"If only my donors would pretty please stop that would be great. Consequences? We need to keep the elderly out of government, and ban lobbying. Until we do BOTH of those things, nothing will change and will only get worse. VOTE.
Well I am glad he finally said something but it’s too little too late. How many more suicides were there this year in the US versus say, 2019? I’ll bet those numbers have experienced inflation. All so Walmarts stock can go up by a dollar.
Corpos = “Slap me harder Daddy Biden! Tell me that I am destroying the middle and the working class for pursuit of increaseing shareholder value and increased profits.”
They don’t. Congress with the President could but won’t.
I’ve no illusions friend. Neither the Republicans nor the Neoliberals aka 90+ percent of Office holding Democrats have the slightest interest in helping anyone, only taking bribes and reinforcing their party’s power.
This nation is over. Reaganomics saw to that and Citizens United dashed the last of the faintest of rational hopes for self-repair. This is just leftover momentum. This labor camp we call the US will eventually collapse under the weight of its own corruption, but until then, we suffer generationally with zero recourse.
No one with any power, no one from the right families is coming to help their capital livestock. This exploitation machine is exactly what they wanted and spent decades lining pockets to achieve.
No one with any power, no one from the right families is coming to help their capital livestock.
That’s an interesting sentence right there. What does that even mean, the “right” families? Are you seriously expecting the people who created the problem to now help solve it?
This exploitation machine is exactly what they wanted and spent decades lining pockets to achieve.
No, of course you aren’t. But by God, let’s also not ask for help from the “wrong” families…
I meant internally right. Goes to the right country clubs. Is on the right museum boards. Is in the little owner’s club that starts with having a 9 figure net worth at absolute minimum.
That’s what I meant by “right” it was a mocking term for the self-protecting, self-elevating wealth class made up of a few thousand of the right families that lord over all of us and believe they are where ultimate authority belongs, and have used their great wealth to secure generationally. This is their system, by their design, and they will continue to use their vast power to defend it.
I’ve belabored the point that they won’t, have no reason to, literally created such conditions to begin with, and actively defend against any change to it.
I do, but if I said it outright I would just be accused of a lack of empathy and intelligence, plus a whole lot of other things far worse than that, so I won’t.
So if you didn’t get my broad hint, I’m not going to be upset, and if you do, like I said, perhaps take my advice to stew and simmer over it before posting a response in affect.
I’ve already been banned from an entire server simply because my username apparently contains a secret message of bigotry and hatred, so I hope you’ll excuse if I’m gonna try to keep it civil and friendly and try not to rustle too many jimmies during my time here.
His alt is @PepeLivesMatter and it are his homophobic and transphobic posts that got him banned on Lemmy World, not the username. He might be banned on another instance too though.
Yes, both parties are cancelling school lunches for impoverished children, reverting environmental regulations, overturning Roe v Wade, forcing women to become baby incubators, cutting social safety nets. Yes, they are both the same…
The Neoliberals that coopted the former Republican opposition party helped Reagan and Clinton destroy the social safetynet. Neoliberal Clinton championed destroying the social safetynet, partnering with Nute Gingrich to do it, around the same time neoliberal biden championed draconian sentencing reform to feed for profit prisons.
Modern Democrats are better than Republicans, but if you want to look for politicians that don’t work against you? Look to the non-neoliberal Democrats that the Neoliberals revile more than their supposed opposition party. There’s about a dozen of them between both Chambers. Most democrats are nice on social issues, but defend this rigged market capitalist hellscape lockstep with republicans.
Clinton at the time was the furthest left that the US as a whole would elect. The third way stuck because it actually worked.
I’m not going to make a snarky comment about how others should’ve put in more work, because I honestly don’t think it would’ve mattered (and it’d be rude). Leftism just wasn’t going to win by any viable margin. You can’t squeeze blood from a stone – when the electorate won’t go further, you have to meet them where they are. I’d love it if Sanders would’ve been elected in the 90s instead of Clinton, but that just wasn’t possible.
The fact remains there has been no attempt on the nation’s part in living memory to actually run the nation by left wing policies. It hasn’t been attempted and yet it is treated in the zeitgeist as if it was repeatedly and was an utter failure. I Consider FDR to be the last remotely progressive President we have attempted.
So when people reduce acknowledging both of our major parties to be varying degrees of economically right wing, center-right(D) to fascist® these days as ‘both parties are the same’ it reeks of bad faith. We can acknowledge both of our parties work against their people economically while not being absolutely interchangeable. It’s just an intential tactic to muddy the waters because some prefer to play team sports, which is exactly the distraction it’s meant and pushed to be.
And you’re right, our people currently have the government they deserve, because they won’t entertain one that works for them and protects them from the capitalist’s whims, that would be evil buzzwords they never bothered to understand or something.
I think there’s still important differences economically even when considering them both to be center right. There’s a strong push for higher taxes on the wealthy and a higher minimum wage among Democrats – the only reason we didn’t see a minimum wage increase is because 1 Democrat opposed it vs the 49 other senators. And while our system still needs work, it doesn’t mean there haven’t been significant changes.
There’s a brilliant provision in the Inflation Reduction Act for instance that ends the corporate tax loophole for the largest corporations. A company above a certain size that makes very high revenue (>1 bil iirc) is required to pay at least 20% in taxes. They can’t loophole their way to $0. The big corporations are going to have to pay actual taxes now.
I’m not going to pretend that Democrats are perfect, but I do think there’s a messaging problem and a tendency to let good works speak for themselves – which doesn’t work. If you remember the rail worker strike that Congress and Biden stopped, that actually wasn’t the end of it. Union leaders have said that the administration continued to work behind the scenes with the unions to pressure the rail companies, and because of that, they’ve gotten the sick days they were demanding.
I would need to do a lot of research to say more about if leftism ever had a serious shake in the US or not, I’ll admit. My assumption is that it was rejected, given the progressivism of the New Deal era didn’t persist. But I do need to do more reading.
I hear you, and mostly agree with some of what you say. Though I take issue with the right families, those being the ones benefitting from the power. What I will point out is the gilded age, and how bad it was back then. Many of the same issues we have today, corruption, bribery, the net worth of the robber barons adjusted for inflation was probably about double the net worth of our current crop of scumbag billionaire villains.
I don’t subscribe to the hopelessness, and I do believe we can end this second gilded age. I just don’t see the ability to do that with either political party’s leadership. We have to reject them both equally while recognizing exactly the issues you’re pointing out with regards to the power structure and inequality. That is essentially what happened when we ended the first gilded age.
IMO it’s better to phrase it as, “The economic system has already collapsed for the majority of Americans, and it’s getting worse. What will happen next?” Because it’s not like people will magically disappear overnight, it’s not like life is terrible for everyone all the time, and some things have improved over the last few decades.
Some people want to say “If we don’t do X, the world will end.” or “We didn’t do X, and it all went to hell, and we’re permanently doomed.” Most of the time, though, end-of-the-world stances are oversimplifications.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is cosponsoring the legislation in the Senate, and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) will introduce companion legislation in the House of Representatives.
It won’t pass, but if Biden can put the blame of it failing on Republicans it could help win elections.
That’s something realistic he could do. For an unrealistic but satisfying option, he could pick the worst offender and make that company an example. Send every OSHA, EPA, and IRS agent they can get to swarm the company and bury them in fines and legal actions.
I don’t think they meant “use agencies as bully goons.”
More like, those agencies are usually left under-resourced and under-staffed, so many companies flagrantly violate safety and employment laws because it’s more profitable to just make more money and pay off an unlikely fine if they get caught.
So, if you focused all the existing attention of those agencies on the worst companies, they’d find tons of legitimate lawbreaking going on, and hopefully punish the crap out of said company.
But, you know how it is “You stole how many millions in employee wages?!?.. that’s $25,000 penalty for you, company. Naughty naughty!”
Exactly, even if they do get caught, the fines are so goddamn low it’s barely worth it. A warehouse in my city got caught using 11-year-olds in their labor force, including having them driving forklifts. Their penalty? The kids can’t work there anymore and the company that owned the warehouse got a $30k fine.
What are YOU doing about it? Not Biden – YOU: the person reading this comment.
I can tell you my overall cost of living since 2020 has plummeted, not because I haven’t faced inflation like everyone else, but because I stopped spending on most extra things. For example: not eating out anymore, cancelled all streaming subscriptions, flexed what I eat based upon coupons and deals at the grocery store (still healthy), I drive much less, etc…
If you keep buying stuff when prices go up, this keeps demand high and, therefore, prices high.
Edit: So far people are saying they are doing nothing different… just continuing to blame corporations. It’s both greedy corporations and people’s fault. If the costs for basic goods and shelter go up, why wouldn’t you adjust?
The prices for fixed costs have gone up, too. People need a place to live, the health to keep living, and ways of ensuring access to both, and the costs of all of those have gone up as well. A not insignificant chuck of people don’t have discretionary spending to cut (not to mention how stressful living paycheck-to-paycheck on the bare essentials can be). Yes, it is certainly worth reevaluating budgets and determining where expenses can be lowered, but those margins have been getting thinner for a long while.
I agree many things have gone up, BUT over the last couple years people kept purchasing without adjustment. I’ve adjusted my grocery purchases (and I’m a nerd who tracks this in spreadsheets) to the point where my monthly costs have gone up 4% over the last 3 years.
New vehicles have shot up in price and people were still waiting in line to buy more! Trillion+ in car loan debt in the U.S… Many of these folks could have bought a used car, fixed their old car, or just waited and purchased later. The numbers are there and support what I’m saying. I’m still driving a very old car (> 15 years old) because I think it’s idiotic to buy another one right now. It sucks, but better than blowing my hard earned cash. This is coming from someone who can afford to ignore interest rates and pay cash and I still won’t do it.
At the end of the day corporations will always be greedy, but only if they can. If people stop buying they can no longer be greedy (supply vs demand). We may be at the point now where people have over extended themselves so much that they simply can’t afford the dumb purchases anymore which means corporations have extracted the maximum from people’s wallets. Sad situation, but I blame both corporations and people.
I stopped spending on extra things too, and it’s really helped. I sold my house so I didn’t have to pay a mortgage and moved into my car which I never drive because buying gasoline will keep the price high. I also cancelled all of my streaming services, so I stare at the ceiling to entertain myself. I eat exclusively organic dirt that’s on sale because I stopped splurging on food. Why don’t people just spend less money?
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