I'm not a saint, I can be pretty selfish in my reasons for treating people well.

I just want everyone taken care of because I want to live in a society that takes care of all the people. I want good education because I want to be around well educated people. I want healthcare for everyone because I want to be around active healthy people who live to old age. I want limits and regulations for companies because I want clean air and safe products.

It's not fucking rocket science.

I once told someone: "look, when I step outside, I don't want to see homeless people. That is why I happily pay my taxes and am supportive of social safety nets."

I have different reasons like human rights but in that conversation, a selfish perspective was the better way to make the point.

"You liberals just want free stuff" says the party whose president just accepted a free 300 million dollar airplane.

What "free stuff?" You mean the things I PAY TAXES for?

Thunderdome for the rich.

Two billionaires enter, zero billionaires leave.

They're still alive but we took all their money and divided it amongst the crowd.

I don't want free healthcare, I want the healthcare I pay for with hundreds of my hard earned dollars every month.

Everyone got “free stuff” from 0-18ish. Should your parents have itemized everything and given you a bill of $377,567 when you moved out? Started payment plans? The argument here is actually “I don’t want anyone but me getting free stuff and help”.

In contrast, we far leftists want free stuff.

Basically, we want to be able to tune the production process of essentials so that potatoes 🥔 and drinking water 🥤are dispensed the way we do napkins, and people can take all they need. And with time we expand the free stuff dispensed to smart phones and rocket fuel and ice cream sundaes 🍨

The stuff isn't absolutely free, and even these days napkin dispensers are adorned with save the trees signs but the price to the end-user is negligible. Sometimes we have to watch our systems for abuse, but then sometimes someone just needs a lot of potatoes. 🥔

Also tool libraries and eventually motor pools that can serve communities who sometimes need gear, but not always. It's kinda creepy how big automotive has us buying two cars for every home and we can't spare government funds for (eventually free) robust public rail.

The 2020 lockdown showed us that people are not turned into couch potatoes 🥔 by benefits and furloughs. (They do couch potato after burnout or due to depression) rather they take up hobbies, many of which become lucrative or are useful to the community. (Community projects were harder because we were hiding in our homes) This led to the Great Resignation during which companies had to offer higher than minimum wage for their bottom-rung jobs.

We've also seen government benefits programs facilitate great movements in art. The whole British Rock-&-Roll boom of the 1960s followed the post-war restoration programs to get everyone who lost everything fed again and back into homes. Then someone threw in an electric guitar.

So it's not bad to want free stuff. It's just assumed that you can't have free stuff if someone else can make a profit by charging, ergo paid toilets and office bathroom tissue pools.

It's also not free. I am paying for these things. These are the things I want my tax money going towards. I'm not asking for free handouts, I'm asking for smart and workable application of my taxes for the betterment of society.

They’ll read this while not understanding empathy and think you’re faking being a good person

Who doesn't like free stuff?

Weirdos

I pay taxes for the things I want

But free stuff is cool too

I don't understand how they can focus on LIBERALS wanting free stuff, while totally ignoring that all Republicans/MAGAs want are more tax breaks and loopholes.

If we're going to give the money away anyway, I'd rather give it to people who need it, than people who already have more than they, or their descendants, will ever need.

I want to fucking get what I'm paying taxes FOR. Which is not yet another war crime. US healthcare has us at the worst quality of life, the lowest life expectancy, and the HIGHEST cost out of any developed nation. It's fucking ridiculous. "Uh huh buh where u gonna get the money for hea-" "FROM MY FUCKING TAXES YOU ILLITERATE FUCK" God damn I'm so incensed from having this conversation so often with dumb assholes who don't realize how dumb they are.

If Democrats didn't rig their primaries we'd have just had eight years of President Sanders, and the world would be a whole lot better for it.

Voting left is directly against my financial interest. But unlike conservatives, I know there’s more to life than the number in my bank account.

My SO had started using the line "taxes for schools are going up and we don't have kids in school anymore so we should move". Gets my BP up everytime.

looks at taxes and social security payments

"Free stuff"

They don't "get it" because they only care for themselves and cannot comprehend that any other way of thinking exists.

You think anyone who legitimately regurgitates that phrase actually spends time thinking about what it actually means?

Conservatives: "Liberals just want free stuff"

Also Conservatives: "Hello, police, there's an immigrant/black/brown person and I don't like it"

🧐

You guys need to get over this notion that we are civilized.

Free stuff is cool though

Ah, very clever twist on the famous Thatcher quote

There is no such thing as society.

There are individual men and women

and there is the thunderdome

I want free stuff, but I want everyone to have free stuff. All of humanity should benefit from progress, not just the wealthy. How many great people lived and died slaving away because that's just how life is.

This is the way rational people think. However. You have the "American dream" to contend with. The dream is NOT 3 kids and a house in the suburbs. The American dream is, and always has been, the desire to collect enough wealth that the rules no longer apply.

This is why we have trump. This is why the republicans wave American flags and condone corruption. Half of the American population either is or fantasizes about the possibility of being untouchable. It's fascism, yes, but it's far deeper than that. The American dream is to live beyond governance; to have "fuck you" money.

Trump isn't the cancer. Trump is the tumor. The cancer is the pursuit of limitless success.

I guarantee you a conservative would skim this and say "That's it! We should build a thunderdome!"

Lots of people are conservative when it comes to chipping in then are liberal to accepting a hand out

Greedy stupid self centered people do not have or understand empathy for others.

Wow, a pfp of a dude in his car with a take I actually agree with. I guess it’s the lack of sunglasses