And prison

ngl I'd turn against my fellow man if I, exclusively, was offered a couple mil untaxed income instantly from a billionaire

You could also end up getting brain worms that way.

And you would probably get high on ketamine from consuming it as well.

Correct, but there is a lot of nuance.

Indeed, when things get bad, the public is willing to take risks. When everything is good enough, they don't revolt.

However, successful revolts do require intelligent and capable leaders.

What the rich have realized, is that if they ensure smart and skilled kids get picked out of the drudgery and get comfortable working for the rich, then the exploited class will not really have anyone to lead them.

Put another way, in 1908, every factory had a few leaders working at the lowest levels. And they are the ones who spearheaded strikes and such.

Nowadays, society is really stratified in terms of skill.

Anyone who grew up poor, but had talent to organize, probably ended up in some kind of middle management or professional job and makes 2x the average.

Convincing these people to have class solidarity is difficult. Only a few of them actually see the bigger. Those tend to become middle or upper management or politicians, making 3-5x the average workers salary. And of those, only a very select few are willing to fight for the common man.

So yeah, the rich engineered a system that they can control. To actually change anything is going to be very difficult.

oh my god im sick of this 'the democratic party cannot fail, only be failed' bullshit. I remember the 2000 election, where these chucklefucks, the same leadership we had in 2024, literally the same people in charge, handed over a presidency that they won because the fascists threw a fit. my life was largely defined by the consequences of the democratic party's abdication to fascists that election. I cannot forgive them for that, if nothing else.

and I'm not confident, given some of the comments musk's son has let slip and the years of always-confessional fascist whinging about election interference, that people DIDN'T properly vote for the absolute piece of shit the dems tried to run, again. that americans weren't just that cucked.

the fact they were willing to ratfuck the candidates the american people wanted, time and time again, since god damn world war two, suggests that these assholes are more willing to risk fascism by putting incompetent figureheads in charge than deal with moderate center left reformers-from henry wallace to bernard sanders-suggests they would not have fought for us, just like they didn't really fight for us from 2020-2024. these were not our people in washington, and expecting our slavish devotion was insulting when they gave us nothing in return, largely letting the fascists run free. maybe, if donald trump was such a threat, and he was, and open fascism was such a huge fucking deal, which it is, they should have run somebody with at better chance of winning an election, nodded to things that energized americans, or played hard ball during the campaign?

I do remember the campaign, by the way. I have the curse of all lefties everywhere; I can remember thirty or more seconds into the past. I remember them pulling back on winning strategies like 'hey these guys are weird deranged little freaks' and 'this fascism thing doesn't sound very nice' because presumably they were more concerned with their ability to be weird little freaks once they took charge, and their ability to do fascism-lite once they were in charge, than with making sure the real thing didn't happen. and maybe that's why they didn't lock trump up when they had control. maybe that's why they didn't cover the white house lawn in gallows on january7. maybe that's why they wouldn't have fought an election result like 2000, if it had occurred, and let the fascists just have the win if it came to that. again. they certainly didn't contest a very very shady election.

cut the shit. the democratic party is done. it's over. they will not resist, because they don't want to, because they would rather side with fascists than the most mild social reformers, the most mild corporate regulator not-quite-communists, the most mild prison abolitionist not-quite-anarchists. they were never going to resist.

move the fuck on. do something real rather than spending your time trying to blame the failures of your duplicitous masters on the people you think should be your natural allies. they didn't even fail to stand up for us; they never tried, and your defense of the democratic party is genuinely offensive. maybe try joining us. go outside, cook some food for your community, talk to people, start a gun club.

I'm not sure the majority voted for Trump considering all the election interference and Elon Musk's fuckery.

Voting stupidly doesn't turn a working class person into an owner class person. We still outnumber them, it's just that most of us have been tricked.

The same people who have historically bankrolled and controlled Republicans also run the Democrats. It's kinda hard to "fight the system" when the oligarchs are the system.

Vegans like you make me interested in veganism. The diet seems to have some beneficial effect on the sense of humor.

TL; DR I laughed my a** off, thank you!

The 2% inflation target that excludes all investments you mean, so that we must consume more every year otherwise interest rates collapse and we gush out money like a sprinkler, as the rich load up on debt to short cash with their ever inflating collateral while gold and houses rise 10% a year.