Nah. …Well, don’t get me wrong, the rich absolutely should be taxed, sure, but that’s a different debate.
We don’t have a nationally mandated minimum wage in Finland. Because the unions set their own minimum wages (which they adjust frequently to market conditions) and the unions also have actual legitimate power.
Maybe they should try this stuff in America too. It’s fucking awesome.
Americans have been convinced that is socialism and therefore the greatest evil.
If there’s a minimum wage, there should also be a maximum wage, but I may be a communist, idk.
The people in the meme aren’t getting their wealth from their wages
Which is why this policy usually goes by maximum income or income cap
Imo, nothing about what you just said is communist in nature, as we are defining terms for a continued labor market.
Maximum wage used to be a thing. It’s how we got insurance tied to employment.
If you see these numbers and still think tax is the solution, you’re not paying enough attention.
A system is what it does. Our system created this disparity, and will continue to allow it to grow as long as it exists. Any solutions within the acceptable limits said system has set out will never stop it, only placate the masses enough to stop us from tearing it down.
You don’t have to go that far back to find a time when the rich were heavily taxed and income disparity was much smaller. Keep going back and you can find other times when the disparity was greater and the rich were taxed less.
The best outcome may require the system to be torn down, but it’s clearly also possible to tax the rich significantly more even with the system already in place.
Exactly. Post WWII the tax on the richest was 90%, it stayed there until the mid 60s when it was lowered to 70% and then in the early 80s Reagan and that congress lowered it to 50%, then briefly to even below 30%.
It probably wouldn’t have happened without the combined effect of the Great Depression rolling directly into WWII. With those two events, it was possible to raise taxes that high, and the rich actually (to a large extent) paid them.
Even though the “Again” part of MAGA is very ill-defined, I think a lot of MAGA supporters would point to the post WWII era as a time that America was great. A greater shared prosperity was probably a significant reason why things felt so great then. Unions were strong, rich people were heavily taxed, and everyone was better off.
For varying definitions of “everyone”…
I don’t think there was anybody in the 1950s who was much worse off than they were in the 1930s. Yes, it took a while for women, non-whites, non-straights, etc. to get their full rights. But, even with fewer rights than a married white christian man, things were improving for them too. But, obviously, there’s a reason that the MAGA theme resonates much more with old straight white men than it does with anybody else.
Lmfao, looking back longingly at feudalism (with a stop over in the cold war era? Because that was such a prosperous time for so many in society /s) I’m guessing isn’t making the point you think it is. You’re literally arguing in favour of maintaining a disparity. The size of isn’t the point, it’s existence in the first place is.
Maybe have a think with yourself about why you’re so attached to the idea of there being a rich and ruling class at all, whose graces and willingness to pay back a tiny percentage of the money they extracted by exploitation society should depend on…
What the hell are you talking about? We’re talking about increasing taxes for the ultra-rich. Saying ultra-wealth people should be paying >90% tax has nothing to do with feudalism, and it certainly isn’t supporting the concept of a rich and ruling class.
All I’m saying is that taxing the rich is good and necessary for as long as they exist. Sure, our current system is a disparity engine, but it’s not impossible for us to dilute the effects of it with progressive tax policies, as has been done in years past.
Personally I don’t see it as a choice of either tax the rich or abolish capitalism. I see the two goals as mutually connected to liberation and progress: tax the rich until we can replace the system with a better one.
Building coalitions around progressive policies within the current system can help shift more people into alignment with post-capitalist thinking. Fomenting divisions between socialists and progressives does the opposite; solidarity forever.
and it certainly isn’t supporting the concept of a rich and ruling class.
It certainly is. There shouldn’t be any people who have that much more than everyone else that a tax bracket that high should even exist. To get to that point you have had to be exploiting others, and allowing them to continue to exploit society and have vastly more power than anyone else, as long as they pay back some (even 90%, that still leaves the likes of Musk and Bezos billionaires) is still maintaining the status quo, no matter how socialist it makes you feel (90% tax isn’t socialism, workers owning the means of production is, which leaves no room for such disparity). So feel free to ask yourself that same question I asked above.
E: as for feudalism, that’s all capitalism is - feudalism with extra steps. You having been indoctrinated to believe there needs to be a ruling class doesn’t mean that’s true.
I agree that there shouldn’t be any people with that wealth, and so does the person you were responding to. But taking away 90% of people’s money above a reasonable threshold is definitely not going to help those people become ultra rich. It would make becoming ultra rich more difficult, and instead spread the wealth across the wider population - decreasing wealth disparity.
And although there is almost certainly a better way possible, this method is relatively easy to implement and is an obvious improvement over our current situation. So we can just go ahead and do it while we continue to find consensus on a better system in the long run.
You seem to be arguing that taxing the rich is somehow bad because it isn’t perfect. Your argument makes no sense. You are saying that taking their money helps them maintain a position of wealth. That makes no sense. Of course taking their money will make them less rich. Surely that’s easy to understand.
Please explain what you’re proposing. Are you saying to get rid of democracy or what?
How about we tax the rich so there are no billionaires, take the corporations out of housing and rentals and fix our gerrymandering? These would go a long way to fix the problems.
Can you please explain your line of thinking here? This person purpose more drastic measures than just taxing, and you jump on them being against democracy. How is democracy = some people being ultra rich?
Like, for me, democracy means people decide how the society is ruled, so Im excited to hear how changing the system to get rid of disparity is the same as abolishing democracy
What do you think that poster is proposing?
Look around, there’s States with a somewhat working mix of capital and social. Take that as a minimum, while some of them already talk about universal basic income.
Some historical presidents and judges literally sold you out. That’s not democracy, you’re a plutocracy.
Do you think that poster is specifically proposing these things? He’s talking about getting rid of the system.
Edit: Go deeper into the thread.
Honestly, i don’t see how you can fix it without starting anew.
It’s not really a great idea to troll the mod.
Why does that matter? I was asking you to explain your line of thinking, and you’re not even trying to answer my question Abolishing the rich is not an attack on democracy, som id like to hear your way of thinking here
Not sure if you’re pretending to be OP or you’re actually OP. Either way, this one is toast in this community.
Why does that matter? I was asking you to explain your line of thinking, and you’re not even trying to answer my question Abolishing the rich is not an attack on democracy, som id like to hear your way of thinking here
Edit: It was a temp ban anyway, don’t worry too much about it.
It seems to me that they’re hinting at abolishing capitalism.
One way to do that would be to
-
Mandate worker coop structure on all businesses
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Institute a 100% land value tax
Taxing the rich doesn’t really solve the root of the problem. Abolishing capitalism pre-distributes wealth so that people don’t become billionaires in the first place. 100% land value tax encourages efficient use of land.
Has that ever worked?
Abolishing capitalism pre-distributes wealth so that people don’t become billionaires in the first place. 100% land value tax encourages efficient use of
This part. Having employee owned corporations doesn’t abolish capitalism completely. Although, I agree that it would be awesome.
There has never been a worker-cooperative-dominated market economy, but actually existing worker coops and employee-owned corporations don’t seem to create billionaires, and have more equitable distribution of wages.
Why does mandating all firms to be worker coops not abolish capitalism in your view?
I would suggest looking into what capitalism is before we have that conversation.
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eat the rich, they taste like pork
I doubt they taste that good, but I guess we would need to try to know for sure.
I’m sure it depends on seasoning…
Make them pay people more.
Obviously, those people worked for their money. All the teenagers with minimum wage did was have a job, like some sort of peasant.
They got nation-states by the balls. They’ll never let you tax them. At most there will be some concession made that just makes them look like they did something, how the ultra rich always do. Unfortunately liberal pacifism isn’t nearly enough.
And yet most forums will ban you even say the word “guillotine”.
I guess y’all don’t know what the point of capitalism is haha.
Exploiting your fellow humans for personal gain…we know exactly what the point is
I am bad at math, but I would love someone to do the math and figure out how many thousands of dollars would have to be on the ground for it to be worth the time of Musk or Bezos or Zuckerberg to pick up.
I mean they’d actually get into a brawl over a penny, but that’s a whole other issue.
You’d need geniune “marginal” income data not wealth to calculate that accurately. Wealth is an illusory “value” it is inflated by asset pices that mean you can only sell it slowly without potentially reducing the price. This is far less true of widely accepted ( ‘liquid’) assets like cash.
Their marginal value of +/-1 minute worked is probably actually very low, since most their income is “unearned”. but ignore that for the sake of stupid calculation. assume they sacrifice an average amount to pick up this cash.
You can start with say roughly +$270bn over 12 years being a bit less than $50k per minute. That +270 can cover inflation adjusting the 2012 start point to crrent prices, it’s in the rounding.
But even assuming they converted it all to liquid assets art once , and tank the asset price so that, instead of £50k/min the break-even might be $5k/min. very roughly i’m looking at $100 per second. That’s your break even you have to get close to.
After that it’s a matter of practicality, face value per bill, ordering/stacking, spread/density, and wind. Assume no tools, vacuums, or scoops, just what can be gathered by one greedy c*nt by hand.
If it’s , say, a single $100 bill already at their feet, then it is probably worth it to them (or maybe handful of $100s if you prefer to think wealth = cash).
A few $20s? probably; if they could gather 5x$20s per second and reach the break even rate - seems doable if the density is there. $10s or lower? I doubt it - unless the cash was neatly stacked or bundled.
But, suppose they were put on to an effectively infinite but random mess of $1 bills; I dont think it’s worth it to them. I don’t think they could physically gather it fast enough. Plus at scale, they’d have overhead costs to store, transport, bundle , count it and then wait in line at the bank and other such indignities.
If it was more like this: https://youtu.be/YEbs0RUyksI?t=363 then no chance.
Damn, I didn’t think it would require that much math! Thanks!
There actually was something many years back called the ‘too small a bill for Bill’ index. The idea was that if it took roughly 4 seconds to pick up money off the ground but he stopped gaining money for that time, what was the smallest amount Bill Gates would stop to grab. The last I saw it was about $4,000 but having a time trying to find it now.
Not the most fair comparison. Compare it to the richest people in 2012, as extreme wealth ebbs and flows with inflated “funny money” stocks.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBLT01026
Edit: also remember the unit on the left side is 1,000,000.
So 10,000,000 is 10 trillion dollars.
So that would show ~5 trillion dollars in net worth to 45+ trillion from 1990 to now.
So they have made 900% increases over 35 years. Note inflation would have been 241% during those years.
Instead of being rich for life and never needing money for anything, now they are rich for life and never need money for anything times 3.73.
Instead of that money going to the people starving while working their ass off.
This is a better comparison than the post itself, and we should also be putting the minimum wage on the graph to compare the gains.
Individual’s wealth vs minimum wage is not a great comparison. It’s showing accumulated wealth of an individual who will over time receive pay raises and build up their wealth.
Minimum wage is what it says the minimum. It’s supposed to be entry level income at the time. It should be adjusted for inflation.
To make it more accurate, it should show income increase for ech of the billionaires, and compare it to an income of some median individuals.
I tried do to just that, because i believed that it wouldn’t paint a better picture for the billionaires, and I also dont like that people have downvoted your comment without providing explanation.
Assuming Musk started working at 18yrs old, which would have been in 1989, 35 years ago. And assuming he started at 7.25 dollars an hour, and never got a raise, he would have accumulated roughly 527.800 dollars by now.
40h * 52w * 7.25 usd = 15080 usd 15080 usd * 35y = 527 800 usd
His net worth (according to meme) is a staggering 273 000 000 000 dollars. Obviously he had to have a pay rise to get there, lets calculate that rise, starting from 7.25 dollars an hour.
273000000000 ÷ 527800 = 517241.37931034
So his pay rise averaged over 35 years, would be an absurd 517240%, or 14778% per year. The yearly average pay rise is roughly 4-5%, its not even remotly close.
All of this assumes that Elon started with 0 dollars to his name, he didn’t. So in reality his hypothetical pay rise wouldve been a a bit lower. However the minimum wage wasn’t 7.25 dollars in 1989, and I haven’t accounted for inflation. Still the numbers would probably be similarly insane.
Even in a somewhat more accurate form, I think the core statement of the meme still rings true.
That’s not how exponential growth works. The pay increase would be in the ballpark of 50% per year for that amount of gain in 35 years.
And remember, wealth accumulates in passive investments, so even if you made $7.25/hr for 35 years, you’d have over $1m if you didn’t spend any of it and it accumulated at over ~3% per year.
Oh, you’re right. Although 50% per year is still insane.
And I definitely forgot about investing, but also didn’t account for inflation, which maybe would cancel e/o out.
Doesn’t really matter if you consider the difference between a million and a billion is roughly a billion.
These numbers are made up - specifically, they’re made up by the stock market. If you actually think Elon Musk has $273 billion dollars, I have some Saudi shares in Twitter to sell you.
Oh so he only has two billion? Well, we’re basically equals then. I wonder how he takes his avocado toast…
I’m not saying that Elon Musk deserves his wealth, I’m saying the premise of the meme is nonsense.
Cool if their stock is worth that much they can get rid of it and make the company more public instead having so much power in the hands of the few
deleted by creator
Axe the rich
The US minimum wage hasn’t changed in TEN YEARS?! You guys need to revolt, that is awful.
To be fair, many states and cities have their own minimum wages higher than the federal minimum. I’ll let you guess which states don’t.
The ones where the people are most afraid of communism and think minimum wage is socialism?
That’s a bingo
You just say “bingo”.
Lemming, chill
But you said—
For anyone about to downvote - it’s a quote from Inglorious Basterds ^
It’s an older quote, sir, but it checks out.
50 states makes this game too difficult. Can we just guess colors instead?
I live in a red state with an $11/hr minimum wage. We got that by amending the constitution, thereby overriding the legislature which was opposed to the increase. Unfortunately $11/hr is not even close to enough to live on here so apparently it’s time to raise it via another constitutional amendment. Sigh
Gotta double it to catch up, and pin it to inflation at the same time so it stops falling behind.
Surprisingly, Florida has a higher minimum wage–nearly double that of the federal minimum, and will reach $15 in 2026. Of course, you can’t survive on that working 40 hours a week.
And most people in those states that don’t have their own don’t work for the federal minimum wage. My state has no minimum wage, and most “minimum wage” jobs start at something like $10-12.
start at something like $10-12
Which is still garbage. How does someone survive today on less than $25,000/year?
Yes, it’s not meant to support a family on, but it’s totally possible to live on, especially if you live with other people (e.g. have a roommate). A 2 bed apartment is something like $1200-1500, so if you cut that in half (i.e. roommate, dual income family, etc), that’s about 1/4-1/3 of a $25k/year wage, which is about what PF writers suggest.
And this is starting pay at the crappiest jobs, many easy to get jobs pay closer to $15/hr. The only people actually making $10-12 are teenagers, college students, and people with limited/negative employment history.
The solution here, IMO, isn’t to increase the minimum wage (that’ll end up reducing jobs), but to supplement the income of people who do those jobs (i.e. something like UBI).
The solution here, IMO, isn’t to increase the minimum wage (that’ll end up reducing jobs)
Research has found that increasing minimum wage does not reduce jobs.
Employment typically lags policy, and stores will prefer to raise prices than potentially reduce their ability to service customer needs. However, the higher the minimum wage goes, the more attractive replacements for workers become, meaning there will be more investment into kiosks and other ways to reduce headcount.
I think we’ll really see how things will work in the next economic correction when stores cut costs to retain customers. So I’m less interested in data from a couple months after the policy change (basically the Berkeley study) and more interested in data 2-5 years after the change. Will fast food companies increase the pace of developing digital replacements for workers?
I don’t have a link handy, but there was a study that showed that fast food businesses didn’t reduce staffing when they replaced cashier’s with kiosks. Rather, they shifted employment to areas that couldn’t be replaced with a kiosk, enabling the staff to meet the increased demand and increased sales that were a result of the kiosks.
Live with their parents. It’s doable to “survive”, it’s just that someone cannot “thrive”, i.e. live the American Dream, or have health insurance, thus getting back to your point about survival, although that’s generally considered a separate thing than income, bc e.g. someone could be on their spouse’s health plan.
And then there are all sorts of tricks to go below minimum wage too… including having more black people locked up and working in for-profit prisons than were ever used as slaves; or Waffle House’s trick where someone only gets a base wage of like $3.25 an hour and then while the minimum $7.25 per hour is guaranteed, in order to get more than that they have to make up the difference with tips (on what is <$10 meals).
But how do you help people when (a) things like the electoral college and gerrymandering exist, (b) preachers say from the actual, literal pulpit that God commands to vote Republican, and (c) those areas vote conservative not only for themselves but also apply that to the nation at large, e.g. keeping Mitch McConnell in power, and making abortion illegal in those states.
TLDR: it’s how they choose to live. And they might be about to fight an actual civil war to extend those “rights” further.
And they might be about to fight an actual civil war to extend those “rights” further.
Well we know how American civil wars end, and the country could use some more Reconstruction
10 years… how refreshingly optimistic…
In 2007, Congress passed the increase to 7.25 to take effect in 2009. The minimum wage change 15 years ago was passed 17 years ago.
I wonder how hoarders of wealth will be thought of in the distant future. If we survive, I hope they are seen as fools with misguided goals, and criminals for being vacuums of human potential.
People should be contributing ideas, creativity and wisdom instead of worrying about their next meal.
The US minimum wage hasn’t changed in TEN YEARS?!
The vast majority of employers can’t pay the minimum rate, because their employees wouldn’t be able to do basic shit like travel to the jobsite or afford to eat. Wages have been rising (particularly post-COVID, after a few million Americans dropped out of the labor force for some mysterious reason) as demand eclipses supply.
And a big reason AI has caught on as a techno-panacea is business analysts are looking at the median age and size of the labor force, the stark hostility to immigration, and the perpetually increasing need for technical work, then realizing this is going to put huge upward pressure on wages unless much of that workforce can be automated away.
But market forces are happening even in absence of legislative action. Union activity is reemerging as a socio-economic force. Not everything rests on a federal majority manually raising the wage floor.
You know, something always feels a little off with an underpantsweevil comment. I could never put my finger on it though, always seems so close to being factual but for some reason skewed. I think it’s the declarative statements which turn out to be more of an opinion or editorial piece that’s only backed up by other vague references much like a matt walsh or tim (can’t remember his last name) might make.
Wages have been rising…as demand eclipses supply.
This is a weird general statement that reinforces that “supply & demand” is a worth-while endeavor that has worked out for everyone economically and socially. Of course wages have been rising… it would be beyond a depression if the average salary went down for the past couple of years. The important caveats are completely missed though…
While salaries are up, salary growth is down — the increase in average earnings is lower compared to the 7.3% rise between 2021 and 2022. The gender pay gap, while shrinking by 1% over the last 10 years, was only cut by 0.7% between 2022 and 2023. This means the average male makes $63,960, while their female counterparts make an average of $53,404
The average white male earns $64,636, while the average Hispanic or Latino male makes $47,996 annually.
With the annual inflation rate for 2023 at 3.4% for the year — up from 3.1% previously — salaries aren’t keeping up. A Smart Asset report based on MIT’s Living Wage data found that the average salary required to live comfortably in the U.S. is $68,499 after taxes.10 This is nearly $10,000 higher than what the average salary currently is. link
AI… are you talking about like a general AI or chatgpt? What right-wing or doomscrolling blog are you reading about AI from? All these companies trying to cram some type of “AI” into their program is a problem for sure, but it’s just a fad which only the most useful implementations will stick around. If anything, the companies are spending more trying to make it work (which it doesn’t).
Amazon Fresh kills “Just Walk Out” shopping tech—it never really worked - “AI” checkout was actually powered by 1,000 human video reviewers in India.
Here is an article by the Mckinsey Global Institute.
One of the biggest questions of recent months is whether generative AI might wipe out jobs. Our research does not lead us to that conclusion, although we cannot definitively rule out job losses, at least in the short term. Technological advances often cause disruption, but historically, they eventually fuel economic and employment growth.
This research does not predict aggregated future employment levels; instead, we model various drivers of labor demand to look at how the mix of jobs might change—and those results yield some gains and some losses.9 In fact, the occupational categories most exposed to generative AI could continue to add jobs through 2030 (Exhibit 4), although its adoption may slow their rate of growth. And even as automation takes hold, investment and structural drivers will support employment. The biggest impact for knowledge workers that we can state with certainty is that generative AI is likely to significantly change their mix of work activities.
“But market forces are happening even in absence of legislative action. Union activity is reemerging as a socio-economic force. Not everything rests on a federal majority manually raising the wage floor.”
Interesting you’ve again promoted “market forces” (reminds me of trickle-down economics). Union activity has been beaten down by a war being waged for decades, proper legislation and officials protecting the rights of Unions are the only way they will continue to have a chance. The recent changes in the Biden administration shows that unions can stand a chance if the branches of government would actually support it.
Wouldn’t having a federal majority, manually raising the wage floor, protect future workers when the AI revolution comes? If the market determines the wage minimum, won’t your points become moot when there is no more demand? I’m just still flabbergasted that you believe “employers can’t pay the minimum rate, because their employees wouldn’t be able to do basic shit like travel to the jobsite or afford to eat.” I don’t know what social circles you are in, but this isn’t the reality most lower income people are facing.
This is a weird general statement that reinforces that “supply & demand” is a worth-while endeavor
It’s a fundamental pricing mechanism. Low supply pushes demand up.
What right-wing or doomscrolling blog are you reading about AI from? All these companies trying to cram some type of “AI” into their program is a problem for sure, but it’s just a fad which only the most useful implementations will stick around.
Efforts to shoehorn AI into daily business activity aren’t just at the retail end. We’re seeing it show up in doctor’s offices, to replace transcription services, and legal offices, to replace paralegals, and in IT to replace developers.
The implementation is routinely worse than the human labor it replaces, but the cost is so much lower that business owners will justify the transition.
Union activity has been beaten down by a war being waged for decades, proper legislation and officials protecting the rights of Unions are the only way they will continue to have a chance.
Union organizers who wait on corporately captured politicians to save them are fucked. You build the union first and you get the legislation later, when politicians recognize the union as a force worth pandering to.
By contrast, the Wildcat Strike and the Slow Down… hell, the very act of collectively bargaining, leveraged market force to exert pressure on employers.
Depriving businesses of their labor supply compels them to increase their compensation. That’s Econ 101 tier material analysis.
Wouldn’t having a federal majority, manually raising the wage floor, protect future workers when the AI revolution comes?
Sure. But you need a movement large enough to obtain the corruptive force of private capital first. Where do you get that movement?
By the time you have a coalition big enough to compel the federal government to change, you’ve already built a union big enough to force private industry to capitulate independent of a legislative fix.
Again, just baseless conjuncture that sounds “almost right”. You have the general principles, you even reference Econ 101, but analysis and expert opinion goes further (why there’s so many armchair champions out there, unfortunately). Please cite some actual sources that have analyzed the systems and what your perspective has been formed by. This just seems like base-level pandering that gets no where like a “group chat” on one of the mainstream news outlets.
Things do not happen in a sterile chamber. You can’t create union movements when they’re getting destroyed by officials
For approximately 150 years, union organizing efforts and strikes have been periodically opposed by police, security forces, National Guard units, special police forces such as the Coal and Iron Police, and/or use of the United States Army. Significant incidents have included the Haymarket Riot and the Ludlow massacre. The Homestead struggle of 1892, the Pullman walkout of 1894, and the Colorado Labor Wars of 1903 are examples of unions destroyed or significantly damaged by the deployment of military force. In all three examples, a strike became the triggering event. (link)
Your AI argument is fear mongering, as I stated above, with sources, a net increase in jobs is projected. This is the telephone/computer technology fear now for the 2020’s. You’ve yet to provide an actual argument for why technology shouldn’t proceed. Should oil and gas not go through the same transition? God forbid we have less administration and more skilled workers, as my sources concluded would be the outcome.
Yes, supply-demand is a fundamental pricing mechanism, as econ 101 will teach. Unfortunately the subsequent classes that economists take after also include the million different factors with changes that mechanisms output. For further understandings, I would suggest Unlearning Economics (here is one of his videos going over a Sabine Hossenfelder’s video on capitalism). He comes with credentials,
My background is as an economist who specialises in behavioural economics. I did my PhD in economics at the University of Manchester and from 2019-23 was a Fellow at the Psychological and Behavioural Science Department at the London School of Economics. I remain affiliated as a Visiting Fellow.
I have quantitative skills including mathematics, statistics, and coding which are illustrated by my PhD and current research. I am also a published author, with my book The Econocracy selling 15,000+ copies and having over 200 citations on Google Scholar. I also have excellent communication skills and have presented both my research and book at numerous conferences and universities.
Please cite some actual sources that have analyzed the systems and what your perspective has been formed by
Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century is a solid one.
Richard Wolff also has a great podcast on the subject
Your AI argument is fear mongering
That is part of the strategy to depress wages, certainly. But substandard substitution is also a standard business strategy.
It’s way beyond that, but the majority of the population has become weak and complicit. Either a general strike or full-on revolution is needed. I guess people will wait until everyone is suffering except the mega rich to be angry enough to break free from their day to day fantasy of blissful ignorance.
Because eXcEptIoNAliSm and mEriToCrAcY, tHe aMerIcAn dReAm!!!1122
It just goes to show how powerful the indoctrination really is.
Seriously, I made overtly anti-fascist comments on a politicalmemes post that are getting downvoted…
Edit for your reading pleasure: https://lemmy.world/comment/13098744
For what it’s worth, you’re spot on and I gave you my upvote lol
But yeah, the resistance to the truth in favour of temporary comfort is quite scary to watch as it unfolds live in front of our eyes, but that just means we have to say it louder.
Thank you! And very frightening, we absolutely need to keep repeating it and louder in this sea of propaganda. Though it seems history will repeat itself, and “comfortable”/ignorant people won’t budge until they are all personally affected and suffering themselves.
Yup, “first they came for…” seems as relevant as ever, it’s almost like we never learn (more like are deliberately kept ignorant and just comfortable enough to benefit the ruling class).
