- cross-posted to:
- socialism@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- socialism@lemmy.ml
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Soon there will be a critical mass of people who have nothing left to lose
Of course, this is going to affect the working class first and worst. But stay with me here.
My wife and I are what you’d call upper middle class. Thanks to our college education, union jobs in public agencies, and mostly being smart with money, our assets are not meager.
Are you like me? Don’t think you’re exempt. They’re coming for our assets too. They want all of us living paycheck to paycheck, begging our employers to not fire us.
What I’m saying is, the class struggle is everyone’s struggle. If you’re not a billionaire, you’re at risk. Act like it.
The #1 issue for all of us is Us versus Them. That’s it. There’s 1000 of them and 350 million of us.
There are about 8 billion of us
Don’t tell the American that there is a world out there. It might kill them.
If they could read, they would be very upset.
But what will you do when the rest of the world’s working poor turns around and suddenly you’re “them”
Right, we need to be careful about defining class struggle globally when we’re in the 99% locally but most of us may be in the 1% globally
This is one of the many reason we need to help our fellow humans, it’s our duty to increase support through agencies like USAid, global public health initiatives, global emergency response, global food aid, global development, education, outreach. We’ve never done enough to support our fellow humans, and now that’s the first place they’re cutting. Do we credit them with the intelligence to call it an intentional part of the strategy to divide us from our fellow exploited class?
Great comment. I think they can be equally intelligent in recognizing the consequences of their actions while also being so short-sighted and obsessed with control and immediate financial and political gain that they don’t recognize how much harm theyre causing for all parties.
Exactly. I don’t think I am poor but in there eyes, I am dirt poor. Anyone can’t afford a seat at their table are at peril.
I’m glad they’re coming for your assets.
You have more than enough and should not receive even more while others have less, just like the billionaires you’re criticizing.
Edit: All the people getting mad at this reality are the reason why we have to choose between clintons and trumps. As soon as someone threatens the wealth of neo-liberals, they immediately agree with conservatives.
Greed and consumerism are the worst issues we face as a species. It makes sense most of you will react the way that you do when being forced to acknowledge your contribution to the problem.
Now, who’s excited for the switch 2 and gta 6?
There’s a massive difference between well-off, or even wealthy (think a practicing doctor/dentist or small business entrepeneur) and billionaire.
Saying ‘screw your savings’ to people like that is the conflict the billionare class wants, instead of everyone focusing on them.
We should be starting at the billionaires and working our way down, but I also don’t care when consumerists and neo-liberals get theirs early.
You have more than enough and should not receive even more while others have less, just like the billionaires you’re criticizing.
This is the important part that you’re conveniently ignoring. Why should the person with a $400,000 house in suburbia be exempt from the redistribution of wealth while children starve? How much are they really contributing to the world to deserve that?
You mention doctors and dentists, and I’d agree with you. They can keep their assets within reason.
What about everyone else who isn’t in medicine? What about the people that aren’t easy for you to hide behind to justify your greed and consumerism?
It’s in our best interest to do things to stay in the “should be higher taxed” group, rather than the guillotine group. And I don’t think it’s as simple as wealth, but how you got it and what you do with it.
- Do you cause misery in your wealth accumulation, or support better jobs for everyone: better health and safety conditions, better benefits, higher pain, share in profits/efficiency, etc
- Do you hoard your wealth or spend on excessive luxury, or do you direct more to uplift those who didn’t catch the same bus?
I’m under no illusion that I have anything in common with working poor here, much less in less developed countries, but I do know I side more with them than the wealthy. I do know that giving even the least fortunate access to the same bus stop helps us all. I do know that there is a lot that can be done by taxing me more, more of what I have should be redistributed to provide the basics, to start building a more level playing field
I hope to deserve being in “should be higher taxed” group
No it’s not. A well off doctor in the U.S. has more disposable income and assets than ~97% of the worlds population, and is able to sustain their resulting material wealth as a function of economic labor exploitation of “developing” countries
Y’all are just mad because Trump is kicking you down to hang with the rest of us poors.
It’s incredible how you absolute cretins are happy to be shoved into the mud just because some other people you don’t like might have to walk through the mud too. What causes this?
Im not sure what you’re talking about. I’m simply calling attention to the fact that Trump is a manifestation of a much more fundamental dissonance between Americans and the rest of the world, particularly the Global South, and even if this country turned around right now the trajectory towards technocratic authoritarianism has been leaning towards this since 9/11. The US is a sick, twisted place; that’s why Trump’s your president.
The French solution
Trickles down on the rich.
Our country is being robbed, our futures stolen
Not me, never had a future.
“Upward transfer”
“Theft” is the word
And yet we get banned for talking about the solution.
Senseless killing is a superficial solution. Organization is the sustainable, but less glamurous one.
That won’t ever work in the US.
Not with that attitude. Seems like MAGA succeeded in organizing sufficiently.
What are you gonna do? Kill all CEOs? And then? Kill all politicians? And then? Police? Military? Dissidents? Do you just keep killing? How do you handle the resulting societal trauma?
How exactly do you think any of that can achieve sustainable, progressive change?
Whatever it takes, and peaceful solutions have proven ineffective for decades.
So what do you propose? What are the logistics of it? How do you organize to take out enough systems to take over? What do you do afterwards?
Life isn’t some fantastical action story, it’s the incredibly complex reality we all live in where a single person cannot fathom all the variables therein. You are not trying to understand, you are not trying to be effective, you’re just circle jerking in your fantasy world. And as long as many people keep doing that, living in some kind of hyper-real abstraction of reality, the people actually smart enough to organize and get into power will be able to do whatever they want. You’re just another enabler.
All you have is “organize” or “awareness.” Your action plan is as circle jerky as ours. My guess is you like the direction the country is going in.
My personal solution is to get out of the house and watch it burn from the neighbor’s yard.
I don’t live in your fash country and no, I absolutely despise the way your country is going in and pulling the rest of the world into hell :)
What I have is political activism in a leftist party where I am helping get new members and organizing various events teaching about democracy and its tools, amongst other things, as well as supporting other groups and bettering the local community.
What you have is fear and a desire to feel good about yourself whilst doing and achieving nothing. You’d rather fuck off than pull through on your mighty words - that’s also called cowardice.
For republicans, “wealth transfer” is a dirty phrase if used in any shape or form that leans towards fairness, a level playing field, and equality. However, handing money to the already wealthy and fuck everyone else is perfectly acceptable wealth transfer.
Well they have all been promised since the Reagan era that it would all trickle back down. I’m sure it will start doing that any day now.
The French public would have a called a general strike at minimum while the AmeriKans take it in the ass.
To be fair the French complain about their access to stolen modern day African money
Because these two countries are otherwise identical in every way. Good thing you have an easy solution that still works in spite of the existence of assault rifles and wire taps
Not exactly.
The American political system turned into a gaggle of Mafias some time ago, France isn’t quite there yet.
I mean it’s pretty much been that the whole time… Idk I guess I’m just tired of people saying basically “Well here’s an obvious solution that you clearly missed because you’re automatically lazy and/or stupid if you’re from the US, and especially if you don’t have the financial solubility or high-demand skills to easily expatriate or you’re disabled, just get up off your lazy corn-fattened ass and go yell at the people who give the US military their orders. Oh, you say you tried and nothing happened? You must have been an utter and complete failure. You deserve this then.”
Not that that’s what is being said precisely, but it hits the same notes. And DicJacobus, this isn’t aimed at you, but at the original comment in this thread. Unless you agreed with them and I misread your tone
did you know that protesting is not legal in many places in the US and also the police like to just murder people randomly
Then, they should have protested when protesting was made illegal. Now, they’re paying the price for that mistake, unfortunately.
That was around 9/11 and when Americans decided that racism was more important than civil rights.
The largest upward transfer of wealth in history… so far.
Not counting the ones during Covid or 2008.
And let’s not forget. Tens of millions of magas, having witnessed the past few months, would vote him in again tomorrow if we gave them a do-over.
As furious as I am at the oligarchs taking over every last thing, evil greedy bastards gonna evil greedy bastard.
That anger pales in comparison to my rage at the tens of millions of my countrymen who dragged the rest of us into this fucking hellscape with them for no reasons beyond:
-Ignorance
-Hate
The ratio of those varies from maga voter to maga voter, but IME those are pretty much the only two reasons I see for why they have condemened not only themselves but also the entire rest of the nation to life in this emerging dystopia. They’ve already killed people in this country with their vote, and the numbers will only go up.
Yet somehow we all still have to go to work and get along every day, but I truly don’t care if I never see or speak to a single Trump voter ever again, and that includes so-called friends and family members. They are all dead to me, or as dead as familial and work obligations will allow. Every last one can choke on a bag of dicks and razor blades as far as I care.
Edit - I beg you, random silent downvoter, to explain to me where I’ve gone wrong in the above.
…the sad part is that perhaps half those MAGAs aren’t necessarily bad people, but they’re so profoundly indoctrinated by its disinformation sphere that they legitimately believe their support serves a greater good…
…the other half are outright evil, though…
I really want this to be it. I want a big enough mass of freak conservative boomers to die off of old age and for the republicans to finally push everyone else hard enough that this country finally fucking snaps and swings left so hard that Reagan’s grave belches black smoke for a month. I hope we swing left so hard that all the Fox News assholes run bawling off to Russia, all the neoliberal dickheads move to their neoliberal paradise of [some offshore oil rig], and we end up fixing all kinds of shit that’s been broken for basically my entire life.
I know it won’t; we’ll just get a bunch of working class republicans standing around the wreckage and mumbling “can you imagine how much worse it would have been under Biden?” to each other.
I want a big enough mass of freak conservative boomers to die off of old age and for the republicans to finally push everyone else hard enough that this country finally fucking snaps and swings left so hard that Reagan’s grave belches black smoke for a month.
Look at Mike Johnson’s face–he’s not dying for a long long time. Get over the idea that evil people are all old and you just need to wait for them to die, it’s not going to happen. New evil ones are born every day, they exist in every generation, they’ve been with us forever and will be with us forever.
J.D. Vance is only 40.
Gen X voted for Trump in greater numbers than the Boomers, who on average voted for Trump less than Gen Z males.
deleted by creator
Guess I’ll give up on everything, not have any kids and shoot myself at age 60,… unironically. I have the gun already.
I have given up on the idea of retirement or security/safety in my lifetime a loooong time back. We live in the worst possible type of dystopia, a world where “evil” won long ago, and has had ample time and opportunity to sink its claws into every aspect of our lives, forever.
And the worst part is that most people won’t even believe it. In fact, almost a majority seem to relish it somehow. Like they want the world to be as terrible as it can possibly be, even for themselves.
And their kids. I couldn’t imagine setting them up for life like this. Then again perhaps they dont really care about them beyond having the “reproduce” achievement unlocked.
My personal take is that the super-elite know there’s no saving our biosphere in our lifetimes so they’re just robbing what they can while they still can.
That’s most millenial Americans’ retirement plans.
I hope they consider overdosing on opiates instead. Put to sleep, probably the only way I’ll know true peace
Again lol. U guys have not realized that two party system does not work …
Many of us realize that it’s broken, but voting doesn’t seem to fix it…
Yep voted for a long long time and tried to be progressive. At this moment I just want this to be over, so whatever the worse is.
And it’s behind a paywall. Chef’s kiss.
The Largest Upward Transfer of Wealth in American History
House Republicans voted to advance a bill that would offer lavish tax cuts for the rich while slashing benefits for the poor. By Jonathan Chait House Speaker Mike Johnson Kevin Dietsch / Getty May 22, 2025, 9:21 AM ET
House Republicans worked through the night to advance a massive piece of legislation that might, if enacted, carry out the largest upward transfer of wealth in American history.
That is not a side effect of the legislation, but its central purpose. The “big, beautiful bill” would pair huge cuts to food assistance and health insurance for low-income Americans with even larger tax cuts for affluent ones.
Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, warned that the bill’s passage, by a 215–214 margin, would mark the moment the Republicans ensured the loss of their majority in the midterm elections. That may be so. But the Republicans have not pursued this bill for political reasons. They are employing a majority that they suspect is temporary to enact deep changes to the social compact.
The minority party always complains that the majority is “jamming through” major legislation, however deliberate the process may be. (During the year-long debate over the Affordable Care Act, Republicans farcically bemoaned the “rushed” process that consumed months of public hearings.) In this case, however, the indictment is undeniable. The House cemented the bill’s majority support with a series of last-minute changes whose effects have not been digested. The Congressional Budget Office has not even had time to calculate how many millions of Americans would lose health insurance, nor by how many trillions of dollars the deficit would increase.
The heedlessness of the process is an indication of its underlying fanaticism. The members of the Republican majority are behaving not like traditional conservatives but like revolutionaries who, having seized power, believe they must smash up the old order as quickly as possible before the country recognizes what is happening.
House Republicans are fully aware of the political and economic risks of this endeavor. Cutting taxes for the affluent is unpopular, and cutting Medicaid is even more so. That is why, instead of proudly proclaiming what the bill will accomplish, they are pretending it will do neither. House Republicans spent months warning of the political dangers of cutting Medicaid, a program that many of their own constituents rely on. The party’s response is to fall back on wordplay, pretending that their scheme of imposing complex work requirements, which are designed to cull eligible recipients who cannot navigate the paperwork burden, will not throw people off the program—when that is precisely the effect they are counting on to produce the necessary savings.
The less predictable dangers of their plan are macroeconomic. The bill spikes the deficit, largely because it devotes more money to lining the pockets of lawyers and CEOs than it saves by immiserating fast-food employees and ride-share drivers. Massive deficit spending is not always bad, and in some circumstances (emergencies, or recessions) it can be smart and responsible. In the middle of an economic expansion, with a large structural deficit already built into the budget, it is deeply irresponsible.
In recent years, deficit spending has been a political free ride. With interest rates high and rising, the situation has changed. Higher deficits oblige Washington to borrow more money, which can force it to pay investors higher interest rates to take on its debt, which in turn increases the deficit even more, as interest payments (now approaching $1 trillion a year) swell. The market could absorb a new equilibrium with a higher deficit, but that resolution is hardly assured. The compounding effect of higher debt leading to higher interest rates leading to higher debt can spin out of control.
House Republicans have made clear they are aware of both the political and the economic dangers of their plan, because in the recent past, they have repeatedly warned about both. Their willingness to take them on is a measure of their profound commitment.
And while the content of their beliefs can be questioned, the seriousness of their purpose cannot. Congressional Republicans are willing to endanger their hold on power to enact policy changes they believe in. And what they believe—what has been the party’s core moral foundation for decades—is that the government takes too much from the rich, and gives too much to the poor.
