Yes, specifically: The billionaires class hired Trump to do this. They may have gotten more than they bargained for, or they may not care since it’s not yet affecting most of them.
Some of them are actively working with Trump towards a future where prison labor in their factories fuels their wealth in perpetuity. It is as simple as incarceration of millions of slave laborers and becoming a government contractor.
Footage of private prison executives celebrating the Trump reelection leaked when it happened. Some immigration camps are already creating labor.
It’s wild because these supposed geniuses have clearly not thought about who the fuck is going to buy all the shit produced by prison labor when EVERYONE IS PRISON LABOR! They’re addicted to making money and will happily squeeze all the money out of everyone till we’re all dead. It’s like if you have a cow and take all the milk and leave nothing for the calves; someday you’ll be left with nothing.
It's completely possible for only the wealthy elite to prosper even if everyone else dives into extreme poverty. That's the way it worked for thousands of years.
Yes, of course it's both, but I think people are upset with the statement because Democrats (with a few exceptions) traditionally bend over backwards trying to ignore the fact that the billionaire class is a HUGE part of the problem.
Somehow this is the most ignored fact ever known, for internet people. No, you just simply cannot acknowledge two compatible facts. One is worthless garbage (your fact) while the other is profound wisdom (my fact). For example, here, somehow Donald Trump being a billionaire with the largest amount of power on earth is lost on this person, basically because it helps them burn the Democrats. Really kind of an idiotic response if you ask me. A billionaire acting the most like a billionaire is the "wrong" culprit here. And they think they're such a big brain for this.
One of those things is just a subset of a much larger group, but both are only products of a systemic failure that democrats refuse to acknowledge - which makes them seem inauthentic to most people experiencing the problem.
I havent put anyone into a box, i just labled the box and put it on the shelf. It's not my problem if people decide to climb into it themselves.
Unless you're upset with my associating liberals with the tendency to ignore the systemic problems of capitalist democracy in favor of directing anger toward just the 'bad' capitalists? I think that's pretty self evident but I'd be happy to argue the merits.
The boxes shouldn't exist, unless they were to define people as they relate to specific issues. I have been raged at for being a "liberal" because users assume I subscribe to many views which I definitely do not. They even go as far to tell me I'm wrong about what I believe because "you're a liberal!!" Which I'm not, insofar as how they mean it. And that's the problem.
To continue the analogy. You say you're putting boxes on the shelf and people climb into them. I'd compare it more to people looking at the box labels and then you're shoving them into the boxes just for that. It's all oversimplified and kills conversations and progress. The fact that I strongly want an end to many social problems which could be addressed by universal healthcare and regulating capitalism means nothing to most of these label-oriented users. The only people who aren't evil capitalist pigs are those who fit their same label. It's actually sick, disgusting, and counterproductive. It's exactly what you'd want if you're a billionaire. People who want mostly the same things hating and icing each other out.
Exactly. As if those are competing ideas. For those to be competing ideas, voters have no agency. Which they do not hesitate to imply if it makes them feel correct.
I'm gonna be honest: voters are dumb, and that's the biggest reason why they don't have agency. Forget voter ID and banning mail-ins, the biggest form of voter suppression is propaganda. Billionaires invest tons of money into making sure voters stay dumb. Politicians actually have a ton of control over voters, because they're so easy to manipulate. So the tankies do have a point.
HOWEVER, if voters weren't so dumb, they'd have agency! And the tankies who didn't vote because they're scared of lesser evilism? Well yeah, there's your voter suppression through propaganda. The dumb voting is coming from inside the house.
This isn't 2 things; Trump is a part of the billionaire class. They're just not being specific enough, mostly because many of them work for the billionaire class.
It ain't that they have a lot of money, it's how they came to acquire that money as an effect of the system of ownership we currently live under incentivising rampant exploitative practices as the most efficient methods of personal enrichment.
Billionaires are just the best at being exploitative; they aren't the only ones though.
Most billionaires get their money by exploiting loopholes in the government. For example, they pay no taxes, yet the government will still prosecute people who kill them.
The owning class are the ones who control and dictate our government structure. Of course they are going to create avenues for advancement of their interests. The system was built by them, for them.
What neo-liberals and their apologizing masses don't understand is we don't see a difference anymore. They're both conservative parties that only care about their payout ultimately. Advancing billionaire objectives and ignoring us. I really wish they'd understand and stop trying to fucking argue against this.
Those are progressive ideals, not neo-liberal ones, and neo-liberals are currently the ones controlling the Democratic party unfortunately.
That's not to say that neo-liberals and conservatives/the MAGA party are the same, or that the Democratic party and the Republican party are the same, but it's important to recognize that neo-liberals explicitly do not want to tax the rich, remove money from politics, or give everyone food.
So as it turns out the entire congressional record including every bill introduced, voted on, passed in either chamber, and signed into law is publicly available.
Although I could mention about 56 years ago they voted differently, so not "always".
So if you've looked at that record, you'd see where Democrats have recently voted against taxing the rich, against food assistance, and against keeping dark money out of politics, and you'd see the absurdity of a sweeping claim like "that's how they've always voted".
Also you realize there are more Democratic politicians than the ones who serve in Congress, right?
It means maintaining constants through change. So it can be applied way more broadly, actually. The 'old ways' or 'traditional' ways are agnostic to whether those ways are progressive or not.
'Progressive conservatism' exists. Many consider the form (or a prominent one) that it takes to be 'neoliberalism'. Neoliberalism isn't specifically used as a defined term political science.
So these terms have a whole lot of room tp be used and misused as needed.
Jesus fuck. It can literally be both, especially with this fatted calf.
Also in terms of affordability of daily good and gas, it literally, majority because of Trump, the billionaire grifter, and his tariffs and his stupid thinking he's Jesus and started a War with Iran and the Republicans refusing to rein him in and the Democrats voting with them.
Hey there's lots of things you can say about Trump without going right to body-shaming.
I'd prefer "Gold-plated calf". It demonstrates both his worthless shell and the chunk of lead underneath. Nothing of value there. Just something dense and toxic.
Not to mention the biblical reference to him and his base.
Why did they pass the ACA when we gave them 58 senators? Why did they ban lobby and PAC campaign funds in 2003? Why did Biden audit the rich? Why did Obama enforce immigrant holding time limits against the private prison industry's wishes?
Seems to me we just haven't given them more than 48 senators in over 13 years and now everything sucks.
It originally had a public option, which wasn't in Romney's healthcare plan. That needed just one more vote to pass, but midterm voters decided to give it many fewer votes instead.
So you oppose giving healthcare to 70 Million people? And btw, the DNC plan was closer to German Healthcare until a lone independent required to reach 60 votes forced the current version.
No, that's the opposite of the truth. They're a paid jobber party. They don't oppose the Republicans, they job them. You know, like in wrestling when a wrestler is paid to lose a fight on purpose.
The best thing we can do to fuck up their plans and screw with the billionaires is vote for the Democrats and persuade others to do the same. That's the thing they least want us to do. They want bad PR and low voter turnout. But if we register with the party, go to local primaries to support socialist candidates who actually believe in improving things, and then help those candidates win (and keep the Rs out by voting for the jobbers when we have to), then the billionaires are fucked because the true believers in the party, even the libby ones, will raise taxes. And Trump won't be able to lower them.
I can get behind primaries pushing out the establishment and neo-liberals, but honestly if we don't succeed in that you'll find me hard pressed to vote blue no matter who.
I'm guessing that's because you think voting for a candidate supports them in more than one way?
The first way that voting for a candidate supports them is that it helps them beat the opposing candidate, the R fascist. So you're giving them the "better than actual Nazis" award, I'm sure you agree.
But I'm guessing you think voting for a candidate gives them support in more ways than just that one?
There are only 45 dem senators and a minority in the house. They can't choose to do a single fuckin thing but block certain bills and force others to vote.
You do realize they could be campaigning on these things. Making noise, drawing more attention to Trumps policy failures.
Maybe it's just the reporting of it, but the only person I actively heard making a big stink within the party was David Hogg. The party had a big issue with his approach that they used a technicality to remove him from his position in the party.
David Hogg clearly didn't care enough about his ideals to participate in the redo election for his seat. To clarify, though, the other DNC chairmen didn't oust him on a technicality, the woman he won against did because she rightfully filed a complaint about the gender segregated pairing of the election which violated DNC rules.
I'm just puzzled that there are a not insignificant number of people on this site who literally believe that Democrats keep losing elections on purpose.
Because that's the only reasonable explanation for their actions. They can't possibly be as incompetent as they're pretending. "They're not trying to win, they're trying to ensure you keep enough faith in the system to prevent you from revolting" is the Occams Razor explanation.
Honestly, I think it's more foreign psyops than anything else. The Lemmy developers are devout Tankies who openly support the invasion of Ukraine, Chinese takeover of Taiwan and Hong Kong, etc. There is proven tankie bot activity and the majority of downvotes are from a handful of IP addresses.
The CCP both supports the Trump admin and at the same time violent insurgency in the USA, Europe, and other nations around the world, because they don't care how we destroy ourselves as long as it gets done.
Fair enough, of course the US government has literally never listened to the people which is statistically provable. What is worse is most nations are about the same.
Really we need a system that doesn't use popular vote to determine representation. Even with good safety rails it eventually turns into an oligarchy which has happened to every major democracy.
I would even argue that democracy itself is just a window dressing around the world for the ruling class.
Oh yes, every two years, what an UNCANNY COINCIDENCE that an independent speaks six months before an election. You are truly the world's greatest detective.
meanwhile, in reality, independents are 40% of the electorate. Ds and Rs are down to 30% each.
Perhaps you should listen to the independents, instead of insulting them? You need independents to win any election. You're not doing yourself any favors.
This is why bOtH pArTiEs are losing voters; when will you figure it out, detective?
If your referring to me you are about as wrong as you can be. I have no qualms calling out the US as the fascist nation it has always been.
I am also not afraid to call out Russia and China as fascist nations as well. I grow tired of campists from .ml as they are mostly just authoritarian apologists.
Authoritarianism is a useless term created by Liberals to obfuscate the differences between Socialism and Fascism.
Russia is a vaguely protofascist Oligarchy, that's kind of true. They only deserve support in so far as their actions weaken imperial hegemony.
China is not at all fascist and it's laughable that you suggest it is. Unless your definition of Fascism is "when the government says there are things I'm not allowed to do"...
They want Democrats to keep loosing until their dumbass fantasy comes true.
Lazy "billionaire" criticism is so frustrating when we watch Republicans cut taxes for billionaires and take away healthcare coverage from 17 million Americans.
given the related issue, best expressed by Upton Sinclair: It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding.
Not the healthy kind of "not being convinced", of curious open minds.
What we need is people who actually write up policy proposals. It doesn't matter whether you have a senate majority, you need to write the policy proposals now. What actually changes things is societal pressure, and you only build that up by showing that another way is possible, which you show by writing down how exactly you would run an alternative society. For which you have to write down policy proposals.
Everybody who's complaining about "the rich" or "the oligarchs" should invest a few thoughts into how to actually formulate a law that makes society a better place.
We have. It's called "theory", and it's a lot more complicated than just tacking on a few more laws to an already corrupt system of government in order to try and control an inherently exploitative system of economics.
yeah but it helps formulating it yourself. only reading is not as good. you need to activate the neurons that do something, such as writing it down in your own words. every other way you only stay passive.
That Democrats waste time pointing the finger at Trump means Republicans get to reset after this like they aren't fully fucking complicit and responsible for promoting Trump to power. And yes, those pro-Israel Dem representatives deserve a portion of blame as well.
It's systemic and by design, yes Greedy Old Pedophile party is predominant and unmasked but the design has been flawed from the inception. Built with slavery and genocide the American Dream has always been for the privileged white man.
Democrats blame Republicans as well, it's just that they're essentially the same thing (by that I mean Trump and Republicans). Republicans are afraid of Trump's cult, so they fall in line. Not that that excuses them, they deserve endless criticism but it's also false to say ONLY Trump is criticized. More like Trump is criticized for immorality, corruption and idiotic policy while Republicans are criticized for their cowardice.
Yeah, it's Trump, everything will be fine when he dies!
Trump could never have been elected without you hacks, your corruption made him possible. He could never be in any position of authority without decades of unbridled rot to pave the way... if he's the monster, you're the Dr. Frankenstein who created him.
Donald Trump is literally everything wrong with The United States of America distilled down to a person and squeezed into an ill fitting suit. All the self obsession, anti-intelectualism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, paedophilia, war mongering, greed, hate, and cruelty rolled into the ugliest person you'll ever know. Did I miss anything?
Technically you covered this, but the narcissism rolled up with many of those other things, speaks to abuse, trauma, and how he has always been in an environment where getting professional help was never an option. So now he's everyone's problem. Passing the buck on abused people is far too normal around here.
I'm not saying he's due a redemption arc (burned FAR too many bridges by now). Rather he's a symbol of mental health around the US too. He's a shambling husk made up of pure psychological damage, making every day an exercise in inflicting uncountable numbers of people with more of the same. And all of it was preventable if there weren't so many institutional and social failures to address it, at every step in their life.
Not to directly quote Donald Trump, but I have to assume that some are, actually, good people. In fact, I'd almost want to believe that the majority of them are...just misled, misinformed, and legitimately didn't see Trump as any sort of a saint, but still somehow saw him as 'better than Kamala'.
Whether that was implicit bias or their racism/patriarchy showing, or they had an actual reason based on what they believed to be facts they received...who knows...but I like to believe that the majority of them are the latter.
Maybe that's just my New England suburban white-boy privilege showing.
I also think that the only people that are still driving around with giant Trump flags on their trucks (or especially bikes), are either paid to do so, or are legitimately pedophiles themselves. I'm sure a homeless guy with a bike isn't too expensive if they are gonna be riding it around anyway.
Media can be pretty damn biased and the people who voted for him mostly watch Fox News AFAIK. Go watch those guys for a day and see how they portray Trump vs the democrats
"Learned", lol, yeah that's what the problem is. They're just so stupid. So unbelievably stupid. These people with billions of dollars of think tank research and social data, these people who climbed into power, they just aren't realizing this obvious fact that somehow every non-politician around me has understood since they were 15 years old. They haven't "learned".
Trump is a symptom and also part of the disease. Is there more to the disease than just trump? yes. There are kind of a lot of parts of this disease and they include effectively all of the current Cabinet, House, Senate and Judiciary. Some of those symptoms are democratic and, while I consider many of these democrats to be personally accountable for the issues we face, I also hold that the system is the real problem.
The existing system is the disease and, while we made it over 200 years, I think about the phrase 'a more perfect union' in that a perfect union is a goal, but was not a guarantee and bad actors will find loopholes and vulnerabilities.
We tried to get rid of kings; and did for a time, but eventually replaced them with technocrats.
There's only a handful of them, and a LOT of us. Let's aim for the next more perfect union and ditch these modern kings.
Yes. The pedodent is supported by the billionaire class and in turn funnels even more taxpayer dollars to then and his own family. The billionaires in turn help manufacture of amplify the conflicts he feeds upon.
But it could be more honest. Dems suck because they're all bark and part of the problem themselves. Pelosi built a fortune on insider trading, but they keep acting like they're innocent and "helping" the avg citizen. They sure as hell not with posts like this.
Just like Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Obama, and Joe Biden. And, fuck it, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris too. Poverty is 100% bipartisan, and it's in service to the billionaire Epstein Class.
House democrats represent the old wave democrats, whereas Nina Turner is part of the Bernie wave. The old wave is dependent on super PACs for getting elected which means they need to lick as many billionaire boots as possible. The Bernie wave is much more credible in that they rely on grass root donations instead of super PACs.
So when House democrats are saying that Trump is the issue, they are implying that if democrats are governing, then housing prices will improve. But swapping bootlickers with other bootlickers are not going to change anything.
Change require that we give the middle finger to the billionaires.
They're billionaires because of monetary policy, Elon Musk and Tesla wouldnt be worth so much if inflation didnt reward risky assets and provide an unlimited runway to profitability. We bid up asset prices until prices rise 2% a year; prices that exclude assets like housing, subjective hedonic downward adjustments of goods prices, and substitutions/shrinkflation.
Blame the rich if you want, I blame the unelected central bank thats debasing your paycheck with 7% annual money supply growth, QE, and bailouts. If the money supply didnt grow every year you wouldnt need to beg your boss for a cost of living adjustment that doesnt match reality. Our parents ate free range grass fed meat, we eat corn fed factory farm troglodytes, and our children will eat highly processed imitation meat slop, and the CPI will mark no difference between the three.
The biggest tour de force of the century so far is the billionaires who built/bought the social media’s and diverted the attention from the class war (member 2008?) to an ideology war.
You'll never be as good at this as a billionaire who can both bribe and wait indefinitely. Every crash since 2007 has made the working class poorer relative to billionaires.
As a whole sure. If you have cash to play the game though it's become very predictable. But if you have cash to play the game you're not really in the bottom tier of the working class. At this point there's sort of a second tier of the working class that used to be the "middle class"- owns a house, has a retirement account, a paid off car, probably some sort of emergency savings. These are the people still clinging to the American dream, and can win the game (but are effectively barred from the upper echelons of society still as is the rest of the working class).
I want the economy to crash so I can afford things.
Okay but for how long? Climate change is going to destroy the global food supply chain and Americans rely HEAVILY on imported food. What happens when the oceans displace all the major port cities that receive everything else? When Americas aging infrastructure falls apart will there be the resources, knowledge, or even political will to rebuild it?
I'm not saying this to attack you... more so to point out that the Boomer Gen X strategy of making theirs and dying before SHTF is a risky bet for anyone younger.
Biden was a horribly inadequate President, and senile besides... an embarrassing alternative. The worst Democratic President of my lifetime, and I am old.
Truly, he was an AWFUL response to Trump's presidency, and he's the reason that Trump was reelected.
This is all humiliating for Americans, our parties need to be dismantled
Biden was a horribly inadequate President, and senile besides…
Biden was not senile, take your bullshit MAGA propaganda elsewhere.
The worst Democratic President of my lifetime, and I am old.
Based on what? This is a ridiculous assertion.
Infrastructure Law, which put major federal money into transportation and other infrastructure.
signed the CHIPS and Science Act, more domestic semiconductor manufacturing, less dependence on fragile foreign supply chains, and more U.S. manufacturing investment. Commerce Department said by August 2024 it had announced over $30 billion in proposed private-sector investments across 23 projects in 15 states, expected to create over 115,000 manufacturing and construction jobs.
Inflation Reduction Act: created Medicare drug-price negotiation, which CBO estimated would lower average prices paid by Medicare and reduce the deficit. It also led to a $2,000 annual out-of-pocket cap for Medicare Part D enrollees starting in 2025. Same act also led to a clean-energy push and EPA regulatory action.
unemployment rate fell sharply from the pandemic period and stayed relatively low by historical standards.
American Rescue Plan expanded ACA premium tax credits, making low-premium marketplace plans more available, and later HHS credited the ARP and IRA premium-credit enhancements with increasing Marketplace enrollment and affordability. Same act also included the Child Tax Credit expansion which was the leading driver behind a 46% decline in child poverty in 2021, cutting it to the lowest recorded annual rate.
Biden was far from an "awful" president.
and he’s the reason that Trump was reelected.
The reason Trump was reelected was phony "progressives" like yourself that would rather Trump be president than "establishment" Democrats. You obviously know nothing about policy. Even more obviously, you don't give a fuck about progressive causes.
This is all humiliating for Americans, our parties need to be dismantled
Yeah, that's realistic, good fucking job you goddam dumbass. We'll wait for your stupid fucking fantasy to come to fruition while Trump destroys the country. Anyone who thinks Biden and Trump are the same is a delusional fucking moron.
The burnings will continue untill we get representation that actually aligns with the will of the people.
To be clear, i won't be me burning, nor anyone on this site; just the regular Joe who has been pushed too far. We don't even have to encourage it. The more our leaders don't listen and ultra rich greed continues the more they will happen.
It is the same as: the less it rains (justice) the dryer and more flammable the ground will get. Not a threat, but the nature of humanity and society.
Nothing will improve until the US moves away from the two party system. It's an inherently flawed system, because it leaves no room for nuance. You either have to vote for the red guys or the blue guys and if both the red guys and the blue guys are crap then you have to vote for the least worst option, which is often hard to identify.
There's nothing written down that actually requires people to be the representative of one party or another, it's just how things have worked out.
The US also needs to seriously get a grip on religion in politics, it can be there up to a point but there has to be a limit. In any other western country a politician stating that a war is just and required entirely on the basis of religion alone would rightfully get them sectioned.
No third party has risen up high enough to compete. You are right, but no third option has made its way to the forefront.
As for religion and politics, that will be extreamly difficult untill the aforementioned 3rd party comes to being. And even then, the cults of America will make it where life is hard if you are not part of thier groups. Even if we make it illigal to do so: see civil rights movement in the 60's.
its unaffordable because both dems and gop collude with each other over things like taxes. this time you cant just blame on trump, hes only the symptom of a larger problem.
I think i disagree. 'Bilionaires' makes it seem seem like a nebulous group of individuals, like
'oh just happens to have a ton of money, you can't hold that against them without evaluating their actions as an individual'
The problem is that they are a class, or rather that the class exists as a class and that they are use their power, act as and are catered to, as a class.
If there were 100 individuals around the word who just happened to have assets valuing 1,000,000,000$ or more, even if they owned shitty companies companies and were all assholes, that would be one thing.
Assuming they not associate with each other, conspire together to warp society and governments to their shared wills etc, it would be a far different world.
If they were seen as just rare individuals, governments would not bend to their whims; one billionaire threatens to offshore his buisness unless he gets favorable laws, to ignore taxes etc, the country threatens to nationalism his buisness, or just locks his ass up. I one guy is found to be bribing one or countless politicians, thats a treasonous scandal.
When a couple dozen are making these threats in lockstep, they are holding the country's economy hostage. And when between them they are bribing all the politicians, that becomes the staus quo.
its when they act as a class that its a real problem.
I like the Epstein class because it's not just billionaires that are the problem, it's all the people who break or circumvent the law to enrich themselves or gain power.
Remembering sept 10th, 2001, hearing about 2.3 trillion missing...
... doubting Trump's an architect, nor even operator, nor even agent, and continuing to presume merely asset.
Even a flat robin-hood style redistribution of all billionaire wealth gets us each a few grand, utterly dwarfed by how much richer we each and all are with the emancipatory technologies no longer being suppressed and inventors no longer being "disappeared".
Keep reminding the billionaires even they are better off with prolific provisioning of emancipatory technologies... no longer having to watch their back.
Do you have spaceships yet? And the reassurance that no one is trying to take yours?
Spaceships for everybody.
No cull necessary. Nor any billionaire ploys to pit us against each other. Nor any perpetuation of slavery and oppression via manufactured scarcity, nor the lethal mayhem pantomime of resource wars.
Remember a third of a year before that (^ sept 10th 2001), the disclosure project conference at the press club? And the free energy conferences around the same time. ... Before they initiated the cascade of contingency plans for mass distraction to allow the continuation of the PNAC's hegemonic jingoistic global domination plans (and the plans within that, and within which the PNAC sits) [the fake [but still lethal] terrorist thing, pandemic thing, [burgeoning] nuclear war, [upcoming] alien invasion, with side dishes of climage disaster [weather warfare weapons] throughout and economic/energy collapses peppered around]. We were headed for skipping ahead to the star trek future, and better. We still could sublimate to that. As I recall from those free energy conferences, there had already been over 3000 free energy device patents secreted by the year 2000 according to patent office whistleblower Tom Valone.
We have so much headroom, without the crooks keeping us down.
Imagine if we obsoleted the billionaire producing paradigm, reminded all would be billionaires that even they are richer in ending manufactured scarcity and embracing abundance.
No more billionaires, nor their puppets of hate.
Keep on dreaming while learning to learn, y'all. :)
What i find intersting and encouraging is that saying what you just said 20 years ago people would completely dismiss any line of thinking like this. Now, if i said something similar to someone in an elevator they would engage and want to discuss it. Change might actually be possible if minds were more open to the headroom possible.
Seeing this again reminds me when I was recently told saying "Democrats" instead of "Democratic Party" is an indicator of having been watching too much right wing media.
The one I see more often is "Democrat Party". I don't know if they're insinuating that the party isn't actually democratic, but in any case it's weird and always seemed like another way to manipulate speech and signal who is in the in-group vs. the out-group.
Nobody needs to infiltrate the left to get them not to vote for the center-right Democratic Party. The elected Democrats do that quite well with no help whatsoever.
Of course, "the billionaire class," is what you arrive at from learning. Good thing that's the end of the line and there is no point in interrogating how a "billionaire class" happened in the first place.
A little tone deaf because Trump is in the billionaire class, but I think I get their point. The problem is not just with Trump, but he is also definitely party to it.
YOU are in the minority. Independents outnumber YOU. And we vote! Do you?
Many millions of your own party don't bother to vote. Bitch at them, clean your own filthy, nasty house; and maybe, just maybe, try being civil to those people you REQUIRE to win any election.
Tell me about cleaning my house when you probably live in a fascist nation yawn
I am not a Democratic Party Member, I have been an independent for almost thirty years now. Probably longer than you have been alive, but please do tell me what is up.
I have no problem with that, the Democratic party is dysfunctional and deserves criticism.
I do have a problem with people who never have anything bad to say about Republicans showing up around election time to talk shit only about the Democratic party. It was a huge issue in the last several elections I have participated in.
In my opinion a lot of them are disingenuous political operatives.
Where did I say not to vote? Also DNC /= Democrat Party
The fact that Democrat incumbents get a free pass while GOP incumbents get primaried for not being MAGA enough is literally why Trump is president. Americans need to primary the DNC and turn over at least 75% of sitting politicians by end of 2028.
USA is a system of checks and balances... the primary balance to unchecked power is the American voter -burning down toilet paper warehouses apparently.
If you want to deny what your up to that is fine with me. Perhaps you just haven't reflected on your message.
The pattern I notice is people showing up to talk shit about Democratic Party (yes, they do suck) around election time, but strangely never have anything to say about the Republican party.
Ugh, the stupidest plank the democrat platform - fomenting wealth envy and scapegoating ~1000 people just because of the number of commas in their bank accounts. There are terrible billionaires, but call them out by name instead of lumping them all together in a big pile of sour grapes.
There is no question about this. Please offer a counterpoint though. I don't think you can even comprehend how much a billion is let alone a trillion.
Spending a billion dollars ($1,000,000,000) would take over 2,700 years if spending $10,000 a day. Are you seriously defending this level of excessive stupidity?
just because of the number of commas in their bank
Having a billion dollars is like having a get out of jail free card. The justice system doesn't work when the perp has more influence then a prince. Has little to do with them as a person, everything to do with having a functioning democracy.
There are billionaires in the DNC, and billionaires who back them. Maybe not as many, but still enough that taxing the rich has never gained any traction even under democratic governments. Billionaires fear nothing in DC, they have proven over and over again they can buy pretty much whoever they need to.
There are no sitting billionaire DNC lawmakers. It is literal party platform, in writing, to tax the rich. Biden increased audits on the rich, made a minimum effective taxrate for the rich, and It was Kamala Harris' campaign promise to make an unrealized gains tax on amounts over a million dollars, which are assets used by billionaires as loan collateral to avoid taxes for their entire life.
If you were a billionaire, you would be 2.5x more likely to back the GOP than the DNC, and you would likely have a spot reserved in the front or on stage during a GOP inauguration.
Both. Both is true.
Yes, specifically: The billionaires class hired Trump to do this. They may have gotten more than they bargained for, or they may not care since it’s not yet affecting most of them.
Some of them are actively working with Trump towards a future where prison labor in their factories fuels their wealth in perpetuity. It is as simple as incarceration of millions of slave laborers and becoming a government contractor.
Footage of private prison executives celebrating the Trump reelection leaked when it happened. Some immigration camps are already creating labor.
It’s wild because these supposed geniuses have clearly not thought about who the fuck is going to buy all the shit produced by prison labor when EVERYONE IS PRISON LABOR! They’re addicted to making money and will happily squeeze all the money out of everyone till we’re all dead. It’s like if you have a cow and take all the milk and leave nothing for the calves; someday you’ll be left with nothing.
It's completely possible for only the wealthy elite to prosper even if everyone else dives into extreme poverty. That's the way it worked for thousands of years.
Or they may be even affected positively based on what industry they own, since they can jack prices higher than needed during a time of crisis.
Yes, of course it's both, but I think people are upset with the statement because Democrats (with a few exceptions) traditionally bend over backwards trying to ignore the fact that the billionaire class is a HUGE part of the problem.
Yeah, but Trump will go away, and the billionaires will still be there. Probably having other politicians do something for them.
Two things can be true
Somehow this is the most ignored fact ever known, for internet people. No, you just simply cannot acknowledge two compatible facts. One is worthless garbage (your fact) while the other is profound wisdom (my fact). For example, here, somehow Donald Trump being a billionaire with the largest amount of power on earth is lost on this person, basically because it helps them burn the Democrats. Really kind of an idiotic response if you ask me. A billionaire acting the most like a billionaire is the "wrong" culprit here. And they think they're such a big brain for this.
One of those things is just a subset of a much larger group, but both are only products of a systemic failure that democrats refuse to acknowledge - which makes them seem inauthentic to most people experiencing the problem.
Libs will pretend that this is not a problem.
Kinda says it all.
If it looks and walks like a duck, it's a duck.
Personally I think putting people into boxes based on almost nothing is toxic but maybe that's just me being a sHiTlIb
I havent put anyone into a box, i just labled the box and put it on the shelf. It's not my problem if people decide to climb into it themselves.
Unless you're upset with my associating liberals with the tendency to ignore the systemic problems of capitalist democracy in favor of directing anger toward just the 'bad' capitalists? I think that's pretty self evident but I'd be happy to argue the merits.
The boxes shouldn't exist, unless they were to define people as they relate to specific issues. I have been raged at for being a "liberal" because users assume I subscribe to many views which I definitely do not. They even go as far to tell me I'm wrong about what I believe because "you're a liberal!!" Which I'm not, insofar as how they mean it. And that's the problem.
To continue the analogy. You say you're putting boxes on the shelf and people climb into them. I'd compare it more to people looking at the box labels and then you're shoving them into the boxes just for that. It's all oversimplified and kills conversations and progress. The fact that I strongly want an end to many social problems which could be addressed by universal healthcare and regulating capitalism means nothing to most of these label-oriented users. The only people who aren't evil capitalist pigs are those who fit their same label. It's actually sick, disgusting, and counterproductive. It's exactly what you'd want if you're a billionaire. People who want mostly the same things hating and icing each other out.
Yep sure is
"This person"
Literally a progressive who co-chaired Bernie's 2020 run and has consistently fought for progressive policies.
I think she deserves to speak the truth to power.
Also, literally a Democrat.
Okay. Even heroes can be testy know it alls at times.
I got a good one for you
Me: Trump won because people didn't vote for Kamala. She got 10 million less votes than Biden.
Tankies: No it's because she ran a bad campaign. It's not because of the voters at all.
Exactly. As if those are competing ideas. For those to be competing ideas, voters have no agency. Which they do not hesitate to imply if it makes them feel correct.
I'm gonna be honest: voters are dumb, and that's the biggest reason why they don't have agency. Forget voter ID and banning mail-ins, the biggest form of voter suppression is propaganda. Billionaires invest tons of money into making sure voters stay dumb. Politicians actually have a ton of control over voters, because they're so easy to manipulate. So the tankies do have a point.
HOWEVER, if voters weren't so dumb, they'd have agency! And the tankies who didn't vote because they're scared of lesser evilism? Well yeah, there's your voter suppression through propaganda. The dumb voting is coming from inside the house.
Ew, I didn't order any boots. Try Jack's table instead.
This isn't 2 things; Trump is a part of the billionaire class. They're just not being specific enough, mostly because many of them work for the billionaire class.
One of those things is more true than the other.
They're both completely true, minus turner's bs about lessons, so no.
It's not "billionaire class". It's owning class.
It ain't that they have a lot of money, it's how they came to acquire that money as an effect of the system of ownership we currently live under incentivising rampant exploitative practices as the most efficient methods of personal enrichment.
Billionaires are just the best at being exploitative; they aren't the only ones though.
Most billionaires get their money by exploiting loopholes in the government. For example, they pay no taxes, yet the government will still prosecute people who kill them.
They actually spend money to keep anyone from even trying.
The owning class are the ones who control and dictate our government structure. Of course they are going to create avenues for advancement of their interests. The system was built by them, for them.
Upton Sinclair, 1934
What neo-liberals and their apologizing masses don't understand is we don't see a difference anymore. They're both conservative parties that only care about their payout ultimately. Advancing billionaire objectives and ignoring us. I really wish they'd understand and stop trying to fucking argue against this.
You think taxing the rich, removing money from politics, and giving everyone food and healthcare is conservative?
Those are progressive ideals, not neo-liberal ones, and neo-liberals are currently the ones controlling the Democratic party unfortunately.
That's not to say that neo-liberals and conservatives/the MAGA party are the same, or that the Democratic party and the Republican party are the same, but it's important to recognize that neo-liberals explicitly do not want to tax the rich, remove money from politics, or give everyone food.
Those are literally the DNC written platform. It's on their website in downloadable PDF form. It's how they have always voted.
What do you mean that's how they've always voted?
jfc
So as it turns out the entire congressional record including every bill introduced, voted on, passed in either chamber, and signed into law is publicly available.
Although I could mention about 56 years ago they voted differently, so not "always".
So if you've looked at that record, you'd see where Democrats have recently voted against taxing the rich, against food assistance, and against keeping dark money out of politics, and you'd see the absurdity of a sweeping claim like "that's how they've always voted".
Also you realize there are more Democratic politicians than the ones who serve in Congress, right?
Link it
you haven’t been paying attention.
The "both sides are same duh" idiots still can't connect these dots
Democrats don't want those. At least at the leadership level. Their voters do, but the leaders don't care.
They should be core conservative policies on account of them being the cheapest options in the long run.
conservatives vote for small government, big business. and by small government they mean gutting social programs, and giving money to billionaires.
these social programs were to fix problems with huge expenses over the long run more so then some bleeding heart reasons.
they literally save a dime now to have you pay a dollar later.
conservatives are so short sighted they can’t see their own d$(&
Conservative means "maintaining the old ways" in politics.
It means maintaining constants through change. So it can be applied way more broadly, actually. The 'old ways' or 'traditional' ways are agnostic to whether those ways are progressive or not.
'Progressive conservatism' exists. Many consider the form (or a prominent one) that it takes to be 'neoliberalism'. Neoliberalism isn't specifically used as a defined term political science.
So these terms have a whole lot of room tp be used and misused as needed.
Hard disagree on this one.
Naturally.
Conservatives aren't working towards those things, no.
That's the point
Jesus fuck. It can literally be both, especially with this fatted calf.
Also in terms of affordability of daily good and gas, it literally, majority because of Trump, the billionaire grifter, and his tariffs and his stupid thinking he's Jesus and started a War with Iran and the Republicans refusing to rein him in and the Democrats voting with them.
Hey there's lots of things you can say about Trump without going right to body-shaming.
I'd prefer "Gold-plated calf". It demonstrates both his worthless shell and the chunk of lead underneath. Nothing of value there. Just something dense and toxic.
Not to mention the biblical reference to him and his base.
Reminds me of this:
Dems know exactly how they could get a massive landslide in the midterms, and are choosing not to do it.
If they win by too much they woukd lose all their excuse to work against the people.
It would ruin them.
Why did they pass the ACA when we gave them 58 senators? Why did they ban lobby and PAC campaign funds in 2003? Why did Biden audit the rich? Why did Obama enforce immigrant holding time limits against the private prison industry's wishes?
Seems to me we just haven't given them more than 48 senators in over 13 years and now everything sucks.
Oh yes the ACA, Romney's healthcare plan lmao
It originally had a public option, which wasn't in Romney's healthcare plan. That needed just one more vote to pass, but midterm voters decided to give it many fewer votes instead.
So you oppose giving healthcare to 70 Million people? And btw, the DNC plan was closer to German Healthcare until a lone independent required to reach 60 votes forced the current version.
Lmfao you're such a bad faith moron.
You argued against expanding healthcare and somehow that makes me bad faith?
That's cause they're trying to lose on purpose. Their corporate donors told them to.
Paid opposition party.
No, that's the opposite of the truth. They're a paid jobber party. They don't oppose the Republicans, they job them. You know, like in wrestling when a wrestler is paid to lose a fight on purpose.
The best thing we can do to fuck up their plans and screw with the billionaires is vote for the Democrats and persuade others to do the same. That's the thing they least want us to do. They want bad PR and low voter turnout. But if we register with the party, go to local primaries to support socialist candidates who actually believe in improving things, and then help those candidates win (and keep the Rs out by voting for the jobbers when we have to), then the billionaires are fucked because the true believers in the party, even the libby ones, will raise taxes. And Trump won't be able to lower them.
I can get behind primaries pushing out the establishment and neo-liberals, but honestly if we don't succeed in that you'll find me hard pressed to vote blue no matter who.
I'm guessing that's because you think voting for a candidate supports them in more than one way?
The first way that voting for a candidate supports them is that it helps them beat the opposing candidate, the R fascist. So you're giving them the "better than actual Nazis" award, I'm sure you agree.
But I'm guessing you think voting for a candidate gives them support in more ways than just that one?
It's more of neo-liberal Dems are fascist, they just have a nicer visage about it as they provide more of the boots.
You shouldn't round so imprecisely.
There are only 45 dem senators and a minority in the house. They can't choose to do a single fuckin thing but block certain bills and force others to vote.
You do realize they could be campaigning on these things. Making noise, drawing more attention to Trumps policy failures.
Maybe it's just the reporting of it, but the only person I actively heard making a big stink within the party was David Hogg. The party had a big issue with his approach that they used a technicality to remove him from his position in the party.
David Hogg clearly didn't care enough about his ideals to participate in the redo election for his seat. To clarify, though, the other DNC chairmen didn't oust him on a technicality, the woman he won against did because she rightfully filed a complaint about the gender segregated pairing of the election which violated DNC rules.
I'm just puzzled that there are a not insignificant number of people on this site who literally believe that Democrats keep losing elections on purpose.
Just stop.
Because that's the only reasonable explanation for their actions. They can't possibly be as incompetent as they're pretending. "They're not trying to win, they're trying to ensure you keep enough faith in the system to prevent you from revolting" is the Occams Razor explanation.
Honestly, I think it's more foreign psyops than anything else. The Lemmy developers are devout Tankies who openly support the invasion of Ukraine, Chinese takeover of Taiwan and Hong Kong, etc. There is proven tankie bot activity and the majority of downvotes are from a handful of IP addresses.
The CCP both supports the Trump admin and at the same time violent insurgency in the USA, Europe, and other nations around the world, because they don't care how we destroy ourselves as long as it gets done.
Both parties are the billionaire class 🤣
There is no truly left party with any type of power in the US.
It's because Republicans and neoliberal democrats (the majority of them) take their marching orders from the billionaire class.
You can just say "Democrats", no need for a qualifier.
No, there are many progressives and socialist leaning people in the Democratic party.
Not in leadership, where it matters.
Sure, there are lots of progressive voters, and even a few token reps. It doesn't matter, window dressing for the defenstration.
Fair enough, of course the US government has literally never listened to the people which is statistically provable. What is worse is most nations are about the same.
Problem is Americans don't turn over incumbents before the wealthy corrupt them or their peers assimilate them into the political class.
The only path forward for US to remain a functional democracy is to primary sitting democrats at a rate faster than they can be corrupted.
Really we need a system that doesn't use popular vote to determine representation. Even with good safety rails it eventually turns into an oligarchy which has happened to every major democracy.
I would even argue that democracy itself is just a window dressing around the world for the ruling class.
We already know you're an enlightened centrist dude. No need to elaborate.
Did your mom raise you to be a twat or is it just your decision?
You don't know what "neoliberal" means. Lumping most Democrats in with Trump is painfully ignorant and divorced from empirical reality.
You don't know what "painfully ignorant and divorced from empirical reality" means.
bOtH pArTiEs take their orders from the billionaire class, get real, stop being a sucker
Thanks for admitting you don't know what "neoliberal" means, you ill-informed blowhard. It's just a buzzword to people like you.
Grow the fuck up. If you can't see the difference between the administrations of Biden and Trump, you're an absolute fucking dumbass.
Look we have a both sider just in time for the next election. What a strange coincidence.
Oh yes, every two years, what an UNCANNY COINCIDENCE that an independent speaks six months before an election. You are truly the world's greatest detective.
meanwhile, in reality, independents are 40% of the electorate. Ds and Rs are down to 30% each.
Perhaps you should listen to the independents, instead of insulting them? You need independents to win any election. You're not doing yourself any favors.
This is why bOtH pArTiEs are losing voters; when will you figure it out, detective?
Hey look, someone who thinks that independents can win and not just siphon off votes in our two party first past the post voting system.
What a ridiculous system.
Yeah it is, and it DOESN'T change by refusing to participate.
Oh it is totally ridiculous.
They said: Demz should win over independent voters
You heard: Vote 3rd party
Take a moment for yourself.
Try reading between the lines and you will start to figure out people are not honest about what they say.
Both parties aren't losing voters, fucking dumbass. The same amount of Trump supporters shows up in 2024 as 2020.
Looks like we have a genocide stanning, Blue MAGA party loyalist, just in time for the next election, what a strange coincidence.
If your referring to me you are about as wrong as you can be. I have no qualms calling out the US as the fascist nation it has always been.
I am also not afraid to call out Russia and China as fascist nations as well. I grow tired of campists from .ml as they are mostly just authoritarian apologists.
Authoritarianism is a useless term created by Liberals to obfuscate the differences between Socialism and Fascism.
Russia is a vaguely protofascist Oligarchy, that's kind of true. They only deserve support in so far as their actions weaken imperial hegemony.
China is not at all fascist and it's laughable that you suggest it is. Unless your definition of Fascism is "when the government says there are things I'm not allowed to do"...
Yup, found another authoritarian apologist. No surprise.
Tell me how China, that cranked out more billionaires than the US this and last year, is not practicing unfettered capitalism.
Tell me how supplying arms to war torn countries is not fascist. They are now the fourth largest producer of arms
Tell me how they are not an authoritarian oligarchy with a single ruling party where dissent is punished with prison.
Actually, don't bother. I hate hearing from human rights abusers. Disgusting.
They want Democrats to keep loosing until their dumbass fantasy comes true.
Lazy "billionaire" criticism is so frustrating when we watch Republicans cut taxes for billionaires and take away healthcare coverage from 17 million Americans.
Never argue with someone whose job depends on not being convinced.
That's a lot of someones,
given the related issue, best expressed by Upton Sinclair: It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding.
Not the healthy kind of "not being convinced", of curious open minds.
What we need is people who actually write up policy proposals. It doesn't matter whether you have a senate majority, you need to write the policy proposals now. What actually changes things is societal pressure, and you only build that up by showing that another way is possible, which you show by writing down how exactly you would run an alternative society. For which you have to write down policy proposals.
The fact that Democrats don’t have a Project 2027 or Project 2029 runbook proves they don’t know what they’re doing.
The fact that Democrats don’t have a Project 2027 or Project 2028 runbook proves that they're not even trying.
They are in on it or worse also caught up in the Epstein/Trump honey Trump.
Yeah, but not because they’re malicious, just inept.
Controlled opposition by design
Hanlon’s Razor disagrees
lol
You’re telling me you think they can’t fail more completely? They’re clearly either not trying at failing or not trying at succeeding.
Either way they’re inept.
When it comes to politics Hanlon's razor provides a distinction without a difference.
I think stupidity is harder to deal with than malice.
Everybody who's complaining about "the rich" or "the oligarchs" should invest a few thoughts into how to actually formulate a law that makes society a better place.
We have. It's called "theory", and it's a lot more complicated than just tacking on a few more laws to an already corrupt system of government in order to try and control an inherently exploitative system of economics.
Try reading it sometime. Try Kropotkin.
yeah but it helps formulating it yourself. only reading is not as good. you need to activate the neurons that do something, such as writing it down in your own words. every other way you only stay passive.
Good news, we've had that for almost 100 years:
Read Soviet Democracy(Pat Sloan, 1937) on ProleWiki https://share.google/A2wORPR6VfQAi4E5B
At LEAST blame Republicans, not Trump.
That Democrats waste time pointing the finger at Trump means Republicans get to reset after this like they aren't fully fucking complicit and responsible for promoting Trump to power. And yes, those pro-Israel Dem representatives deserve a portion of blame as well.
It's systemic and by design, yes Greedy Old Pedophile party is predominant and unmasked but the design has been flawed from the inception. Built with slavery and genocide the American Dream has always been for the privileged white man.
Democrats blame Republicans as well, it's just that they're essentially the same thing (by that I mean Trump and Republicans). Republicans are afraid of Trump's cult, so they fall in line. Not that that excuses them, they deserve endless criticism but it's also false to say ONLY Trump is criticized. More like Trump is criticized for immorality, corruption and idiotic policy while Republicans are criticized for their cowardice.
This was a joke, right? Good one
Yeah, it's Trump, everything will be fine when he dies!
Trump could never have been elected without you hacks, your corruption made him possible. He could never be in any position of authority without decades of unbridled rot to pave the way... if he's the monster, you're the Dr. Frankenstein who created him.
Good job
Donald Trump is literally everything wrong with The United States of America distilled down to a person and squeezed into an ill fitting suit. All the self obsession, anti-intelectualism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, paedophilia, war mongering, greed, hate, and cruelty rolled into the ugliest person you'll ever know. Did I miss anything?
You missed corrupt, self dealing
Technically you covered this, but the narcissism rolled up with many of those other things, speaks to abuse, trauma, and how he has always been in an environment where getting professional help was never an option. So now he's everyone's problem. Passing the buck on abused people is far too normal around here.
I'm not saying he's due a redemption arc (burned FAR too many bridges by now). Rather he's a symbol of mental health around the US too. He's a shambling husk made up of pure psychological damage, making every day an exercise in inflicting uncountable numbers of people with more of the same. And all of it was preventable if there weren't so many institutional and social failures to address it, at every step in their life.
The other 100million Americans they concentrated to make him.
Unfortunately this problem doesn't end with Trump.
Some, I assume, are good people.
Not to directly quote Donald Trump, but I have to assume that some are, actually, good people. In fact, I'd almost want to believe that the majority of them are...just misled, misinformed, and legitimately didn't see Trump as any sort of a saint, but still somehow saw him as 'better than Kamala'.
Whether that was implicit bias or their racism/patriarchy showing, or they had an actual reason based on what they believed to be facts they received...who knows...but I like to believe that the majority of them are the latter.
Maybe that's just my New England suburban white-boy privilege showing.
I also think that the only people that are still driving around with giant Trump flags on their trucks (or especially bikes), are either paid to do so, or are legitimately pedophiles themselves. I'm sure a homeless guy with a bike isn't too expensive if they are gonna be riding it around anyway.
Media can be pretty damn biased and the people who voted for him mostly watch Fox News AFAIK. Go watch those guys for a day and see how they portray Trump vs the democrats
trump is the champion of the billionaire class.
"Learned", lol, yeah that's what the problem is. They're just so stupid. So unbelievably stupid. These people with billions of dollars of think tank research and social data, these people who climbed into power, they just aren't realizing this obvious fact that somehow every non-politician around me has understood since they were 15 years old. They haven't "learned".
Hell yeah. Fuck their weaponized ignorance. Pretending they don't know just absolves them of guilt.
Sounds like we should form a commission to study this issue.
I'll draft a resolution for a committee to form and discuss the logistics of said commission. Closed door meetings of course.
I'll arrange the menu, the the venue, the seating...
Ooooh can we pay my washed up friend $3,000,000 to give a speech there?
It’s the problem is that they refuse to learn
I mean, they're also right that Trump is making it worse. Hes making it acutely terrible in fact.
If it were some competent neolib at the helm instead of a retarded fascist we'd only be slightly miserable instead of suicidally miserable.
Those aren't exclusionary statements
Trump is a symptom of the wider rot that the establishment Democrats are a part of
Bullshit, he is literally part of the disease.
Bullshit, without the disease he could never, ever have taken office. No functioning Republic would allow it
Just to be clear: symptoms are part of a disease.
Trump is a symptom and also part of the disease. Is there more to the disease than just trump? yes. There are kind of a lot of parts of this disease and they include effectively all of the current Cabinet, House, Senate and Judiciary. Some of those symptoms are democratic and, while I consider many of these democrats to be personally accountable for the issues we face, I also hold that the system is the real problem.
The existing system is the disease and, while we made it over 200 years, I think about the phrase 'a more perfect union' in that a perfect union is a goal, but was not a guarantee and bad actors will find loopholes and vulnerabilities.
We tried to get rid of kings; and did for a time, but eventually replaced them with technocrats.
There's only a handful of them, and a LOT of us. Let's aim for the next more perfect union and ditch these modern kings.
Yes. The pedodent is supported by the billionaire class and in turn funnels even more taxpayer dollars to then and his own family. The billionaires in turn help manufacture of amplify the conflicts he feeds upon.
But it could be more honest. Dems suck because they're all bark and part of the problem themselves. Pelosi built a fortune on insider trading, but they keep acting like they're innocent and "helping" the avg citizen. They sure as hell not with posts like this.
Every time.
Neo libs are similarly to blame, not as bad as gqp, but not fixing it either...
TBF, Trump is glazing the billionaire class about as much as he's glazing Putin and Netanyahu.
Yeah.
Just like Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Obama, and Joe Biden. And, fuck it, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris too. Poverty is 100% bipartisan, and it's in service to the
billionaireEpstein Class.No war but the class war.
America is Unaffordable because of DONALD TRUMP!
-People who Voted in FAVOR of Donald Trump's Policies!
And then they go and vote down a bill to stop the war in Iran.
Oh, they know.
It's the same picture
For anyone unfamiliar with Nina Turner, she has run for Congress before and the Democrats united against her.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Turner#2021_Ohio's_11th_congressional_district_special_election
They did the same to Bernie and the NYC mayor.
Lets concider the context:
House democrats represent the old wave democrats, whereas Nina Turner is part of the Bernie wave. The old wave is dependent on super PACs for getting elected which means they need to lick as many billionaire boots as possible. The Bernie wave is much more credible in that they rely on grass root donations instead of super PACs.
So when House democrats are saying that Trump is the issue, they are implying that if democrats are governing, then housing prices will improve. But swapping bootlickers with other bootlickers are not going to change anything.
Change require that we give the middle finger to the billionaires.
They're billionaires because of monetary policy, Elon Musk and Tesla wouldnt be worth so much if inflation didnt reward risky assets and provide an unlimited runway to profitability. We bid up asset prices until prices rise 2% a year; prices that exclude assets like housing, subjective hedonic downward adjustments of goods prices, and substitutions/shrinkflation.
Blame the rich if you want, I blame the unelected central bank thats debasing your paycheck with 7% annual money supply growth, QE, and bailouts. If the money supply didnt grow every year you wouldnt need to beg your boss for a cost of living adjustment that doesnt match reality. Our parents ate free range grass fed meat, we eat corn fed factory farm troglodytes, and our children will eat highly processed imitation meat slop, and the CPI will mark no difference between the three.
Tesla would be worth basically nothing if the federal government weren't artificially propping them up by banning Chinese EVs.
Shit company, bullshit valuation, shit products
"worth" is an interesting choice of word there...
I blame Nixon.
Well there was a great society program in the 60's that ran up debt, by do-gooders who didnt properly fund their ambitions.
Society needs to learn that we need to actually tax the rich and run low deficits if we want to spend big on social programs.
It's both? He does claim to be a billionaire.
I think his crypto scam actually made that true. Millions of people are willing to spend money to prove their loyalty.
Trump is part of the billionaire class having stolen the reins of government that allows him to steal our tax money for his personal use
That's like comparing a Ben and Jerry's Vanilla milkshake with a different brand of Vanilla milkshake. They are mostly exactly alike.
The biggest tour de force of the century so far is the billionaires who built/bought the social media’s and diverted the attention from the class war (member 2008?) to an ideology war.
They won their bet
The dummies followed and even fought for them
I'm counting on the GOP to crash the economy again. I've managed to buy the dip twice and look to buy a house big enough to move my dad in
You'll never be as good at this as a billionaire who can both bribe and wait indefinitely. Every crash since 2007 has made the working class poorer relative to billionaires.
As a whole sure. If you have cash to play the game though it's become very predictable. But if you have cash to play the game you're not really in the bottom tier of the working class. At this point there's sort of a second tier of the working class that used to be the "middle class"- owns a house, has a retirement account, a paid off car, probably some sort of emergency savings. These are the people still clinging to the American dream, and can win the game (but are effectively barred from the upper echelons of society still as is the rest of the working class).
This is my sad hope as well.
I want the economy to crash so I can afford things.
Watching homes in my area go from 300k to 1 mil in less than a decade is surreal. This isn't even a fancy area.
Okay but for how long? Climate change is going to destroy the global food supply chain and Americans rely HEAVILY on imported food. What happens when the oceans displace all the major port cities that receive everything else? When Americas aging infrastructure falls apart will there be the resources, knowledge, or even political will to rebuild it?
I'm not saying this to attack you... more so to point out that the Boomer Gen X strategy of making theirs and dying before SHTF is a risky bet for anyone younger.
The economy is worse under Trump, that's pretty hard to deny. Yet we continue to insist that Biden was just as bad. It doesn't make a ton of sense.
Biden was a horribly inadequate President, and senile besides... an embarrassing alternative. The worst Democratic President of my lifetime, and I am old.
Truly, he was an AWFUL response to Trump's presidency, and he's the reason that Trump was reelected.
This is all humiliating for Americans, our parties need to be dismantled
Biden was not senile, take your bullshit MAGA propaganda elsewhere.
Based on what? This is a ridiculous assertion.
Infrastructure Law, which put major federal money into transportation and other infrastructure.
signed the CHIPS and Science Act, more domestic semiconductor manufacturing, less dependence on fragile foreign supply chains, and more U.S. manufacturing investment. Commerce Department said by August 2024 it had announced over $30 billion in proposed private-sector investments across 23 projects in 15 states, expected to create over 115,000 manufacturing and construction jobs.
Inflation Reduction Act: created Medicare drug-price negotiation, which CBO estimated would lower average prices paid by Medicare and reduce the deficit. It also led to a $2,000 annual out-of-pocket cap for Medicare Part D enrollees starting in 2025. Same act also led to a clean-energy push and EPA regulatory action.
unemployment rate fell sharply from the pandemic period and stayed relatively low by historical standards.
American Rescue Plan expanded ACA premium tax credits, making low-premium marketplace plans more available, and later HHS credited the ARP and IRA premium-credit enhancements with increasing Marketplace enrollment and affordability. Same act also included the Child Tax Credit expansion which was the leading driver behind a 46% decline in child poverty in 2021, cutting it to the lowest recorded annual rate.
Biden was far from an "awful" president.
The reason Trump was reelected was phony "progressives" like yourself that would rather Trump be president than "establishment" Democrats. You obviously know nothing about policy. Even more obviously, you don't give a fuck about progressive causes.
Yeah, that's realistic, good fucking job you goddam dumbass. We'll wait for your stupid fucking fantasy to come to fruition while Trump destroys the country. Anyone who thinks Biden and Trump are the same is a delusional fucking moron.
Maybe not, but man was he a shell of a former self.
That last debate...man...I'm not a very empathetic person to start with, and even I felt second-hand embarrassment.
The burnings will continue untill we get representation that actually aligns with the will of the people.
To be clear, i won't be me burning, nor anyone on this site; just the regular Joe who has been pushed too far. We don't even have to encourage it. The more our leaders don't listen and ultra rich greed continues the more they will happen. It is the same as: the less it rains (justice) the dryer and more flammable the ground will get. Not a threat, but the nature of humanity and society.
Nothing will improve until the US moves away from the two party system. It's an inherently flawed system, because it leaves no room for nuance. You either have to vote for the red guys or the blue guys and if both the red guys and the blue guys are crap then you have to vote for the least worst option, which is often hard to identify.
There's nothing written down that actually requires people to be the representative of one party or another, it's just how things have worked out.
The US also needs to seriously get a grip on religion in politics, it can be there up to a point but there has to be a limit. In any other western country a politician stating that a war is just and required entirely on the basis of religion alone would rightfully get them sectioned.
No third party has risen up high enough to compete. You are right, but no third option has made its way to the forefront. As for religion and politics, that will be extreamly difficult untill the aforementioned 3rd party comes to being. And even then, the cults of America will make it where life is hard if you are not part of thier groups. Even if we make it illigal to do so: see civil rights movement in the 60's.
No third option has been allowed to rise. The Rs and Ds have rigged the system to keep out third parties.
I only disagree with this because I know far too well that infighting is more destructive than anything either side could do.
Majority take all voting needs to go, it doesn't allow nuanced representation either.
It's both!!!
its unaffordable because both dems and gop collude with each other over things like taxes. this time you cant just blame on trump, hes only the symptom of a larger problem.
During a structure fire, the fire department has to start spraying water somewhere to battle the blaze.
And when fire brigades began they would watch it burn until ypu met their price, which was not fixed.
Less scrupulous fire companies had people set fires to drum up business as well.
Great choice of analogy.
Potato, potato
One day Dems and their moronic supporters will realize they are also the enemy and deserve just as much hate and punishment as conservatives and MAGA
We should probably stop calling them a class and just say billionaires. Calling them a class gives them validation. They are just greedy shitty people
I think i disagree. 'Bilionaires' makes it seem seem like a nebulous group of individuals, like
'oh just happens to have a ton of money, you can't hold that against them without evaluating their actions as an individual'
The problem is that they are a class, or rather that the class exists as a class and that they are use their power, act as and are catered to, as a class.
If there were 100 individuals around the word who just happened to have assets valuing 1,000,000,000$ or more, even if they owned shitty companies companies and were all assholes, that would be one thing.
Assuming they not associate with each other, conspire together to warp society and governments to their shared wills etc, it would be a far different world.
If they were seen as just rare individuals, governments would not bend to their whims; one billionaire threatens to offshore his buisness unless he gets favorable laws, to ignore taxes etc, the country threatens to nationalism his buisness, or just locks his ass up. I one guy is found to be bribing one or countless politicians, thats a treasonous scandal.
When a couple dozen are making these threats in lockstep, they are holding the country's economy hostage. And when between them they are bribing all the politicians, that becomes the staus quo.
its when they act as a class that its a real problem.
I like the Epstein class because it's not just billionaires that are the problem, it's all the people who break or circumvent the law to enrich themselves or gain power.
Remembering sept 10th, 2001, hearing about 2.3 trillion missing...
... doubting Trump's an architect, nor even operator, nor even agent, and continuing to presume merely asset.
Even a flat robin-hood style redistribution of all billionaire wealth gets us each a few grand, utterly dwarfed by how much richer we each and all are with the emancipatory technologies no longer being suppressed and inventors no longer being "disappeared".
Keep reminding the billionaires even they are better off with prolific provisioning of emancipatory technologies... no longer having to watch their back.
Do you have spaceships yet? And the reassurance that no one is trying to take yours?
Spaceships for everybody.
No cull necessary. Nor any billionaire ploys to pit us against each other. Nor any perpetuation of slavery and oppression via manufactured scarcity, nor the lethal mayhem pantomime of resource wars.
Remember a third of a year before that (^ sept 10th 2001), the disclosure project conference at the press club? And the free energy conferences around the same time. ... Before they initiated the cascade of contingency plans for mass distraction to allow the continuation of the PNAC's hegemonic jingoistic global domination plans (and the plans within that, and within which the PNAC sits) [the fake [but still lethal] terrorist thing, pandemic thing, [burgeoning] nuclear war, [upcoming] alien invasion, with side dishes of climage disaster [weather warfare weapons] throughout and economic/energy collapses peppered around]. We were headed for skipping ahead to the star trek future, and better. We still could sublimate to that. As I recall from those free energy conferences, there had already been over 3000 free energy device patents secreted by the year 2000 according to patent office whistleblower Tom Valone.
We have so much headroom, without the crooks keeping us down.
Imagine if we obsoleted the billionaire producing paradigm, reminded all would be billionaires that even they are richer in ending manufactured scarcity and embracing abundance.
No more billionaires, nor their puppets of hate.
Keep on dreaming while learning to learn, y'all. :)
... or so I aspire manifest.
... so much headroom...
What i find intersting and encouraging is that saying what you just said 20 years ago people would completely dismiss any line of thinking like this. Now, if i said something similar to someone in an elevator they would engage and want to discuss it. Change might actually be possible if minds were more open to the headroom possible.
Nina could have win her election if it hadn't been for Uncle Jim Clyburn and his oversized ego sabotaging her run.
Hrmm.
Seeing this again reminds me when I was recently told saying "Democrats" instead of "Democratic Party" is an indicator of having been watching too much right wing media.
The one I see more often is "Democrat Party". I don't know if they're insinuating that the party isn't actually democratic, but in any case it's weird and always seemed like another way to manipulate speech and signal who is in the in-group vs. the out-group.
Im not sure thats a real thing.
Possibly a divide and muddle attempt.
As an "independant" non fascist, non billionaire type i use Republicans/Democrats more than i use the full Party names because its less to type.
"Here we go again, same old shit again."
“It’s because of your major donors…”
The same old history. Some people infiltrate and manipulate the lefties to not vote, until they will lose their power of voting forever.
Nobody needs to infiltrate the left to get them not to vote for the center-right Democratic Party. The elected Democrats do that quite well with no help whatsoever.
He is a symptom of the disease, and both must be dealt with as such.
Everyone arguing over the cause while rent just keeps going up 😅
i find it funny that there are more balanced takes on politics here then in any of the canada political pages on here
It’s not in the Democratic Leadership’s interests to not cozy up to the true ruling class. However they’re a bit better than the alternative.
Every US election is a giant douche vs a turd sandwich.... Atleast the douche keeps you clean.
Says the party of "Restrict supply, subsidize demand"
Is this even authentic? Link?
It's the same
Why not both?
Trump is the worst president in American history.
"Yeah people with no power, how did you let them be that way?"
We didn't start the fire~ but we love pouring some gasoline on it, oh yeah.~
Of course, "the billionaire class," is what you arrive at from learning. Good thing that's the end of the line and there is no point in interrogating how a "billionaire class" happened in the first place.
A little tone deaf because Trump is in the billionaire class, but I think I get their point. The problem is not just with Trump, but he is also definitely party to it.
This comment is tone deaf. The DNC are a bunch of billionaire enablers scapegoating Trump.
I swear every time the next election is near all these anti-democrats show up to convince people not to vote. Pathetic.
When is an election not near?
YOU are in the minority. Independents outnumber YOU. And we vote! Do you?
Many millions of your own party don't bother to vote. Bitch at them, clean your own filthy, nasty house; and maybe, just maybe, try being civil to those people you REQUIRE to win any election.
Tell me about cleaning my house when you probably live in a fascist nation yawn
I am not a Democratic Party Member, I have been an independent for almost thirty years now. Probably longer than you have been alive, but please do tell me what is up.
Really? Because I've been seeing a pretty steady stream of complaints and general badmouthing of Democrats for many years now.
I have no problem with that, the Democratic party is dysfunctional and deserves criticism.
I do have a problem with people who never have anything bad to say about Republicans showing up around election time to talk shit only about the Democratic party. It was a huge issue in the last several elections I have participated in.
In my opinion a lot of them are disingenuous political operatives.
Where did I say not to vote? Also DNC /= Democrat Party
The fact that Democrat incumbents get a free pass while GOP incumbents get primaried for not being MAGA enough is literally why Trump is president. Americans need to primary the DNC and turn over at least 75% of sitting politicians by end of 2028.
USA is a system of checks and balances... the primary balance to unchecked power is the American voter -burning down toilet paper warehouses apparently.
If you want to deny what your up to that is fine with me. Perhaps you just haven't reflected on your message.
The pattern I notice is people showing up to talk shit about Democratic Party (yes, they do suck) around election time, but strangely never have anything to say about the Republican party.
Are you just bad at reading? I'm telling people to vote MORE by participating in primary elections.
Please reread my original comment to see where I stand.
It is clear you have a boner for the only political party that even slightly supports progressive policies. Perhaps you should reflect on that.
I'm Canadian dumbass. You are a shining example of American Education.
Well, he's in the billionaire class NOW.
It's amazing what a few years in political office will do for your bank account (and that of your entire family).
Politics are the third easiest way to generational wealth in the USA; first being inheritance and second being prosperity gospel preacher
Pastor Mulligrubs has a ring to it... and zero taxes.
Lol, so true.
Ugh, the stupidest plank the democrat platform - fomenting wealth envy and scapegoating ~1000 people just because of the number of commas in their bank accounts. There are terrible billionaires, but call them out by name instead of lumping them all together in a big pile of sour grapes.
No, there is no such thing as an ethical billionaire. We must reject this and creates policies to reduce and eventually eliminate the wealth gap.
That's a lie, but if it helps you understand why you aren't rich go with it.
Extreme wealth inequality causes a host of problem we are facing right now.
https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/
https://democracyproject.org/posts/extreme-wealth-inequality-destroys-constitutions
There is no question about this. Please offer a counterpoint though. I don't think you can even comprehend how much a billion is let alone a trillion.
Spending a billion dollars ($1,000,000,000) would take over 2,700 years if spending $10,000 a day. Are you seriously defending this level of excessive stupidity?
They are all terrible. Billionaires are parasites, one and all. It's not wealth envy - it's just wanting a FAIR share. Billions is never a fair share.
Sorry you are having issues with severe envy. Maybe you should focus on yourself instead of other people's wallets?
Having a billion dollars is like having a get out of jail free card. The justice system doesn't work when the perp has more influence then a prince. Has little to do with them as a person, everything to do with having a functioning democracy.
Then fix the justice system instead of crying about an entire group of people.
I'm sure the kings of the past said the same thing. Funny thing, that's how the left vs right divide started.
There are billionaires in the DNC, and billionaires who back them. Maybe not as many, but still enough that taxing the rich has never gained any traction even under democratic governments. Billionaires fear nothing in DC, they have proven over and over again they can buy pretty much whoever they need to.
There are no sitting billionaire DNC lawmakers. It is literal party platform, in writing, to tax the rich. Biden increased audits on the rich, made a minimum effective taxrate for the rich, and It was Kamala Harris' campaign promise to make an unrealized gains tax on amounts over a million dollars, which are assets used by billionaires as loan collateral to avoid taxes for their entire life.
If you were a billionaire, you would be 2.5x more likely to back the GOP than the DNC, and you would likely have a spot reserved in the front or on stage during a GOP inauguration.
Look at Me, I'm Just Jack! I'm helping the billionaires confuse the working class into voting against their own interests!
Weird. Now I get why every time I read Wikipedia I taste leather. Simply engaging in facts is lIcKinG bOoTs.
Could easily be said without using a slur.
Fair, the comment was deleted by moderators a few hours ago and I have no protest about that decision.