So let's do nothing at all.
this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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How dare you! They made a meme.
I read it as suggesting we should do more, not less.
It has a hopeless/fatalistic tone. That is off-putting to some of us.
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(6 replies)
Yeah, that sucks. I'd rather start somewhere than just throw my hands up and go "well, it's fucked, may as well not try."
My thought is, sure we can tax the rich and make them less rich. But I find it hard to believe that the government is going to magically allocate those resources in a way that actually benefits Joe Schmoe. On top of that, even if you totally liquidated every billionaire, you'd get less than $2k for every person in America. Make it $4k if you only distribute it to the bottom half. Sure, it would be nice and I think billionaires are a scourge, but I don't think it's going to fix the problems people think it will.
Seems to me that the people going on and on about eating the rich would get a lot more done if they focused on achievable policy goals that directly affect their community. I would bet money 95% of the clowns that keep going on about this stuff don't even know who their city councilman is and have never been to a town hall meeting.
But if you inverse those thoughts or even pull back a bit, it's the same defeatist perspective. "Sure we can allocate taxes better but I find it hard to believe we'll ever be able to tax the rich." These aren't unrealistic changes or even far fetched, it just comes down to informing people and making the change. Most average people don't know what the Military Industrial Complex is or how it works and by telling them and illustrating how bad it is, politicians who'd like to remain politicians might listen to their constituents a little bit more than their wallet. Not entirely but enough.
Eating the rich is just a vivid expression to get the point across. A motto of sorts that just gets the idea across that the ultra wealthy need to be reconstituted into society at large. Be it through harmless proposals of policy and ranging to, well, the French Revolution. You don't need to know who your city councilman is nor your town hall to agree with something and make a change. I personally don't have time to attend a town hall with the oldest people in my county who are more interested complaining about a bakery not being in the right zoning area than change their mind about local taxes.
Change is slow and it starts with education. Being pissy or condescending also isn't a very good way to convince people you're right. If anything, they'll put extra effort into being wrong to spite you.
My main thing is that I'm tired of hearing people whining about it all the time, yet they do nothing themselves and don't even provide any actionable policy proposals. A comprehensive solution will have to involve both some mechanism to reduce the outsized influence that specific individuals and organizations can project onto society, including but not limited to corps and rich people, AND policies targeted to actually directly improving social welfare like healthcare, housing policy reform, overhauling disability, SNAP, and similar benefits, etc.
A lot of this needs to happen at the local level, especially housing reform, and even if you can't attend your local town hall, you can email your councilman. That's the person who controls whether or not that affordable apartment complex or homeless shelter goes up, and things like that will make a much bigger positive impact on your community than any amount of rich people eating. For the sweeping reforms, proving that things like this work at the local and state level is the first step to bringing them to the national level. The ACA for example was directly copied from the system Massachusetts had come up with.
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this is what a whiney ass Russian says about life.. this is how a coward thinks.. this is what defeat looks like from inside the mind of the loser..
I agree, memes like this act like this isn't a reason to try. It's an illusion to think one solution solves all problems. There are several problems here and having the wealthy pay their share will be part of the solution.
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This meme has been brought to you by an anonymous Asian country's disinformation campaign.
Please give up.
You have been banned from hexhear for unrelated reasons
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All military spending comprises ~10-15% of the budget, just a FYI.
The military budget isn’t stopping anything. In 2022, $4.1 Trillion was spent on mandatory programs (social security, Medicare, Medicaid, income security).
Social security, Medicare, and Medicaid alone were just shy of $3 Trillion.
It's still a rediculously large military budget and it's incredible how much we spend on our social programs only for them to still suck ass
Fixing our social programs would go so far to make things better without even changing anything else at all.
The amount of money spent isn’t the issue, it’s how inefficiently it’s spent.
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Admittedly, I thought these percentages were different.
Not above admitting when I'm wrong.
https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/budget-explainer-national-defense
No worries.
A part of that is that there’s the entire budget of all federal outlays and then “the budget” which is what the President requests and Congress authorizes.
That is solely the discretionary spending. It’s unfortunate that it’s the only thing that actually gets talked about in the media.
Related, but interest on the debt is set to pass military spending like next year even.
if the military industrial complex gets rich then they are also taxed
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Fact: despite popular perception and rhetoric, the government does not actually need to issue taxes pay for things. Taxing the rich does not actually act as a source of revenue; it disincentivizes greater Extremes of price gouging and wage suppression as well as reducing the wealth disparity between the the poor and wealthy.
Your objection is nonsensical, misleading, and damaging to the cause. Good job. 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏
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Yeah but it ends up in our hands for a few minutes and that's the point
Not true and even if true I'm ok with it, I love lockmart, nuke the Kremlin.
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If rather have a military armed to the teeth than the super rich getting even richer.
US military is already larger than the 4 next largest militaries worldwide IIRC, so no need to worry about being a paper tiger
Are you suggesting we must choose between monarchy and fascism?
You can have a well armed military without being fascist?
as opposed to the rich people doing military donations on their own? the spotify ceo invested in fucking AI military killing machines man grow up. you have no control over rich people and they have demonstrated that there is no reason to trust them. the government sucks too, but at least you get to cast a vote on how much it sucks. stop bootlicking
I'm all for taxing the rich, but I'm even more for rooting out the corruption that enables the rich to become the monsters they are. This isn't bootlicking, its holding the opinion that the priorities are out of order.
Thanks for sharing your perspective.
Even stuff like welfare and social benefits help the rich more than the poor. Walmart can have billions of profits while their people make so little they have to apply for aid. If aid wasn't there, they would have to pay proper wages and their profits would be smaller.
Taxing the rich means their money will go straight to government. Just have corporations pay workers more, so it goes straight to the people. Taking the rich is a stupid fucking movement, people should be emphasizing paying the workers more
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