If lemmy.world finds this, please tell my starving children that I love them.
But have you thought about the shareholders and the executives? They are the ones that really have it bad!
If only those lazy poor people worked harder and pulled themselves up by this bootstraps.
It's not like we systemically work towards keeping them poor so we can have the power!
Last quarter my 401k dropped by 0.3%! IM THE VICTIM HERE
To be fair when you have that much money 0.3% is a lot of money (for a poor person)
It's more that the 401k grew 0.3% the previous. Still growing, still a lot, just not quite as much of an increase.
I’m in my 40s and I honestly still don’t understand the appeal of the GOP to the average American. I have never seen them put forth a policy that does not seem to be shitting on one group or another. What has the GOP done in the last 40 years to make the average citizens life better?
shitting on one group or another
That's the whole point. They're the party of oppression, and the people that follow that party believe that those groups should be oppressed.
That's the interesting thing they don't. They typically do the best they can to make lives worse for their constituents and they'll be happy about it as long as the "others" are getting fucked over more than they are.
That they hate some of all the other people the consevative voters hate, and they are happy to starve if the group they hate starve too.
It is a stupid premise I know, but you can see posts about evil things the gop does, and somehow "centrists" find a way to blame the democrats for that.
I think that is actually true. The average poor republican doesn't want to be wealthy, if that would mean that would also become more wealthy or have more rights. This also applies to other political subjects. I mean a poor republican who works a terribly paying job with no worker rights or healthcare would actively vote against politicians who say they'd want to change that situation, just to make sure that underage girls that got raped are forced to give birth to their unwanted childs they then can't provide for.
If you don't let people starve. They'll learn to be lazy and it'll be the downfall of our society! /s
we should also get rid of the inheritance tax so I can make sure even more generations of my family will never need to work and be lazy! /s
Yes we need the society to look like Hercule Poirot's England where you had to wait for your uncle to die, or help them on the way, to get some inheritance.
You're not far left enough for me if you're still thinking that instead of "let's go grab the guillotine"
The replies to this are insane. These people are actively harming millions. Its their fault if the world forms a fist aimed at their faces.
That's fine with me, I don't have any interest in "let's just kill a bunch of people" as an ideology. It's objectively wrong.
That's not the ideology though, guillotine memes are essentially just pushing for revolutionary restructuring of the state and economy. Nobody simply thinks "kill rich" and stops thinking there.
When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist. - Hélder Câmara, an archbishop
Hélder Câmara ❤️
Júlio Lancellotti ❤️
The people whining are literally brain damaged. Conservatism is legitimately brain damage. Given the harm they do though I have no sympathy.
That study states that brain damage can cause more conservative views, but the reverse isn't true. Not everyone with conservative views has brain damage.
arguable
This is kind of an aside but it's always weird looking at caricatures of poverty from the 90s and earlier, where people live in modest homes they seem to own. Or people living alone in plain apartments in places like New York.
A six-figure salary in so many cities means that you can probably rent a decent apartment and never own anything. It's just so obvious that this system isn't working.
If there's one thing Hollywood is known for it's accurate depictions of the housing market.
You're right, but on the other hand, no one in the 1980s watched Married With Children and thought, "a shoe salesman? With a house? How absurd!" Because houses were affordable.
housing used to be affordable. I've seen the value of the modest house i grew up in increase in value after my parents sold it so much that I can't afford to even think about buying it now that i'm the age they were when they bought it. and it looks like the new owners have let it go to shit.
Exactly. People did talk about how homes on TV in the 1980s were unreasonably large, but the idea that Al Bundy's family or Roseanne's family couldn't have a house at all was not even one people considered. Because of course you could afford a house.
Commie. The poor will just trade the food for drugs, might as well throw it away as trash and shoot anyone that gets near it.
as somewhat of a 'commie' yea kinda, but again its crazy that someone who toils away at work for the better part of his life and earns a salary for his contribution to society will sometimes have to be hungry or homeless. on average you do all that and are at least always struggling for money come on.
considering we have smartphones, rockets and AI, at this point im surprised some people are not considering alternatives.
I've always wondered where i would land on the political spectrum if I didn't live in the US
Do you think the Means of Production should be owned collectively, or individually? Do you agree with horizontal power structures being dominant, or do you believe more in centralization?
There's a ton more to it, but those 2 questions pretty clearly give you a direction.
Tax should pay for healthcare of all citizens.
Why am I paying tax if I still have to pay to see a doctor?
Yeah I think Republicans and centrist Democrats are involved in a massive gaslighting campaign against the American citizens. ie: the overton window, aka shifting what's thought of as acceptable towards corporate donors requirements. Empathy is what makes us human.
One of the defining traits of the left is empathy.
One of the defining traits of humanity is empathy.
If you're not left you're less than. I said it. I stand by it.
Humans are really good at empathizing. But we are also really good at delineating between in and out groups. It was crucial to protect your tribe over every other human. We now have a massive problem of entire countries or even the world being the "in-group" since we have enough resources for everyone to survive.
But those people wanting power are really good at exploiting that group mentality to cause groups to form in people's minds. Then they use that delineation to withdrawn empathy from those new out groups. And when those delineations aren't coherent among actual groups, it causes a lot of divisions that can be exploited.
I really wouldn't mind the whole rhetoric of pulling yourself by the bootstraps if it wasn't rigged. The system is literally made to make ppl fail.
There's also the fact that it originated as an expression meaning "doing something impossible" since pulling on your own bootstraps would PREVENT you from getting up.
Sounds very american to me. Its very normal here to at least try take care of the less fortunate.