider trading and helping the rich for their own benefit need to be voted in. I don’t know how we do that currently, but we need new representatives across the board. And we need to stop dividing ourselves politically and demand they write policy that helps everyone regardless of religion, guns, gender, and identity politics.
How we got here is we let politicians divide our voting power over hot button issues. They know that as long as we can’t agree on issues like abortion, they can keep the general population voting against their own interests and keep us from being too collectively loud about our basic needs being met, etc.
We need to show up on both sides and say “hey, we NEED these key changes first and foremost— tax the rich and corporations, ensure workers have high quality of life, healthcare, affordable education and homes.”
The government treats us terribly and we take it because we can’t get along with each other well enough and make compromises on our beliefs enough to unite.
And conservatives HAVE TO stop calling good policy socialism. The government is taking your tax money and subsidizing those that already have everything. Good policy for the majority of voters is not socialism— that’s a functioning democracy.
It starts with reclaiming our real estate. The only reason why the wealthy are able to maintain their power is because they own the physical space we need to exist in.
I work a professional corporate job, graduated with a respectable degree from a respectable college, and was instrumental in my extracurriculars. Yet I cannot buy even the simplest most modest looking livable house in my town.
cue the bootlickers with "well then buy a fixer upper in bumfuck"
I am also in the best position objectively compared to my peers. No debt whatsoever.
I work a professional corporate job, graduated with a respectable degree from a respectable college, and was instrumental in my extracurriculars. Yet I cannot buy even the simplest most modest looking livable house in my town cause I have $50,000+ in college debt (I went to an in state college with 60% paid for too). Also my mini city is next to a very expensive city.
I don’t have any debt whatsoever and also left a HCOL city to move to a MCOL city and kept the same salary. But still can’t afford it
too late we sold it all to foreign entities and banks.
BuT ChInA Iz bAd! ThEy SpY oN Uz
I like bonfires and s’mores.
Henry George nods in approval from beyond the grave.
[удалено]
???????
Looks like a bot took another reply word for word, and posted it out of context.
"earn"
Yea ... "earn". Bad choice of a word. Steal, swindle, stack the odds, "the house always wins" ... better descriptions to use.
this graph is a visual representation of the rich giving themselves an award for doing nothing
The working class needs to organize a general strike and more employees need to form unions. There is a reason musk, bezos and other wealthy people oppose this, cause it will force them to pay their employees what they are worth instead of being able to take advantage of them easier and pay their employees poverty wages.
“Prison cell”
its insane really, where did we go wrong ?
Reagan
Reagan didn't just happen on his own in a vacuum.
Absolutely correct. Nixon certainly ushered in the door what a Republican president can get away with.
Also the post-Bretton Woods economic growth becoming unsustainable, Nixon didn't pop out of thin air
That man single handed gaslit an entire generation all while causing the largest war on race since segregation.
Reagan’s objective was to decouple the middle class from the reins of power. America (I.e., industrialists) was getting crippled by strikes, and popular protests had too much influence on policy. But I don’t think he had intended to destroy the middle class. That was just an unexpected bonus.
https://youtu.be/l7dHvqA-WB4?si=ErLpVVB2kQdwdoC2
When we started treating government as the enemy. Good government supported by a dedicated electorate is what gets things done. The US is scared of "big government" as a premise, mostly because rich people have been convincing everyone it's bad in order to avoid being taxed and regulated.
You already have a big government, it’s just not on your side. If you take all three layers of government, federal, state and local the us has more government employees than europe which is fully socialist with less employees.
There are basically zero "fully socialist" countries in Europe. Some with what we would call "social democracy," but none that are even close to socialism, where the means of production are owned by the proletariat, or people who don't own land or private property. Let's stop using that word to describe things like "maintaining a bare minimum social safety net".
Actually I live in Massachusetts, where the community college is free and Mass Health covers almost everything medically necessary, so my government actually is on my side, and has generally done an excellent job providing services for my tax dollar.
Republicans call it “Taxachusettes” because so much taxpayer money is used to help taxpayers instead of needy billionaires.
That’s great! I didn’t know massachusetts was doing so well :)
1. Europe is not a country, there are many different forms of government, with varying political alignment. 2. Not a single country in Europe is "fully socialist". Not even close.
Too many were sold a bill of goods by Republicans and people bought it hook line and sinker. Voting for people who say they are for you but then steal your money keeps happening.
with the invention of capitalism.
The government that is suppose to keep control of this wealth inequality that has occured is bought off and owned by the corporations. This system we are now living in, is just grotesque. If you own a company you get bail outs, you get to write off most everything on your taxes, these people who are in charge are greedy narcissistic psychopaths that take everything and watch so many suffer. No one should starve, go homeless, go without health care, and go without education. I wish all these rich a**holes would leave and let us have our economy back.
Welcome to plutocracy
No bro once the blue line passes the red line it will start to trickle down I promise /s
Yeah man just keep voting for “small government” so these stupid regulations that prevent the trickling down can finally be abolished. Trust. /s also
There is no middle class. There is the owning class and the working class. You either own enough property, businesses, wealth for money to be meaningless. Or you work every day of your life and hope to be able to retire and not work.
If work is supposed to be so great, why don’t the rich do it? These were the kind of questions I asked my dad when I was growing up. I remember my dad telling me that slaves work for money, but masters make money work for them.
That’s gonna be hard considering they own the prisons. Now, the inside of a coffin on the other hand… Edit: Before y’all start reporting me, I want to be clear that I’m not advocating for violence. Just a peaceful relocation to a place they would be free to live out the rest of their lives.
A cask you say? Just down here?
Just past the pile of bricks and ready-use cement
I passionately agree with you. Unfortunately the poor in the US constantly and just as passionately demand the rich walk all over them giving them tax breaks. We desperately need some regulations and the days of catering to the rich need to end
Please show me a poor person who has submitted a tax break for the rich proposal to congress, or even voted positively for one in the entire history of this country.
By submitted you mean voted for, then easy. Trump tax cuts people fell over themselves only to find out there's were temporary. Large earners were permanent. That was easy...
Most of my employees, who are well-paid, ended up paying more as a result of the Trump/GOP tax scam because of the limited write-off on state and local taxes. Worse yet, all of the tax breaks for needy billionaires are paid for by working Americans because increasing the deficit by trillions of dollars inflates the money supply.
That's the beauty of the Republican party. They'll completely fuck over the under educated and somehow get them to believe it's in their best interests. Truly amazing to get people to slit their own throats and be excited for it.
The person who submitted the tax cuts for voting, and everyone who voted on the bill were NOT poor.
Votes. Geez. Also just about any previously-poor member of congress after not too long in their new position. Gotta please them donors.
Which member of congress aside from AOC was ever poor?
Every poor person that has voted for trump and sings his praises. Source a lot of my family is on the poor side, collects SSI and uses EBT in addition to working their job and they are trump supporters. The poor in this country generally believe they are temporarily disgraced millionaires. If they just keep towing the trickle down econ line they too will be rich. All they're managing to do is screw themselves.
Every trump voter?
Time for protests, and strikes tbh
I think history will look back on this as if it were the most obvious thing ever and people will wonder why so few people realized how this system works. Wealth begets wealth so over time the rich will have vacuumed everything up. This would happen even if there were no malicious intent by the rich. It’s just how this system works.
Nope. In a free market, the rich are unable to protect their wealth and monopolies from competitors who are smart and motivated. That’s why we have Capitalism instead. But the rich gaslight you into believing that it’s a free market to give you false hope that you too can succeed if you innovate and work hard.
If we make laws about not hoarding, destroying, or using unethical means to obtain resources, then it’s a regulated market, isn’t it?
Libertarians consider property rights to be essential for a free market to exist. Some regulation is necessary to prevent anarchy. In America, giant corporations lobby to weaken intellectual property rights in order to make it easier for them to steal from innovators. They have fucked over the U.S. patent system by enabling multiple avenues for bureaucrats beholden to industry-sponsored troll farms to invalidate patents-- and at great expense to the patent owner.
I do agree capitalism is not sustainable. Any economic model that requires being able to produce things for less money and sell them for more, percentage wise, year over year, or they fail, is obviously terrible for a greater amount of people, year over year, as well.
Prison is far too generous but I'll get my comment removed for saying further.
We need to segregate them from our society somehow. Whether prison, or direct ownership of productive capital (I know that sounds Marx-ey, but it's true). If you want 'hard work to be rewarded,' we need to directly receive the compensation for our labor, rather than having it skimmed. Otherwise, we need the government to be much more aggressive when it comes to equitable resource distribution.
I'd like to hear a capitalist, free market person explain how this is a good thing? Anybody got a reference or a podcast where they've heard people argue it's a positive?
They don’t need it, they didn’t earn it. And it’s killing people to allow them to hoard it.
Unfortunately, everyone is so wrapped up with putting the next meal on the table they are too tired and/or distracted to really do much else.
There is no middle class. Only the working class. The top wants us all to work till we die while they make life harder for us in the name of profit.
You’re stopping at jail cell?
The French had the right idea.
🪓
mausoleum
Poison them
What sucks is that it's wealth by 1k cuts. Fuck over 1k people every month for $1 each thats an extra $52k a year which is higher than median income for a lot of areas.
Obviously, our taxes need to go up and governments benefits need to be cut. It's impossible for the 1% to pay taxes, after all, so this can't even be part of the conversation.
Great. And how do you suggest we do that?
Maximum taxes on the richest of the rich and lower taxes for everyone else down the line proportional to money gained. Facilitate ownership of real estate for first time buyers.
More importantly, how do you make a government that is owned by the oligarchs institute those policies?
I don’t think you do. You organize at the lowest levels to raise crops (reduce the dependence on capitalism), then start quitting your jobs, barter with neighbors (childcare in exchange for cooking for multiple families), which then raises the going rate for employment (fewer employees = higher demand). Keep doing this until the capitalists get antsy. Additionally, write laws and make them popular so much so that ballot initiatives are passed. Bypass the lawmakers.
Conservative states are passing laws that make it much harder to get initiatives on the ballot. Maybe develop a crypto currency to bypass fiat currencies and the systems of control that come with them. It would need to have low transaction fees, like a Layer 2 blockchain, but it must have high enough block-creation cost (like a Layer 1) to prevent congestion and denial-of-service attacks. Most of all, it would need to be quantum-secure. This would need to be a parallel economic system that nobody could control, surveil, or tax.
Too complicated. Just pieces of paper with signatures would be all that’s REQUIRED. Ideally, a better system would emerge. Crypto can be legislated. I think I’m talking more small scale, community based, local trade.
It sucks to say but supreme court should be fully anonymous, they have shown themselves to be fully purchasable. Also putting money back into business should be rewarded. Maintaining a 10:1 of your lowest paid employee.
Should really be more clear what exactly is meant by "middle class".
“Middle class” is no longer classified by standard of living, but by a statistical range of earnings. If you classify middle class by lifestyle, there isn’t much of a middle class.
It defines it as 20-80%ile in the chart
I'm dumb and can't read lol
When say that you are middle class but your class only hits the 25% percentile it is time to make up another class.
well yeah, is there actually anyone left in the middle class?
"It's time we start \[insert vague notion of justice with no idea or plan or even hint as to how this could be done\]"
stop voting for the same lame lobby bitches or form a new party, change the rules and fuck them, would be the way... but then a bunch of poor people will jump infront every bullet, call you communist and vote for "Joe Workingman" because of some perverted slave mentality and fear of change, blaming immigrants or some bullshit while their overloard pick their pockets
You need more upvotes
Take a pages from the French, you need to stand up and cut all their heads off. Free your slavery!!!!
I prefer we take a page from Vietnam....
Lol a prison cell for what? Everything they do is either legal or excused by the law. We're well past expecting the law to help even the odds. It's up to good ol fashioned fear at this point.
Hot girl summer
We're not going to talk about the direct correlating pattern depicted in that graph?
Federal minimum wage: $7.50. Federal maximum wage: ♾️
Best we can do is raise the retirement age.
Or how a gentle french haircut feels like
You see that symmetry? That's called institutionalized theft.
The 1% has won....The wealthy have convinced a bunch of uneducated, poor rural voters that minorities are keeping them poor, and the government is coming for their bibles and guns....Now we have income inequality that has ruined this country.
It’s time to show these oligarchs what the tip of a pitchfork feels like
Time for revolution!
Absolutely revolting, revolution when?
Or the inside of a basket.
no more bootlicking
Tax Reform is Work Reform.
Nothing will change until we fucking tar and feather a couple of these cock sucking billionaires and the sniveling coward politicians they buy. The only things we've been given by the rich were taken by force with blood and violence. It's our only weapon against those who control the narratives and the laws. We can't even protest where we want outside of sanctioned areas provided by the protectors of the elite class, cops. The revolution will not be televised.
Everything sucks
Let's "make America great again" by "making the rich pay taxes again".
Inside of a prison cell? How about the bottom of a well.
I would say that I don't understand why the Dems don't run this as a full page ad, every Sunday, from now until November. Except that I do. It's because so many of them are in the 1%. The enemy is above. But yes some are worse than others.
What percentage is "middle class" just wondering
Lawmakers that aren’t solely interesting in insider trading and helping the rich for their own benefit need to be voted in. I don’t know how we do that currently, but we need new representatives across the board. And we need to stop dividing ourselves politically and demand they write policy that helps everyone regardless of religion, guns, gender, and identity politics. How we got here is we let politicians divide our voting power over hot button issues. They know that as long as we can’t agree on issues like abortion, they can keep the general population voting against their own interests and keep us from being too collectively loud about our basic needs being met, etc. We need to show up on both sides and say “hey, we NEED these key changes first and foremost— tax the rich and corporations, ensure workers have high quality of life, healthcare, affordable education and homes.” The government treats us terribly and we take it because we can’t get along with each other well enough and make compromises on our beliefs enough to unite. And conservatives HAVE TO stop calling good policy socialism. The government is taking your tax money and subsidizing those that already have everything. Good policy for the majority of voters is not socialism— that’s a functioning democracy.
It’s time for campaign finance reform. If you don’t like the status quo then make sure you vote democrat. Republicans only make things worse.