These are a bit too left-leaning for European centrists. Especially the 32-hour-workweek, even in the most "socialist" European countries this is a position only taken by dedicated "leftist" parties.
I'm in the UK, 35 hours a week, with a compulsory 1 hour lunch break. University life... It's flexible though 08:00-16:00 through 10:00-18:00. As long as you get seven hours in.
That’s pretty good, though legislation says they only have to give you a 20 minute break, and only if you work over six hours. Otherwise, 37.5 tends to be standard.
Is it? The average work week in the Netherlands is 30 hours. That is the current status quo, not even what the "left-leaning" parties propose for the future.
If it's about the same as Germany, then the reason for that is that there are a lot of part time workers, who often don't get enough money to be able to live off it on their own (e.g. married people, single parents who also get government assistance to make up the difference). That's very different from declaring the full-time work week to be only 32 hours.
It's somewhat similar to Germany, yes, though Germany has fewer part-time workers. In Germany (where I also live) the default options are 35 or 40 hours, though it's becoming more common to have options to work less even in "full time" type of jobs.
Anyway, I doubt the "democratic socialists" in the USA want to ban working more than 32 hours, they just want people to have the same option people have in rich European countries.
Anyway, I doubt the “democratic socialists” in the USA want to ban working more than 32 hours
They want 32 hours to be legislated as 'full time' -- meaning that employers legally must pay overtime (1.5x normal wage) for any amount of time worked over 32 hours per week.
This is already the case for 40 hours, but they want to reduce the number to 32.
If this is what they want, it's really not very well thought through. Employers can just pay the same amount for 40 hours (paying less for the initial 32 and more for the subsequent 8), and employees will have greater incentives to keep their working week at 40 instead of having more flexibility for work-life balance. This would discourage 32-hour work weeks except for those jobs where employers can easily hire more people to compensate for the 8-hour shortfall (and those jobs are very few in number).
In fact, in Europe it's usually the opposite, where overtime is more heavily taxed, so both employers and employees have incentives to keep the work week within sensible hours. In addition, overtime tends to be restricted by collective wage agreements, which, in contrast to the USA, often apply to non-union members.
Employers can just pay the same amount for 40 hours (paying less for the initial 32 and more for the subsequent 8)
They're going to have a lot of very pissed-off employees when they announce the company-wide pay cuts. And competing employers who instead use the strategy of dropping to 32 hours and hiring more employees to make up the difference are going to be able to pay the full rate without any pay cut, making them more attractive to workers.
Also ... ask yourself, why aren't they already doing this to get 50 or 60 hour work weeks out of their employees? Because it's hard to find employees willing to work below market rate for 60 hours a week. (Most employers already strictly limit employee hours, because they hate paying overtime.)
Now, what you're saying isn't completely insane -- I do recognize that some employers may try to do something similar to what you're saying, while trying to justify the pay cuts as a reaction to the new law. Also, there's nothing forcing them to increase the hourly rate, so for a lot of workers going to 32 hours instead of 40 would be a significant overall income reduction.
There will be some friction, especially at first, but I think that over time, the market will normalize around it, and (essentially) 4-day work weeks could become the norm. It's nothing that hasn't happened before, during the fight for a 40-hour 5-day workweek.
The average work week in the Netherlands is 30 hours.
It's a skewed bullshit metric though and you can't compare it to most other countries.
It's quite normal here to have one member of a household working 40 hours and the other part-time, for example 20 hours. That's 60 hours of labour for a family and indeed 30 hours on average.
Unfortunately most statistics only include people who actually work, instead of the total potential workforce. So a traditional family where dad works 40 hours and mom stays at home will have a combined total of 40 working hours vs our 60. But because mom doesn't work she is ignored and the family counts toward the average for 40 hours. So they go into the books as hard workers and we are just lazy sobs.
The cherry on top: statistics often cut off around 60-62, while we can't retire until 67+.
Remember: there are lies, damned lies and statistics.
In this case the median would be a lot more interesting than the average. Few do more than 40h (legally) but many do less -> the average always under 40. Similarly, in average men have less than 2 testicles, but >99% have 2.
If the median is 40, then it still means that over half the population have 40h weeks meaning it's the standard.
The median employee in the Netherlands is just barely at the threshold of working full-time (defined as 35 hours or more). Few of those who work full-time cross 40 hours, and part-time can be well below 30; the average comes out to about 30.
Of those working part-time (less than 35 hours), about 12% would like to work more but has no suitable work available, so these are underemployed people working part-time.
But what's the legally defined full work week? If legally the full work week is 5 days you don't have a 4 day work week, you just have enough privileged people and part time workers to bring the average down to 30.
I don't know if there is a "legally defined work week." The "average work week" is just the average hours worked by anyone performing paid labour, which includes part-time workers, who consist of about half the workforce.
So I did some quick digging and it does seem that there overall work week in Netherlands is rather flexible. That said I did find this from Arbeidstijdenwet:
2 The employer organizes the work in such a way that the employee aged 18 years or older at most work performed during:
a. 12 hours per shift;
b. 60 hours a week, and
c. average 48 hours per week in each period of 16 consecutive weeks.
Legally the upper limit you can work in a week is 48 hours. But that's the upper limit and not what is happening in practice. So I looked that up as well. For full-time employees I found that men average 38.4 hours and women average 35.0 hours. The average work week of 31.9 hours doesn't mean Netherlands has 32 hour work weeks, it's just skewed lower primarily by part time workers.
It's only a position taken by the Democrats in the U.S. because it's something that will safely never pass. Kinda like in 2020 when we had candidates promoting Universal Basic Income.
*Profiting from the privatization of these vital services, thereby guaranteeing that those services are degraded to the lowest quality possible while reaching the smallest number of people possible while most of the funds reach the pockets of the people at the top.
As long as a profit motive exists, that motive is that the person at the top gets as much of the money possible, while the people who the services are meant to serve always get the absolute least as is possible, and what is possible continues to diminish until it reaches zero.
I am starting to feel that Fox news is for the filthy rich to watch and for people who are deluding themselves into believing that, one day, they will also become filthy rich.
The older generation is so selfish they don’t want the younger generations to get something “easier” than they think they had it. “I walked uphill both ways in the snow” kind of thinking. Most privileged generation.
Good luck being distracted by age. That's almost as bad as red/blue state bullshit. Sure, the people in power in those states is making a difference, but my point is there's a huge mix of people in every state. And in the same way, there's plenty of old progressives and young fascists.
Constantly putting this crap on older generations implies you're one of the ones hoping the problem will die off.
It won't.
And distracting you from realizing that is the big reason for the push for "boomers" to equal "evil". There's a lot of idiot evil boomers, but there's plenty of young idiot evil fascists.
The problem ain't gonna die itself away. We must fight.
I've been hearing that the Republican Party will wither from attrition as they all die off for 50 fucking years. We should be free of them by now, but instead they've taken over everything.
I always tell people to remember back to that first big protest in Chancellorville, when all those neo-Nazi fuckwits marched in with their tiki torches, chanting "Jews will not replace us". ALL those weenies were under 40 years old. Rush Limbaugh and all the other psychopathic propagandists have been great at recruiting and indoctrinating new psychopaths into their ranks, and replacing all the old psychopaths that finally got dragged to Hell.
You don't understand Christianity. Christianity is the religion of the police state. Revelation 22:15 encapsulates the notion of how the sinners are surrounded, with everyone who loves AND practices lying (not TO) being the undercover cops. Jesus' crucifixion let us see who the idoltarers were, and cost one Roman soldier with a spear a promotion. I guarantee those tiki torch fuckers were 80% cops. The Proud Boys are feds. I know this because the joke is I had to be a crackhead because I wasn't good enough to be a pothead, which is a festival cop.
This is sorta the same defense as "#NotAll(X)". Because, like, yeah, obviously there are plenty of older progressives. But... The issue at hand here is one of power. Older generations have more wealth on average and hold more conservative views on average. It's sorta on them to use their positions to make lives easier on those younger and less fortunate than themselves, and unfortunately for the rest of us, they are less likely to do so. And I say this with a boomer grandma doing her fucking best protesting outside ICE facilities.
To pretend there isn't an age bias is silly. To pretend there is only an age bias is also silly. But it does exist, interrelated to wealth and power disparities that everyone is suffering from. So, you know, fuck boomers. If you don't like hearing that, then really reflect on what that says about you.
In closing, yeah, the problem won't simply die away, but I ain't gonna pretend it doesn't help, even if it isn't every boomer's fault.
The point that you are glossing over and dismissing as a minor one is Central to my theme: the problem is not going to die itself away.
Most of the people riding off boomers assume that all the youngsters are progressives. They are not.
Nowhere did I say boomers are equally as progressive as any other group. There's a reason I didn't say that. There's a reason I said the other things that I said.
Around 44% of Boomers consider themselves conservative.
Around 33% of young adults do.
Go ahead and wait around while the fascists only increase the propaganda if you think that'll help, but in my humble opinion, that only falls into their trap. They get us to wait while they keep fighting tooth and nail.
Thinking in labels is inherently dualistic thinking. The brain processes entanglements, and it is möbiated entanglements, that which the Buddhists called "defiled" that manifest the illusion of the self. This is giving a string a half-twist to create dualistic dichotomy (inner/outer). A form of möbiation that would take a minute to explain, but can be summed up in the phrase orthogonal relativity, and this picture, is what allows the brain to process an eleven dimensional topological matrix. Yer a knot, Neo. Enlightenment is being the effect before the cause - developing your prefrontal cortex to predict and outclass the animal parts of the brain, and resolving all karmic debt to demöbiate all your mind back into a unified field of entanglements.
Last night at dinner boomer maga: “why aren’t the kids drinking anymore?” Me: well we got like 10 jobs and have no time so i imagine they have like 20 jobs even less… “we used to go to work hungover”… oooooookay
How about getting a single DUI will absolutely ruin your life? I'm so paranoid about drinking that I NEVER drink when I'm out for dinner. If a cop pulls me over, I want to be able to say "I haven't had a single drop to drink."
Besides, what's wrong with people drinking less? Not smoking and drinking are two of the best things you can do for your life. This guy wants young people to fuck up their lives, so that he feels better about fucking up his?
It's funny that you think not having a drop to drink will prevent the cops from arresting you for DUI with a 0.0 breathalizer anyway and the DA from prosecuting you despite an additional 0.0 blood test.
o0o in a similar vein, i like to ask them if they are pro fascism or anti.. reminding them that they really only get to pick one.. and watch them squirm as their programming conflicts
which is hilarious as they generally also couldnt define fascism if their life depended on it
I once explained some socialism ideas on Reddit. One user called me a communist, another a Nazi. It was a very confusing pair of responses but said more than either would ever know.
North Korea still claims to be a communist state too,
It's more interesting to look at things like the USSR before, during and after the New Economic Policy period. Or, to look at the USA at the time when policing was outsourced to the Pinkertons. Or, at the UK when firefighting was a for-profit enterprise.
Tbf, Maoism was certainly more aligned with communist principles, though with their entering into the global capitalist marketplace they've certainly morphed quite a bit. They still maintain a unilateral top down structure and control, while allowing their citizens to benefit from certain elements of capitalism.
What blows my mind is that basically all of these fit in with fiscal conservative ethos.
Healthcare would benefit the most from economy of scale, which is the bedrock of corporation above the mom and pop level.
Education is literally capital reinvestment for sustained growth.
Housing is a commodity like like any other.
32 hour work weeks are scientifically proven to increase productivity and decrease Fraud, Waste, and Abuse.
Taxation is another instance of capital reinvestment for sustained growth. Hell, it's (demi-god of capitalism) Henry Ford's "pay the line workers enough to buy my products".
The Green New Deal is not quite as cut and dry, but there is plenty of both "leveling the playing field to promote free market competition" against fossil fuel subsidies AND capital reinvestment.
Palestine opens a whole other can of billions of dollars of foreign government spending separate from the ethical concerns, which is less clear cut on market economics and would need to be an essay by itself. So I will just stick with the 6 out of 7 low hanging fruits for this argument, and mock the completely not fiscally conservating mess the Republican party has become.
The conservatives abandoned ethos long ago in favor of being against everything the progressives are for.
One of the bits that blew my mind was watching foreign politics and learning other countries have right wings further left than our own left. Fucking Overton windows.
Green New Deal is also incredibly sound economics and conservative ethos. Economically speaking, which is better: something you have to spend a bunch of time and effort mining for and then can only ever use it once or something you spend a bit more effort mining and manufacturing, but then can receive gains off your investment for decades? Gains that exceed your initial investment well before expected end of life.
And that's just the economics of the gains; completely forgoing the cumulative costs burdened upon society by climate-change (increased heating/cooling-costs, early deaths because of pollution, crops failing and the mass-migration as a result of that). Continuing with fossil fuel is very very dumb if you look at the medium to long term.
For sure, but I focused on just the easily quantifiable economic returns because most people who would call the Green New Deal the Green New Scam are also climate change deniers. So, focusing on just their own pocketbooks with things that can easily be measured and calculated seems a better approach.
True, although we shouldn't pretend that the cost for building a coal mine or developing an oil field is more single use than a solar farm or wind turbine. Many oil wells and coal mines operate for decades with relatively small operational costs after initial build out. Time in production difference is not statistically significant enough to make that a linchpin argument.
The jobs created by solar and wind in R&D, manufacturing, and construction and maintenance, along with most importantly the carbon emissions benefits are the most relevant economic points. Nuclear should also be part of the Green New Deal, but fossil fuel companies successfully fear mongered that sector to death.
There was a time where I was moderate, willing to believe the word of conservatives who said they wanted fiscal responsibility. I now know that they are craven liars, and have become fully radicalized.
Preach! I still consider myself to be a moderate or centrist as a leftist libertarian (social progressive and fiscal conservative), and also haven't believed Republicans were actual fiscal conservatives since Bush Jr. They have been only social conservatives since arguably at least Regan. Still pissed off that insane Ayn Rand utopian individualists and Christian Nationalists became the entire libertarian movement.
From a customer service standpoint, no, but I was talking about the cost perspective. A single payer system financing small clinics would be the best answer here, getting rid of the corporate hospital impersonality while keeping costs low. If a doctors office doesn't have to deal with the insurance middle men and pharmacy middle men who are parasitically draining the system, you will have more neighborhood clinics and hospitals that care about their city's residents.
Health care ? Stable economy ? You really want that ?
You'll end up just like Boomers with fancy "pensions" and "cabins" and happy grandkids DO YOU REALLY want tha.... yeah that sounds pretty pretty pretty good comrade.
If you see this and think these things are bad things to have in your country, you are seriously fucked in the head and I hope you die a horrible death from colon cancer.
if they had room on the graphic, it'd be there too.. but their racism runs deeper, and just think of all the black and brown people that would benefit from these policies. they don't care that "all" includes all the maga nuts, too, doesn't even register in their minds.. it's just that "those" people.. the "wrong" people.. would get something--anything, is just too much for them to handle.
OK, that clinches it. I've had a feeling since the first time I saw this graphic that there was some sympathetic background worker at Fox News who purposely made the thing look as appealing as possible. "Culture war" issues are still kneejerk, hot button topics for a lot of that audience.
My parents are boomers and they want these things. And most people in their circles are the same. So I really get annoyed when I see this sentiment online, especially on Lemmy where you’d think people would know better. A lot of MAGA support is coming from younger people. Why do you think that Kirk dickhead was at college campuses, not retirement homes. These are people who are not anti vax because they grew up with polio. They support unions because they have seen them work.
Eh, plenty of Boomers will say they want those things but then shoot down any attempts at them as "not the right way". These are the kinds of people who showed up to the Democratic primaries in 2020 and voted for Joe Biden. If they really wanted these things they'd vote in the primaries for politicians who are fighting for them.
Eh, plenty of younger people will say they want those things but then decide not to vote for the Democrat candidate who made it as the nominee because they didn't pass some purity test. And that hands power to the fascists.
I voted for Biden. And Clinton. And Harris. In the general election, because not doing so was a vote for fascism. I also voted for different people in the primaries because that was my chance to vote for a progressive.
To be clear, you're trying to deflect blame away from people who show up to the Democratic primaries to vote for strike blocking, genocide supporting geriatrics yes?
Imagine that before you stand two candidates. One of them supports genocide and corporations as people, but does occasionally manage to also support human rights. The other of them supports genocide and corporations as people, but also is working to break our democracy and replace it with fascism.
Those are your two options.
If you decide not to vote for the first one because they support genocide, then you are lending your support to fascism.
I would hope you would have supported a better candidate earlier in the process, but the point is that when faced with the final voting options, many people withdraw from voting because they don't like the candidate that is of the party that they would support if they did like them.
And so the fascists win that voter's voting power, essentially.
Worth noting that I'm not talking about earlier in the process because the above scenario is an extremely simplified version of what our options have mostly been.
As with any generation, many of the people who were teens in the 60s did not like the depression- and war-torn, conformist, society they grew up in, They had much different values and music and politics and approaches to life. Yes ... today they'd be called democratic socialists, they showed up for Sanders' tour. They don't watch what Mideas Touch calls the 'Regime Media'. The Repubs are running scared about the midterms, for a good reason.
Thinking everyone in an earlier generation is to blame for anything today is wrong-headed and the result of just not knowing enough about history.
Fox news is just an online church. Preaching all the hate, gloom & doom.
No one is allowed to be happy or have nice things. Fear is the flavor of every day.
What a sad, sad cult this is.
It almost makes me wonder if the people working in their graphics department are left-leaning. You'd think they'd at least do something like add dollar signs to the art to make it clear that these good things aren't free.
I once met someone who worked on computer graphics for one of the NFL broadcasters. He hated gridiron football with a passion, but a job was a job, so he made animations involving shiny humanoid robots, because apparently that has something to do with gridiron football. I don't know if he snuck easter eggs into his stuff, but I wouldn't be surprised.
This boogie-man makes perfect sense when viewed through the lens of zero-sum thinking. They literally view helping other people as being detrimental to their own position because it means that the people "beneath" them are now less far beneath. This makes their position feel less lofty because we've raised the floor of human suffering, thereby making them feel less advantaged and less high above that floor of human suffering by comparison.
It's not even a meme to characterize them as saying, "the suffering is the point" when they support certain inherently evil consumerist practices. They literally think that way.
You've been shown probably hundreds of times on this website that the uyghur genocide is western propaganda designed to make you hate China, and yet you continue to parrot it. The liberal mind is fascinating.
I'll speak for that user. They can't observe very well.
I shared with them a 2022 UN report that acknowledges human rights abuses of the Uyghurs and other minority populations (via OHCHR), but I purposely didn't say it was the UN. They then went to say the UN said there was no genocide.
I'm newer to the "site", but way to go on making a statement that presumes truth with nothing to back it up. You may be using reverse psychology or be a bot, but for posterity, let's put out some actual info.
If we presume your comment to be sincere, then it would logically follow that you would dismiss all the western nations' legislative declarations that genocide has taken place, and that dismissal would extend to claims made by all the activist organizations.
How about some reports and declarations from international bodies who jump through hoops to avoid commitment? I'll link them below, which you can evaluate on your own. An example of noncommittal can be found in the activist criticism against the OHCHR assessment. The assessment goes in great detail of all the human rights abuses but doesn't mention the word genocide or try to address if it meets the definition. Unsurprisingly, China's retort to the assessment was "Nuh uh we are fighting terrorism" and NK, Cuba, and Venezuela advocated on behalf of China with "Shhh please don't publish"
To clarify, you're saying the UN disagrees with the OHCHR assessment...
Edit: Clearly pointless to continue a thread of comments
The UN says there's no genocide of the uyghurs taking place in China.
I'm a little surprised I was able to make you say something so stupid so quickly. The OHCHR Assessment is a UN statement. It concludes the many claims about human rights abuses are supported and there is cause to claim China has committed crimes against humanity. It never discredits genocide, for—as I summarized previously—it avoids addressing the term genocide completely.
This is a regular bit on FOX News. The list all the platform points of a Democratic official and play it as if it's offensive when they should be positive points and are, popular policies according to most polls.
I've seen lists played this way on FOX for years now, including the original Green New Deal.
I don't understand how this works, and am disquieted that it does. FOX is super confident in the thrall it has over it's viewership.
That gives me a glimmer of hope, that the boomers dying off (and some of us Xers) will allow the Overton window to shift again away from tribalism and towards mutualist values.
It is curious though, since the silent generation and greatest generation both had a sense of legacy, e.g. planting trees knowing you will not live to feel their shade. I wonder if it's related to the rise of consumerism and the disposable product economy.
While I agree with this depiction of the older demographics, it leaves out the "values" that Fox News viewers are propagandized into accepting.
They believe we live in a meritocracy, government should leave them alone, America is a great nation, and everyone has to earn their way in life. These "values" allow older Republicans to take pride in their lives and the younger Republicans blame themselves (or immigrants/minorities/etc) for their lack of success.
It's negative programming. It's a psychological technique used to prevent the subject from engaging with a subject earnestly when a source of free information is available by 'poisoning the well' ahead of time by associating the idea with an 'opposed ideology' thus discrediting the source of further information ahead of time.
They're terrified at the idea of the "lower class" having anything good. They think it takes something away from them. They're terrified of people having good things without "earning" it, even though the rich aren't earning it either
It's like Syndrome in The Incredibles with the "When everyone's super, no one will be." But for them, when everyone has a living wage, social safety net, human rights - they won't be superior to anyone anymore.
And when they're still a failure and not even superior to anyone who has it worse… who are they anymore?
The only thing I would alter is "college for all those that want it". However, this would also include "trades training and paid apprenticeships to those that want it".
Usually when they say free college, it really means College/ Trade School. If we ever do get around to doing this, trade school will definitely be part of it.
And yeah, we need to start a serious conversation about UBi, since AI is threatening to permanently unemploy a significant double digit percentage of Americans.
I know this is a long shot, but does anyone have a link to a stream of this show's segment? I tried Googling for it, but came up with nothing. I'd genuinely like to know what their argument against having these things is. I'm assuming it's the same old "who's going to pay for it" thing, which we all know is silly because we always seem to have plenty of money for wars, bailouts, subsidizes for corps/billionaires, etc. Still I'd like to hear their fearmongering talking points on this one.
If you see this and think these things are bad things to have in your country, you are seriously fucked in the head and I hope you die a horrible death from colon cancer.
Damn so scary. It sure would be horrible to have a good job support supporting the environment, while also having healthcare, education and fair wages at my Disposal. And free Palestine at that.
Their base has been so brainwashed into thinking that other people getting things means they WONT get those things, because as Democrats have pushed for equity reforms, Republicans have eroded away worker and lifestyle protections, and purposely ran propaganda campaigns to tell them their declining lifestyle is because of Democrats.
Palestine is a dogwhistle call against "antisemitism", which is defined by them as anyone who doesn't stringently support Israel. It's the AIPAC part of their stance. AIPAC has paid them good money for that representation.
Not to mention, USA and UK founded Israel for a reason, and give Israel money and weapons every year for a reason, too.
It's not AIPAC alone, it's also our long-term strategic goals in the Middle East. That's why Israel is there, and AIPAC is only one tool in the box, the obvious one. Meanwhile, US military is testing and refining its new weaponry against Lebanon and Palestine, and all of those missiles cost a fortune. But, it's vital to them to expand their growth every year. Only way to do that is war.
The governments, with lower corruption, are successfully running their public services funded by taxes. The USA will need to reduce the defense budget, lower corruption and stop voting for shitbag politicians.
I'm probably gonna catch flak for saying it, but are they wrong? Israel's genocide is easily the #1 issue I see presented on why a DSA voter did not vote for a DNC candidate in previous elections.
But if we do that, we can't have the world's biggest Navy and maintain hundreds of bases all around the world!
We have over 100 bases in Italy alone, that's very expensive. Think of the Italian children YOU BIG DUMMY. They will go berserk making pizzas and whatever
Might I remind you that what you call "socialism" is generally called "basic human rights" in the rest of the developed world?
Europe is not socialist by any means, nor is Japan, nor is the UK, but they all have reasonably priced healthcare and education, varying degrees of help for the homeless, etc.
Not having children starve in school because their family is poor is not socialism, it's basic decency.
Not being forever in debt because of a medical complication you likely had no control over is not socialism, it's basic decency.
Providing services that make everyone's life better is not socialism, nor is properly regulating what corporations and billionaires can and cannot do, it's a reasonable middle ground with seems to elude you and many of your compatriots.
You Americans need to understand that, despite the decades of propaganda you've been fed, your country is woefully behind compared to the rest of the world. If you want it to get better, you need to set aside your prejudice towards "leftist" (and I mean it in the lightest sense of the word, even the right-most of right-wing parties abroad doesn't wish to eliminate public healthcare) policies, or you'll be stuck being the richest third world country for the rest of time.
I second that. It's always a sensitive topic with Americans because a lot of them are really in a bubble.
Only a handful of countries worldwide don't have a universal heathcare system. Only one is in the "developed countries" list.
Universal healthcare is not socialism, it's a very pragmatic policy that saves a lot of money for everyone but private insurance companies.
Public health in general is disastrous. Obesity and diabetes rates are alarmingly high. The food industry is literally killing Americans, much more than terrorists or wars, but they have free pass.
Predatory loans on students are another third-world mafia idea of an education system.
When corporate can pour money on campaigns, all we see is a legalized corruption system.
I could go on. But at this stage, you probably understand why the US don't "have people from Norway": the only people living in a developed country who would benefit from going to the US are wealthy enough to not fear the healthcare and education systems.
I personally know folks who went to the US with promises of better pay and very low taxes. They were debt free before going. Now they're in debt for the rest of their life, are worried about their kids studies and their own retirement. The American dream quickly turns to a nightmare.
It's the taxes. There's a reason people bike in Europe and not because it's cute it's because the high taxes on gas are used to support public transportation. Imagine being closer to the source and paying more because it's taxed to shit. The high taxes on what we enjoy with just a price point to fund projects that never become complete or serve the direct purpose, is what bothers them.
#1 question who's gonna pay for it? Free isn't free with those goods and services.
Given there's a trillionaire class you could totally start a trust and in 5 years have enough money to fund all of those for 10 years worth of those good and services the questions are: how much do you want in the trust, how much do you think we should tax people to reach that goal and how are we going to make this work effectively because eit would have to be in the bench mark of the 200k$ and up class to make it effective.
Medical, Housing and Work Leave are the biggest that would cost the most you could make college free and make it go off of income as well but that's still making pay just not up front.
Put it this way housing market in New Hampshire fuckin' sucks and the taxes are a fuck load but there's no sales tax because they evened it out.
So unless you can even these goods and services out effectivly in the way of where the hell are you getting the money to pay for these goods and services, you're not getting far.
Doctors need to get paid, college professors need to get paid, housing authorities and landlords still need to get paid (and utilities and all that shit), like solar/wind/nuclear still needs funding.
It's not that they don't want it!!! They don't know how to make it cost effective without it needing to accumulate in a treasury in the same amount of time it would take for 4 presidencies to go by before it could even be used and in that time the new presidents could scrap the trust.
It's not gonna happen. I'm for it. It'll never happen but I'm for it
It's been said countless times. Americans are right now paying way more for these services than they would if it was paid through taxes. The secret to this little scheme, that only every single other devolped country has figured out, and has been fucking screaming at you for a century, is that you cut out the middle men. The shareholders at the hospital, the shareholders at the insurance company, the shareholders at the colleges, the loan sharks making billions off of people needing to survive.
It's not very hard. Get rid of the people who only make profit off of people's suffering instead of helping the situation, and you get a remarkebly better result. Those middlemen are nothing but leeches. They don't actually do anything, they just siphon money out of the pockets of poor people.
America, the only place where this shit is happening, and for some reason, they're hellbent on never looking at how other countries do it, and live in complete denial, thinking they're the createst country in the world.
There's only 1,000
billionaires in the US but there's way more six figure earners. So where does that leave the middle class? Would the near poverty lower class be paying these taxes?
You also overlooked what I mentioned that relative to now it seems like a good idea, yes? Though, in the amount of time it would take to not only accumulate the amount of money through those taxes into a treasury, about 4 presidencies will have gone by, realistically 2 which would mean in the amount of time it would take for this to work the legislation behind it could go away, meaning it wouldn't make a fucking difference and all those funds would dissolve back either into the social security trust or more likely the military funding or the national debt.
It would be a massive gamble to attempt it. You would be playing with a lot of people's money.
We could have "free" healthcare by paying less than we pay today.
We are simply getting ripped off at every turn. For some reason there are a lot of people who think it should cost out the ass for basic care you can get for much cheaper. And it isn't because it is "higher quality" like some claim. A white woman is 2x as likely to die during pregnancy in the U.S. than if they were in Canada. A black woman 6x. So it all ends up being about money/class.
Think about this. The U.S. provides free X-rays for 2.5 million people and their luggage every day, by a federal department that didn't even exist pre-2001.
Our taxes even went down
2001 Brackets: 15%, 27.5%, 30.5%, 35.5%, and 39.1%. The top 39.1% rate kicked in at $297,350.
2026 Brackets: 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35%, and 37%. The top 37% rate begins at $640,600
So who's paying for the department of homeland security? It's not a mystery, we are.
Our health care system is set up to milk every penny they can from the people. We could cut the costs so much that it actually is funny. If it was made illegal to provide health insurance in the U.S. and it was illegal to overcharge on medications and procedures, our healthcare system would get better for the majority of the population.
They could, I don't know take the money out of the military budget. There is absolutely fucking no reason that the military is paying $10,000 for a hammer. And look I work for the government The spending is absolutely ridiculous. Why don't we audit what the military is spending their money on?
Those are all good ideas, but we can't even afford to pay off the debt. So realistically getting this done is scary for people that realize it would require slave labor, and we are only getting that by villainizing one group of people and using force.
America flavored socialism is scary just in the way they think. Scary because it will suppress actual revolution for years. There will be some token efforts and in the end will be bluemaga
This is accelerationist bullshit. People are more capable of organizing mass movements when they aren't forced to focus on survival. Organized labor in the US was the strongest it had ever been under FDR's social democracy. Advancing welfare in a capitalist economy actually heightens contradictions because it becomes more clear to the working class that those things are good and that the owning class opposes it.
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Most people agree on 3/4ths of politics but nothing ever happens because we can never figure out that last 1/4th
Oh no! It's... European centrist?! And a rogue Free Palestine with a steel chair from the corner!
These are a bit too left-leaning for European centrists. Especially the 32-hour-workweek, even in the most "socialist" European countries this is a position only taken by dedicated "leftist" parties.
In France we have a 35 hours workweek, and our centrists fight that with all their might.
Imagine being so In love with the billionaires that you want less free time
My day job is unionized and it's 35 hours per week. 🇨🇦
In the UK I think it averages 37.5 hours for salaried jobs. I haven't looked that up.
I'm in the UK, 35 hours a week, with a compulsory 1 hour lunch break. University life... It's flexible though 08:00-16:00 through 10:00-18:00. As long as you get seven hours in.
That’s pretty good, though legislation says they only have to give you a 20 minute break, and only if you work over six hours. Otherwise, 37.5 tends to be standard.
If you have enough time to think, that means we can strip you down to a 15 minute break
Thinking is clearly inefficient!
Is it? The average work week in the Netherlands is 30 hours. That is the current status quo, not even what the "left-leaning" parties propose for the future.
If it's about the same as Germany, then the reason for that is that there are a lot of part time workers, who often don't get enough money to be able to live off it on their own (e.g. married people, single parents who also get government assistance to make up the difference). That's very different from declaring the full-time work week to be only 32 hours.
It's somewhat similar to Germany, yes, though Germany has fewer part-time workers. In Germany (where I also live) the default options are 35 or 40 hours, though it's becoming more common to have options to work less even in "full time" type of jobs.
Anyway, I doubt the "democratic socialists" in the USA want to ban working more than 32 hours, they just want people to have the same option people have in rich European countries.
They want 32 hours to be legislated as 'full time' -- meaning that employers legally must pay overtime (1.5x normal wage) for any amount of time worked over 32 hours per week.
This is already the case for 40 hours, but they want to reduce the number to 32.
If this is what they want, it's really not very well thought through. Employers can just pay the same amount for 40 hours (paying less for the initial 32 and more for the subsequent 8), and employees will have greater incentives to keep their working week at 40 instead of having more flexibility for work-life balance. This would discourage 32-hour work weeks except for those jobs where employers can easily hire more people to compensate for the 8-hour shortfall (and those jobs are very few in number).
In fact, in Europe it's usually the opposite, where overtime is more heavily taxed, so both employers and employees have incentives to keep the work week within sensible hours. In addition, overtime tends to be restricted by collective wage agreements, which, in contrast to the USA, often apply to non-union members.
They're going to have a lot of very pissed-off employees when they announce the company-wide pay cuts. And competing employers who instead use the strategy of dropping to 32 hours and hiring more employees to make up the difference are going to be able to pay the full rate without any pay cut, making them more attractive to workers.
Also ... ask yourself, why aren't they already doing this to get 50 or 60 hour work weeks out of their employees? Because it's hard to find employees willing to work below market rate for 60 hours a week. (Most employers already strictly limit employee hours, because they hate paying overtime.)
Now, what you're saying isn't completely insane -- I do recognize that some employers may try to do something similar to what you're saying, while trying to justify the pay cuts as a reaction to the new law. Also, there's nothing forcing them to increase the hourly rate, so for a lot of workers going to 32 hours instead of 40 would be a significant overall income reduction.
There will be some friction, especially at first, but I think that over time, the market will normalize around it, and (essentially) 4-day work weeks could become the norm. It's nothing that hasn't happened before, during the fight for a 40-hour 5-day workweek.
It's a skewed bullshit metric though and you can't compare it to most other countries.
It's quite normal here to have one member of a household working 40 hours and the other part-time, for example 20 hours. That's 60 hours of labour for a family and indeed 30 hours on average.
Unfortunately most statistics only include people who actually work, instead of the total potential workforce. So a traditional family where dad works 40 hours and mom stays at home will have a combined total of 40 working hours vs our 60. But because mom doesn't work she is ignored and the family counts toward the average for 40 hours. So they go into the books as hard workers and we are just lazy sobs.
The cherry on top: statistics often cut off around 60-62, while we can't retire until 67+.
Remember: there are lies, damned lies and statistics.
In this case the median would be a lot more interesting than the average. Few do more than 40h (legally) but many do less -> the average always under 40. Similarly, in average men have less than 2 testicles, but >99% have 2.
If the median is 40, then it still means that over half the population have 40h weeks meaning it's the standard.
The median employee in the Netherlands is just barely at the threshold of working full-time (defined as 35 hours or more). Few of those who work full-time cross 40 hours, and part-time can be well below 30; the average comes out to about 30.
Of those working part-time (less than 35 hours), about 12% would like to work more but has no suitable work available, so these are underemployed people working part-time.
Stats
But what's the legally defined full work week? If legally the full work week is 5 days you don't have a 4 day work week, you just have enough privileged people and part time workers to bring the average down to 30.
I don't know if there is a "legally defined work week." The "average work week" is just the average hours worked by anyone performing paid labour, which includes part-time workers, who consist of about half the workforce.
So I did some quick digging and it does seem that there overall work week in Netherlands is rather flexible. That said I did find this from Arbeidstijdenwet:
Legally the upper limit you can work in a week is 48 hours. But that's the upper limit and not what is happening in practice. So I looked that up as well. For full-time employees I found that men average 38.4 hours and women average 35.0 hours. The average work week of 31.9 hours doesn't mean Netherlands has 32 hour work weeks, it's just skewed lower primarily by part time workers.
It's only a position taken by the Democrats in the U.S. because it's something that will safely never pass. Kinda like in 2020 when we had candidates promoting Universal Basic Income.
Didn’t even get a clip art icon for them.
The horror! Won't someone think of the rich who profit from each of these vital services?!
*Profiting from the privatization of these vital services, thereby guaranteeing that those services are degraded to the lowest quality possible while reaching the smallest number of people possible while most of the funds reach the pockets of the people at the top.
As long as a profit motive exists, that motive is that the person at the top gets as much of the money possible, while the people who the services are meant to serve always get the absolute least as is possible, and what is possible continues to diminish until it reaches zero.
I am starting to feel that Fox news is for the filthy rich to watch and for people who are deluding themselves into believing that, one day, they will also become filthy rich.
Most filthy rich people don't watch it I'd say. It's literally made for idiots.
If you just give someone a Palestine for free, what incentive will they have to work?
Principle's office. Now.
The way to remember if it's "principal" or "principle" is that the one that's a person is your princi-pal.
You are my hero. Been mixing that one up since grade school
if i ever get a free palestine, u can be damn sure im putting it on display on my god damn fanciest shelf
Free Palestine? Hell, I'll take two!
I don't know, have you seen it lately? It's a Fixer Upper.
The older generation is so selfish they don’t want the younger generations to get something “easier” than they think they had it. “I walked uphill both ways in the snow” kind of thinking. Most privileged generation.
Good luck being distracted by age. That's almost as bad as red/blue state bullshit. Sure, the people in power in those states is making a difference, but my point is there's a huge mix of people in every state. And in the same way, there's plenty of old progressives and young fascists.
Constantly putting this crap on older generations implies you're one of the ones hoping the problem will die off.
It won't.
And distracting you from realizing that is the big reason for the push for "boomers" to equal "evil". There's a lot of idiot evil boomers, but there's plenty of young idiot evil fascists.
The problem ain't gonna die itself away. We must fight.
And teach. We're fighting ignorance and intolerance. We all gotta learn
Critical Thinking Skills are the best offense against propaganda.
I've been hearing that the Republican Party will wither from attrition as they all die off for 50 fucking years. We should be free of them by now, but instead they've taken over everything.
I always tell people to remember back to that first big protest in Chancellorville, when all those neo-Nazi fuckwits marched in with their tiki torches, chanting "Jews will not replace us". ALL those weenies were under 40 years old. Rush Limbaugh and all the other psychopathic propagandists have been great at recruiting and indoctrinating new psychopaths into their ranks, and replacing all the old psychopaths that finally got dragged to Hell.
You don't understand Christianity. Christianity is the religion of the police state. Revelation 22:15 encapsulates the notion of how the sinners are surrounded, with everyone who loves AND practices lying (not TO) being the undercover cops. Jesus' crucifixion let us see who the idoltarers were, and cost one Roman soldier with a spear a promotion. I guarantee those tiki torch fuckers were 80% cops. The Proud Boys are feds. I know this because the joke is I had to be a crackhead because I wasn't good enough to be a pothead, which is a festival cop.
This is sorta the same defense as "#NotAll(X)". Because, like, yeah, obviously there are plenty of older progressives. But... The issue at hand here is one of power. Older generations have more wealth on average and hold more conservative views on average. It's sorta on them to use their positions to make lives easier on those younger and less fortunate than themselves, and unfortunately for the rest of us, they are less likely to do so. And I say this with a boomer grandma doing her fucking best protesting outside ICE facilities.
To pretend there isn't an age bias is silly. To pretend there is only an age bias is also silly. But it does exist, interrelated to wealth and power disparities that everyone is suffering from. So, you know, fuck boomers. If you don't like hearing that, then really reflect on what that says about you.
In closing, yeah, the problem won't simply die away, but I ain't gonna pretend it doesn't help, even if it isn't every boomer's fault.
The point that you are glossing over and dismissing as a minor one is Central to my theme: the problem is not going to die itself away.
Most of the people riding off boomers assume that all the youngsters are progressives. They are not.
Nowhere did I say boomers are equally as progressive as any other group. There's a reason I didn't say that. There's a reason I said the other things that I said.
I don't think everyone is saying the youth are all progressives, either. I think the only people saying that are conservatives.
The problem will get better with people dying of old age, though. You can't really deny that.
Around 44% of Boomers consider themselves conservative.
Around 33% of young adults do.
Go ahead and wait around while the fascists only increase the propaganda if you think that'll help, but in my humble opinion, that only falls into their trap. They get us to wait while they keep fighting tooth and nail.
I don't think I said anyone should wait, though.
And young people aren't doing enough to push back either, so fuck youth too.
True, but I think if we're going off pure numbers, fuck men. Like, they are doing the least outta all these groups.
Thinking in labels is inherently dualistic thinking. The brain processes entanglements, and it is möbiated entanglements, that which the Buddhists called "defiled" that manifest the illusion of the self. This is giving a string a half-twist to create dualistic dichotomy (inner/outer). A form of möbiation that would take a minute to explain, but can be summed up in the phrase orthogonal relativity, and this picture, is what allows the brain to process an eleven dimensional topological matrix. Yer a knot, Neo. Enlightenment is being the effect before the cause - developing your prefrontal cortex to predict and outclass the animal parts of the brain, and resolving all karmic debt to demöbiate all your mind back into a unified field of entanglements.
Last night at dinner boomer maga: “why aren’t the kids drinking anymore?” Me: well we got like 10 jobs and have no time so i imagine they have like 20 jobs even less… “we used to go to work hungover”… oooooookay
Twas the Homer Simpson generation, meanwhile we're all Frank Grimes
How about getting a single DUI will absolutely ruin your life? I'm so paranoid about drinking that I NEVER drink when I'm out for dinner. If a cop pulls me over, I want to be able to say "I haven't had a single drop to drink."
Besides, what's wrong with people drinking less? Not smoking and drinking are two of the best things you can do for your life. This guy wants young people to fuck up their lives, so that he feels better about fucking up his?
It's funny that you think not having a drop to drink will prevent the cops from arresting you for DUI with a 0.0 breathalizer anyway and the DA from prosecuting you despite an additional 0.0 blood test.
Their finding out the hard way that nothing lasts on this Earth and that death always comes to reap its due.
My favorite activity for a minute now is to ask people the definitions and differences between socialism and communism. It's entertaining.
o0o in a similar vein, i like to ask them if they are pro fascism or anti.. reminding them that they really only get to pick one.. and watch them squirm as their programming conflicts
which is hilarious as they generally also couldnt define fascism if their life depended on it
I once explained some socialism ideas on Reddit. One user called me a communist, another a Nazi. It was a very confusing pair of responses but said more than either would ever know.
Because outside of a class room the terms are meaningless.
The PRC is still officially Communist, and has billionaires.
North Korea still claims to be a communist state too,
It's more interesting to look at things like the USSR before, during and after the New Economic Policy period. Or, to look at the USA at the time when policing was outsourced to the Pinkertons. Or, at the UK when firefighting was a for-profit enterprise.
It's not technically communist (yet), but it is supposed to be socialist ("with Chinese characteristics").
And another person proving my point.
Tbf, Maoism was certainly more aligned with communist principles, though with their entering into the global capitalist marketplace they've certainly morphed quite a bit. They still maintain a unilateral top down structure and control, while allowing their citizens to benefit from certain elements of capitalism.
You just proved my point.
lol Communism with a smidge of Capitalism Characteristics
But you're wasting their time, and yours.
Instead say, "I like this candidate. She wants to tax the rich."
What blows my mind is that basically all of these fit in with fiscal conservative ethos.
Palestine opens a whole other can of billions of dollars of foreign government spending separate from the ethical concerns, which is less clear cut on market economics and would need to be an essay by itself. So I will just stick with the 6 out of 7 low hanging fruits for this argument, and mock the completely not fiscally conservating mess the Republican party has become.
The conservatives abandoned ethos long ago in favor of being against everything the progressives are for.
One of the bits that blew my mind was watching foreign politics and learning other countries have right wings further left than our own left. Fucking Overton windows.
Green New Deal is also incredibly sound economics and conservative ethos. Economically speaking, which is better: something you have to spend a bunch of time and effort mining for and then can only ever use it once or something you spend a bit more effort mining and manufacturing, but then can receive gains off your investment for decades? Gains that exceed your initial investment well before expected end of life.
And that's just the economics of the gains; completely forgoing the cumulative costs burdened upon society by climate-change (increased heating/cooling-costs, early deaths because of pollution, crops failing and the mass-migration as a result of that). Continuing with fossil fuel is very very dumb if you look at the medium to long term.
For sure, but I focused on just the easily quantifiable economic returns because most people who would call the Green New Deal the Green New Scam are also climate change deniers. So, focusing on just their own pocketbooks with things that can easily be measured and calculated seems a better approach.
True, although we shouldn't pretend that the cost for building a coal mine or developing an oil field is more single use than a solar farm or wind turbine. Many oil wells and coal mines operate for decades with relatively small operational costs after initial build out. Time in production difference is not statistically significant enough to make that a linchpin argument.
The jobs created by solar and wind in R&D, manufacturing, and construction and maintenance, along with most importantly the carbon emissions benefits are the most relevant economic points. Nuclear should also be part of the Green New Deal, but fossil fuel companies successfully fear mongered that sector to death.
There was a time where I was moderate, willing to believe the word of conservatives who said they wanted fiscal responsibility. I now know that they are craven liars, and have become fully radicalized.
Preach! I still consider myself to be a moderate or centrist as a leftist libertarian (social progressive and fiscal conservative), and also haven't believed Republicans were actual fiscal conservatives since Bush Jr. They have been only social conservatives since arguably at least Regan. Still pissed off that insane Ayn Rand utopian individualists and Christian Nationalists became the entire libertarian movement.
would it? i've had far worse experience in large medical systems than i have in small clinics.
From a customer service standpoint, no, but I was talking about the cost perspective. A single payer system financing small clinics would be the best answer here, getting rid of the corporate hospital impersonality while keeping costs low. If a doctors office doesn't have to deal with the insurance middle men and pharmacy middle men who are parasitically draining the system, you will have more neighborhood clinics and hospitals that care about their city's residents.
Health care ? Stable economy ? You really want that ?
You'll end up just like Boomers with fancy "pensions" and "cabins" and happy grandkids DO YOU REALLY want tha.... yeah that sounds pretty pretty pretty good comrade.
Soon enough it's going to be "Food? Clean water? Those aren't in the constitution, that'll be 50 dollars for that small bag of rice, cash or klarna?"
Klarna or
physical enslavementprison labor?They'll put a tax on oxygen after
Bro didn't have an icon for Palestine
Their graphics team is working on an icon of bombs landing on kids probably.
Faux news doesn't have one already?
It's just the American flag
That's just the default if you ask GPT to generate "Palestine Icon" with no descriptors.
Socialism!
Ooohh. Say it again!
If you see this and think these things are bad things to have in your country, you are seriously fucked in the head and I hope you die a horrible death from colon cancer.
Terry? 🤔
HOW DARE THEY GIVE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE LITERALLY EVERYTHING THEY EVER WANTED!!!
AAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
😂😂😂😂😂😊😂😂😂😂😂
if they had room on the graphic, it'd be there too.. but their racism runs deeper, and just think of all the black and brown people that would benefit from these policies. they don't care that "all" includes all the maga nuts, too, doesn't even register in their minds.. it's just that "those" people.. the "wrong" people.. would get something--anything, is just too much for them to handle.
OK, that clinches it. I've had a feeling since the first time I saw this graphic that there was some sympathetic background worker at Fox News who purposely made the thing look as appealing as possible. "Culture war" issues are still kneejerk, hot button topics for a lot of that audience.
Time to never vote for any of these candidates!
I’d say /s but that was literally many, many unironic comments in 2024
This is what the boomers most fear. Telling, huh?
I'm a boomer and want those things.
My parents are boomers and they want these things. And most people in their circles are the same. So I really get annoyed when I see this sentiment online, especially on Lemmy where you’d think people would know better. A lot of MAGA support is coming from younger people. Why do you think that Kirk dickhead was at college campuses, not retirement homes. These are people who are not anti vax because they grew up with polio. They support unions because they have seen them work.
Eh, plenty of Boomers will say they want those things but then shoot down any attempts at them as "not the right way". These are the kinds of people who showed up to the Democratic primaries in 2020 and voted for Joe Biden. If they really wanted these things they'd vote in the primaries for politicians who are fighting for them.
Eh, plenty of younger people will say they want those things but then decide not to vote for the Democrat candidate who made it as the nominee because they didn't pass some purity test. And that hands power to the fascists.
I voted for Biden. And Clinton. And Harris. In the general election, because not doing so was a vote for fascism. I also voted for different people in the primaries because that was my chance to vote for a progressive.
To be clear, you're trying to deflect blame away from people who show up to the Democratic primaries to vote for strike blocking, genocide supporting geriatrics yes?
Wut
I didn't stutter. Do you lack basic reading comprehension?
The purity test of.. not doing a genocide??
Imagine that before you stand two candidates. One of them supports genocide and corporations as people, but does occasionally manage to also support human rights. The other of them supports genocide and corporations as people, but also is working to break our democracy and replace it with fascism.
Those are your two options.
If you decide not to vote for the first one because they support genocide, then you are lending your support to fascism.
I would hope you would have supported a better candidate earlier in the process, but the point is that when faced with the final voting options, many people withdraw from voting because they don't like the candidate that is of the party that they would support if they did like them.
And so the fascists win that voter's voting power, essentially.
Worth noting that I'm not talking about earlier in the process because the above scenario is an extremely simplified version of what our options have mostly been.
Then the country deserves to be sanctioned out of existence and balkanized. Sorry about your shitty situation. Death to America.
As with any generation, many of the people who were teens in the 60s did not like the depression- and war-torn, conformist, society they grew up in, They had much different values and music and politics and approaches to life. Yes ... today they'd be called democratic socialists, they showed up for Sanders' tour. They don't watch what Mideas Touch calls the 'Regime Media'. The Repubs are running scared about the midterms, for a good reason.
Thinking everyone in an earlier generation is to blame for anything today is wrong-headed and the result of just not knowing enough about history.
Yeah, I had relatives that grew up with polio, etc. They (and I) are very pro-vax!
Good, I'm glad you're one of the decent ones.
Who did you vote for in the 2020 Democratic primaries?
This is Fox telling them what to hate.
Anybody has the video? I wanna know if this is real and if it is I wanna see them try to spin that the bad way.
https://youtu.be/LQzhGnuhx0I
Clown world is the only place this could not be a joke. Like what else could they have on there? Free oral sex on request? Support for kittens?
Fox news is just an online church. Preaching all the hate, gloom & doom. No one is allowed to be happy or have nice things. Fear is the flavor of every day. What a sad, sad cult this is.
It's like when AOC was gaining popularity so they showed her platform on Fox. Showing all these good things as "bad".
It almost makes me wonder if the people working in their graphics department are left-leaning. You'd think they'd at least do something like add dollar signs to the art to make it clear that these good things aren't free.
I once met someone who worked on computer graphics for one of the NFL broadcasters. He hated gridiron football with a passion, but a job was a job, so he made animations involving shiny humanoid robots, because apparently that has something to do with gridiron football. I don't know if he snuck easter eggs into his stuff, but I wouldn't be surprised.
FTFY
I don’t get it
AOC is a fake leftist CIA plant to temper and suppress actual revolutions in burgerland. AOCIA
Stop skipping your meds dude.
You should start skipping your lib brain pills dude.
Ah yes, thanks faux news for accidentally advertising socialism and making them look cool
Well, unfortunately they can just show this, because a third of the country apparently hates these things for some reason
Well those things are obviously bad, if they weren't, their "team" wouldn't fight so hard against it!
I find it funny that they couldn't find a pictogram for the last one.
Watermelon emoji
The Palestinian flag emoji exists. 🇵🇸
They could, but it was overruled at the last minute for being too racist even for Fox.
I like how the Free Palestine bit clearly wasn't part of whatever presentation they stole this from.
When you're so racist and classist, that you've become afraid of "all".
This boogie-man makes perfect sense when viewed through the lens of zero-sum thinking. They literally view helping other people as being detrimental to their own position because it means that the people "beneath" them are now less far beneath. This makes their position feel less lofty because we've raised the floor of human suffering, thereby making them feel less advantaged and less high above that floor of human suffering by comparison.
It's not even a meme to characterize them as saying, "the suffering is the point" when they support certain inherently evil consumerist practices. They literally think that way.
Yep - sounds like some dumb Facebook platitude, but I like “Equal rights for others does not mean fewer rights for you. It’s not pie.”
Isn't that like part of being a fundie?
Sounds good to me, what's the problem? 🥴
This is some fat cat problem we are too poor to understand I guess.
Maybe the graphics designers are insiders?
It’s very much a “they knew” kind of thing here. Like how many of the staff is actually in on this. It’s so blatant it’s ridiculous.
Toss in freeing Ukraine and stopping China's genocide of the Uyghurs and I know who I'm voting for!
You've been shown probably hundreds of times on this website that the uyghur genocide is western propaganda designed to make you hate China, and yet you continue to parrot it. The liberal mind is fascinating.
All I’ve seen are genocide denialists.
Not very observant, are we?
I am but I can’t speak for you.
I'll speak for that user. They can't observe very well.
I shared with them a 2022 UN report that acknowledges human rights abuses of the Uyghurs and other minority populations (via OHCHR), but I purposely didn't say it was the UN. They then went to say the UN said there was no genocide.
That’s just the CIA trying to make China look bad because they’re racist.
You should believe in yourself more.
You said you couldn't speak for them, but that's a spot-on impression
I'm newer to the "site", but way to go on making a statement that presumes truth with nothing to back it up. You may be using reverse psychology or be a bot, but for posterity, let's put out some actual info.
If we presume your comment to be sincere, then it would logically follow that you would dismiss all the western nations' legislative declarations that genocide has taken place, and that dismissal would extend to claims made by all the activist organizations.
How about some reports and declarations from international bodies who jump through hoops to avoid commitment? I'll link them below, which you can evaluate on your own. An example of noncommittal can be found in the activist criticism against the OHCHR assessment. The assessment goes in great detail of all the human rights abuses but doesn't mention the word genocide or try to address if it meets the definition. Unsurprisingly, China's retort to the assessment was "Nuh uh we are fighting terrorism" and NK, Cuba, and Venezuela advocated on behalf of China with "Shhh please don't publish"
https://genocidescholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Final-IAGS-resolution-Uyghurs.pdf https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-cables/icc-complaint-alleging-uighur-genocide-cites-china-cables-as-evidence/ https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/ohchr-assessment-human-rights-concerns-xinjiang-uyghur-autonomous-region
The UN disagrees.
To clarify, you're saying the UN disagrees with the OHCHR assessment...
Edit: Clearly pointless to continue a thread of comments
I'm a little surprised I was able to make you say something so stupid so quickly. The OHCHR Assessment is a UN statement. It concludes the many claims about human rights abuses are supported and there is cause to claim China has committed crimes against humanity. It never discredits genocide, for—as I summarized previously—it avoids addressing the term genocide completely.
Glad we can agree, then!
The UN says there's no genocide of the uyghurs taking place in China.
There is no war in Ba Sing Se.
Journalists: not allowed in Gaza. Despite that fact we have thousands of hours of evidence of genocide.
Journalists: allowed in Xinjiang. 0 evidence for genocide except for a man named Adrien Zens' testimony.
oh no, basic universal rights!
Even for the poor? Oh, the humanity!!!
This is a regular bit on FOX News. The list all the platform points of a Democratic official and play it as if it's offensive when they should be positive points and are, popular policies according to most polls.
I've seen lists played this way on FOX for years now, including the original Green New Deal.
I don't understand how this works, and am disquieted that it does. FOX is super confident in the thrall it has over it's viewership.
It works because the average Fox News viewer:
That gives me a glimmer of hope, that the boomers dying off (and some of us Xers) will allow the Overton window to shift again away from tribalism and towards mutualist values.
It is curious though, since the silent generation and greatest generation both had a sense of legacy, e.g. planting trees knowing you will not live to feel their shade. I wonder if it's related to the rise of consumerism and the disposable product economy.
While I agree with this depiction of the older demographics, it leaves out the "values" that Fox News viewers are propagandized into accepting.
They believe we live in a meritocracy, government should leave them alone, America is a great nation, and everyone has to earn their way in life. These "values" allow older Republicans to take pride in their lives and the younger Republicans blame themselves (or immigrants/minorities/etc) for their lack of success.
It's negative programming. It's a psychological technique used to prevent the subject from engaging with a subject earnestly when a source of free information is available by 'poisoning the well' ahead of time by associating the idea with an 'opposed ideology' thus discrediting the source of further information ahead of time.
Works on enough people to matter.
Where do I sign up?
Election
Fireman saves kitten and no money changed hands. Fuck that communist bastard fireman! /s
Worse yet, the fireman was paid for by mandatory taxes by everyone even though most of them have never needed a firefighter in their lives
/s for good measure
They're terrified at the idea of the "lower class" having anything good. They think it takes something away from them. They're terrified of people having good things without "earning" it, even though the rich aren't earning it either
It's like Syndrome in The Incredibles with the "When everyone's super, no one will be." But for them, when everyone has a living wage, social safety net, human rights - they won't be superior to anyone anymore.
And when they're still a failure and not even superior to anyone who has it worse… who are they anymore?
The only thing I would alter is "college for all those that want it". However, this would also include "trades training and paid apprenticeships to those that want it".
Also, why not toss in a UBI?
Usually when they say free college, it really means College/ Trade School. If we ever do get around to doing this, trade school will definitely be part of it.
And yeah, we need to start a serious conversation about UBi, since AI is threatening to permanently unemploy a significant double digit percentage of Americans.
I'm a socialist!
I know this is a long shot, but does anyone have a link to a stream of this show's segment? I tried Googling for it, but came up with nothing. I'd genuinely like to know what their argument against having these things is. I'm assuming it's the same old "who's going to pay for it" thing, which we all know is silly because we always seem to have plenty of money for wars, bailouts, subsidizes for corps/billionaires, etc. Still I'd like to hear their fearmongering talking points on this one.
Guaranteed the entire argument is: Socialism.
If you see this and think these things are bad things to have in your country, you are seriously fucked in the head and I hope you die a horrible death from colon cancer.
I don't find anything wrong.
Socialism will give you scary big dicks
this is scary if you are someone that relies on exploitation for your livelihood.
Don't tease me with a good time.
THE HORROR!
OMG, they used the red background color! PANIC!!!
Damn so scary. It sure would be horrible to have a good job support supporting the environment, while also having healthcare, education and fair wages at my Disposal. And free Palestine at that.
"Unfortunately, it doesn't say anything about slaughtering the people we hate, so it's a no go." - MAGA
"None of this actually works because we pay tons of people to convince you we can't try it"
Imagine being the richest nation to ever exist, and being told it isn't possible to have these things.
Why is fox news trying to threaten me with a good time?
Wow where would I donate to the horrible monsters behind this movement just so I can carefully avoid clicking the link and sending money
https://act.dsausa.org/donate/donation
Housing for all? No genocide?! These mosnters!
Another example of the Caduceus being wrongly used instead of the Rod of Asclepius.
Looks great to me.
Their base has been so brainwashed into thinking that other people getting things means they WONT get those things, because as Democrats have pushed for equity reforms, Republicans have eroded away worker and lifestyle protections, and purposely ran propaganda campaigns to tell them their declining lifestyle is because of Democrats.
Many people don't want non-whites to get any of these things. They'd rather get nothing themselves than some of them get nice things. They're scumbags
Sign me up!
omg. unthinkable! I'd much prefer to go bankrupt from uni and/or getting sick! THIS IS UNTHINKABLE!
Sounds rad. Let's do that then.
Is there anything worse than giving the American people what they deserve and want?
I am pretty comfortable with socialism. Why is Palestine getting shoehorned in here?
Because systematic elimination of a country via genocide is not acceptable. Same as it's happening currently in south Lebanon.
Palestine is a dogwhistle call against "antisemitism", which is defined by them as anyone who doesn't stringently support Israel. It's the AIPAC part of their stance. AIPAC has paid them good money for that representation.
Not to mention, USA and UK founded Israel for a reason, and give Israel money and weapons every year for a reason, too.
It's not AIPAC alone, it's also our long-term strategic goals in the Middle East. That's why Israel is there, and AIPAC is only one tool in the box, the obvious one. Meanwhile, US military is testing and refining its new weaponry against Lebanon and Palestine, and all of those missiles cost a fortune. But, it's vital to them to expand their growth every year. Only way to do that is war.
I'm wondering why imprisoning the MAGA High Command isn't up there.
Gimme gimmie
This has to be fake right? It's too on the nose.
I cannot find a single flaw in this plan. I want it.
Looks amazing!
yup blame everything on the Dem's REAL UM NOT Cleaver duh
Sounds like a pretty great platform. Way better than what we are currently getting.
"Uuuh, hmmm..." - MAGAs
The governments, with lower corruption, are successfully running their public services funded by taxes. The USA will need to reduce the defense budget, lower corruption and stop voting for shitbag politicians.
I'm probably gonna catch flak for saying it, but are they wrong? Israel's genocide is easily the #1 issue I see presented on why a DSA voter did not vote for a DNC candidate in previous elections.
But if we do that, we can't have the world's biggest Navy and maintain hundreds of bases all around the world!
We have over 100 bases in Italy alone, that's very expensive. Think of the Italian children YOU BIG DUMMY. They will go berserk making pizzas and whatever
https://www.italianfacts.com/en/art-109-us-military-bases-in-italy-here-s-where-they-are-located-region-by-region
Just show New York City's rapid deterioration. Socialism IS scary for America. But so is Trump.
Might I remind you that what you call "socialism" is generally called "basic human rights" in the rest of the developed world?
Europe is not socialist by any means, nor is Japan, nor is the UK, but they all have reasonably priced healthcare and education, varying degrees of help for the homeless, etc.
Not having children starve in school because their family is poor is not socialism, it's basic decency.
Not being forever in debt because of a medical complication you likely had no control over is not socialism, it's basic decency.
Providing services that make everyone's life better is not socialism, nor is properly regulating what corporations and billionaires can and cannot do, it's a reasonable middle ground with seems to elude you and many of your compatriots.
You Americans need to understand that, despite the decades of propaganda you've been fed, your country is woefully behind compared to the rest of the world. If you want it to get better, you need to set aside your prejudice towards "leftist" (and I mean it in the lightest sense of the word, even the right-most of right-wing parties abroad doesn't wish to eliminate public healthcare) policies, or you'll be stuck being the richest third world country for the rest of time.
I second that. It's always a sensitive topic with Americans because a lot of them are really in a bubble.
Only a handful of countries worldwide don't have a universal heathcare system. Only one is in the "developed countries" list.
Universal healthcare is not socialism, it's a very pragmatic policy that saves a lot of money for everyone but private insurance companies.
Public health in general is disastrous. Obesity and diabetes rates are alarmingly high. The food industry is literally killing Americans, much more than terrorists or wars, but they have free pass.
Predatory loans on students are another third-world mafia idea of an education system.
When corporate can pour money on campaigns, all we see is a legalized corruption system.
I could go on. But at this stage, you probably understand why the US don't "have people from Norway": the only people living in a developed country who would benefit from going to the US are wealthy enough to not fear the healthcare and education systems.
I personally know folks who went to the US with promises of better pay and very low taxes. They were debt free before going. Now they're in debt for the rest of their life, are worried about their kids studies and their own retirement. The American dream quickly turns to a nightmare.
What about NYC is rapidly deteriorating that wasn't an issue before?
It's the taxes. There's a reason people bike in Europe and not because it's cute it's because the high taxes on gas are used to support public transportation. Imagine being closer to the source and paying more because it's taxed to shit. The high taxes on what we enjoy with just a price point to fund projects that never become complete or serve the direct purpose, is what bothers them.
That's a lot of words to say they only care about themselves.
#1 question who's gonna pay for it? Free isn't free with those goods and services.
Given there's a trillionaire class you could totally start a trust and in 5 years have enough money to fund all of those for 10 years worth of those good and services the questions are: how much do you want in the trust, how much do you think we should tax people to reach that goal and how are we going to make this work effectively because eit would have to be in the bench mark of the 200k$ and up class to make it effective.
Medical, Housing and Work Leave are the biggest that would cost the most you could make college free and make it go off of income as well but that's still making pay just not up front.
Put it this way housing market in New Hampshire fuckin' sucks and the taxes are a fuck load but there's no sales tax because they evened it out.
So unless you can even these goods and services out effectivly in the way of where the hell are you getting the money to pay for these goods and services, you're not getting far.
Doctors need to get paid, college professors need to get paid, housing authorities and landlords still need to get paid (and utilities and all that shit), like solar/wind/nuclear still needs funding.
It's not that they don't want it!!! They don't know how to make it cost effective without it needing to accumulate in a treasury in the same amount of time it would take for 4 presidencies to go by before it could even be used and in that time the new presidents could scrap the trust.
It's not gonna happen. I'm for it. It'll never happen but I'm for it
It's been said countless times. Americans are right now paying way more for these services than they would if it was paid through taxes. The secret to this little scheme, that only every single other devolped country has figured out, and has been fucking screaming at you for a century, is that you cut out the middle men. The shareholders at the hospital, the shareholders at the insurance company, the shareholders at the colleges, the loan sharks making billions off of people needing to survive.
It's not very hard. Get rid of the people who only make profit off of people's suffering instead of helping the situation, and you get a remarkebly better result. Those middlemen are nothing but leeches. They don't actually do anything, they just siphon money out of the pockets of poor people.
America, the only place where this shit is happening, and for some reason, they're hellbent on never looking at how other countries do it, and live in complete denial, thinking they're the createst country in the world.
There's only 1,000 billionaires in the US but there's way more six figure earners. So where does that leave the middle class? Would the near poverty lower class be paying these taxes?
You also overlooked what I mentioned that relative to now it seems like a good idea, yes? Though, in the amount of time it would take to not only accumulate the amount of money through those taxes into a treasury, about 4 presidencies will have gone by, realistically 2 which would mean in the amount of time it would take for this to work the legislation behind it could go away, meaning it wouldn't make a fucking difference and all those funds would dissolve back either into the social security trust or more likely the military funding or the national debt.
It would be a massive gamble to attempt it. You would be playing with a lot of people's money.
We could have "free" healthcare by paying less than we pay today.
We are simply getting ripped off at every turn. For some reason there are a lot of people who think it should cost out the ass for basic care you can get for much cheaper. And it isn't because it is "higher quality" like some claim. A white woman is 2x as likely to die during pregnancy in the U.S. than if they were in Canada. A black woman 6x. So it all ends up being about money/class.
Think about this. The U.S. provides free X-rays for 2.5 million people and their luggage every day, by a federal department that didn't even exist pre-2001.
Our taxes even went down
2001 Brackets: 15%, 27.5%, 30.5%, 35.5%, and 39.1%. The top 39.1% rate kicked in at $297,350.
2026 Brackets: 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35%, and 37%. The top 37% rate begins at $640,600
So who's paying for the department of homeland security? It's not a mystery, we are.
Our health care system is set up to milk every penny they can from the people. We could cut the costs so much that it actually is funny. If it was made illegal to provide health insurance in the U.S. and it was illegal to overcharge on medications and procedures, our healthcare system would get better for the majority of the population.
You're right the costs do make it unfavorable. Quality ain't bad though. An anesthesiologist makes more than a dentist though. So that's cool.
They could, I don't know take the money out of the military budget. There is absolutely fucking no reason that the military is paying $10,000 for a hammer. And look I work for the government The spending is absolutely ridiculous. Why don't we audit what the military is spending their money on?
Good luck why don't you audit Fort Knox as well.
Probably needs it too
Those are all good ideas, but we can't even afford to pay off the debt. So realistically getting this done is scary for people that realize it would require slave labor, and we are only getting that by villainizing one group of people and using force.
America flavored socialism is scary just in the way they think. Scary because it will suppress actual revolution for years. There will be some token efforts and in the end will be bluemaga
This is accelerationist bullshit. People are more capable of organizing mass movements when they aren't forced to focus on survival. Organized labor in the US was the strongest it had ever been under FDR's social democracy. Advancing welfare in a capitalist economy actually heightens contradictions because it becomes more clear to the working class that those things are good and that the owning class opposes it.
...I think you put this abrasively, and in a "tankie" kind of way.
But mark my words, bluemaga will happen. I dunno who, we're gonna get a Democrat Trump, for sure.