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It's rigged
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2026
1142 points (98.5% liked)
Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
- Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
- Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.
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Reminder that during what many consider America's middle class golden age for a couple decades after WW2 we were TAXING THE EVERLOVING FUCK OUT OF RICH PEOPLE.
Then, surprise surprise, the rich people started buying off politicians to change all that.
EAT. THE. RICH.
They are blood sucking leeches.
Tax avoidance during this period was also at historic highs. One of the perks of the payroll tax was that it collected at the point of the employer rather than being paid directly by the employee. This put the liability for missed payments on the business (which is risk averse) rather than the individual (which often is not) and shrank the labor required for administration from "everyone with an income" to "everyone who pays a salary".
Curiously, we choose not to do this for stock transactions and other big ticket revenue generating sales. Rather than demanding Wall Street assume liability for the vast number of brokerage sales the big clearing houses oversee, we politely ask that each individual stockholder report gains and losses at the end of the year. Private businesses are even worse. Rather than assessing their revenues through the major transaction arteries - banks and commodities/wholesale exchanges - we wait for businesses to self-report.
All this creates enormous blind spots in how taxation is accessed and collected in a way that practically invites business owners (especially small and low-volume business owners) to lie, cheat, and steal.
It's a great bumper sticker slogan. But I don't see any blood on your gums.
Neither yours. I have visible, physical scars from fighting against capitalism and fascists. I don't wanna eat them, I want them gone.
It was a tactical decision to turn people off of socialism/communism.
I think you'll find it's no longer needed.
If anything it did the opposite!
A lot of the yanks still hate communism.
I mean Zohran Mamdani's victory seems to show a developing change.
He's a capitalist.
Cool, have fun in the "Best Leftist Ever" corner over there, I'll go do some more organizing and soup kitchen service.
What does that have to do with anything?
I mean that I don't really want to argue about this with you because it's a waste of time. If being a socialist obligatorily means opposing reform or deeming it contrary to revolution, I don't want to be a socialism, and neither would Marx.
It doesn't also Marx was a communist, he just saw socialism as a necessary step towards communism. The same way capitalism was a step towards it.
But that doesn't automatically make all capitalists and socialists communists.
Well, what would Mamdani have to do in order to be a socialist then, by your precepts?
Give ownership of companies to the state or the workers.
That's fair and consistent with socialism as worker ownership of the means of production, which is my definition too.
That being said, a politician is not capable of doing that without being removed, which means socialist politicians won't exist without a revolution. And a revolution is not currently exactly the most practical thing to get done without revolutionary fervor, which we don't really have enough of, and without logistics like a stockpile of food and stuff for strikers to have, and... it's just a whole can of worms.
Anyway I'd argue 'socialist' is someone who is IN FAVOR of getting there at some point somehow, and 'capitalist' is someone who is in favor of capitalism, and I don't think Mamdani is someone who's in favor of capitalism, just because he's forced to play the cards he's dealt.
But if you wanna go by Stafford Beer's "the purpose of a system is what it does", which is fair, then yeah, Mamdani's not really going to be changing it meaningfully by himself. Then again we're kind of about to see modern civilization go through a heck of a tribulation because of a severe lack of oil (oil bad but fully replacing it is hard and needs a proper transition, not this) and because of climate crisis and a ton of other stuff coinciding. So if anything's going to be toppling capitalism, it's itself from the inside.
Sorry if I was rude earlier. Just tired of purity tests within the left wasting everyone else (in the left)'s time and energy for no good productive reason towards any better outcomes. I suppose that that has made me a bit too prone to lashing out at signs of that.
This, 100% this.
I've had the desire to write a satirical swiftian letter to the editor to a national paper talking about how to tax Americans "fairly" where every single American pays the same amount in taxes regardless of age and income. Billionaires and babies owing the same amount, some ridiculous amount like $50k per person. Then I realized some people might take it as an actual suggestion and try to put it into practice.
Was this after the green new deal?