Not our chosen leaders. Not our way of life.
Spread this OC far and wide.
Spread this OC far and wide.
ah, the old lemmy switch-a-roo.
by the way these links don't work, but they do go to the previous switch a roo! sorry about that lol
i don't see what's so bad about it, sure it has negative connotation because it's from a now evil site but it's still cool history; why can't i keep it alive?
It's not bad because it's from reddit, it's bad because it was so overdone and cringe and it should be left to die
Seriously. If they want to keep their money, they should be forced to invest it in companies that generate jobs.
Yeah bullshit jobs make me annoyed too. Why can I not pump my own gas in your state? "Oh, those people need jobs." Okay that makes it more annoying to get gas but okay.
But there are jobs that need doing! These people could be building solar panels, working at carbon sequestration, or even just staffing childcare which we desperately need. Why are we wasting our workforce in made up jobs when we have work that needs doing?
I think I understand you're pro UBI. Just wanted to state that I'm pro UBI too. Especially instead of bullshit jobs.
Isn’t that exactly where most billionaire’s wealth typically is? A lot is in stock of some company they started or invested in.
You can’t gobble up the excess value created by workers if there are no workers.
...unless you gobble up your rivals instead, creating a monopoly, shrinking the job pool through consolidation, sweating the remaining employees that are competing for the vanishing opportunities to keep a roof over their heads, causing market failure and generally fucking everyone over.
This is the strategy adopted by the likes of Bezos, Zuckerberg, the Waltons, and arguably the majority of the biggest drains on our society. Billionaires
Well yeah, all that consolation and abuse of the working class means more productivity per person, and since we definitely aren’t going to pay them more that means we’re now worth $100 billion versus the measly, honestly embarrassing, ten figures we had a decade ago. Single-digit billions, could you imagine the shame?
/s but what you describe is honestly seen as a good thing by c-suite sociopaths. The super rich people you mentioned are heroes to them. Such efficient use of capital to create shareholder value!
And that's the issue - we've structured our economy for the benefit of the owners rather than the contributors. Sociopathic as they are, the C-suite are just doing what they're motivated (and to a lesser extent legally obligated) to do.
Change the incentives, change the behaviour, change our society for the better.
Yep. No pity. There is an upper limit on how much money one person can meaningfully benefit from. And our system creates these insane leaks that pour value into mile-deep, inch-wide holes. It’s honestly a form of waste. Radical capitalists should embrace this idea.
Consider this: a million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. It really helps me understand just how obscenely wealthy these people are, how much money they are hoarding. They're leeches.
By that measure, $100,000 a year for 60 years is 70 days.
And since a billion seconds is 31 years, Musk is worth almost 7000 years.
There are people on this planet who could give up 90% of their wealth and still ensure a more than comfortable life for themselves and their family, for a dozen generations and more.
And yet they keep all of it.
Then you'll have the people defending them with the good old argument that no one should be expected to give up their hard-earned wealth.
Sure, except these twats „earned“ it through exploitation and misery. No one gets this filthy rich with honest and fair work, that's not how the game works.
Can we just get here already, these memes are nice, but where are the actual guillotines?
God I'm so sick of this take.
We're not anti second amendment we're anti idiots with guns.
If you can't pass a background check or a psychological evaluation you shouldn't own a gun.
"bUt CrImInAlS-" shut the fuck up. Yeah criminals will still get guns but it'll be a lot fucking harder for them to obtain them.
Who's giving the psy eval? Is it Jim Bob from the county who hates blacks and LGBTQ+? So he denies all those applications and allows just his white friends to get firearms?
And no it will not make it harder for them to get firearms. There are 450+ million of them get over it.
Meaning now the state gets to dictate who gets to have weapons, making violent revolution impossible.
The police are full of right wingers. What makes you think they won't simply label all left-wingers as mentally ill, deny you access to weapons and then kill you all?
This is gonna be a bitter pill for you to swallow, but protecting people's basic human rights is more important than lowering gun deaths. And you refuse to accept that at your own peril.
An idiot with a gun isn't going to help with any of that.
They will rather make it worse.
Stop allowing crazy people access to offensive weapons.
There is no straight line from mental illness to senseless violence.
The path rather is one paved by the marginalization and alienation affirmed by a society that declines to affirm the value of its every member.
If those struggling with illness received care, in all the varied senses of the term, then they would not be brought to destructive ends.
A dedicated group of marginalized people with guns will, though, and that is what gun bans -- I'm not gonna let you lie and ca it gun control anymore -- is intended to prevent.
Stop trying to force me to submit to your opinion.
You're not in the real world where you can shout and use violence, and bold text does not substitute for that
Do we have car bans (for the general populace, not people who were banned because they committed a crime) because you have to be licensed to use one?
I love firearms. They're fun. However, they're also dangerous, to yourself and others. I believe there should be requirements for background checks, mental health evaluations, and also mandatory training in the operation, maintaince, storage (1776 is not a good combination, and firearms are the most stolen items), and transportation of your firearm, as well as training on the legality of its usage, all of which is tested and must be passed. This should probably be funded with taxes as well, to ensure poor people aren't deprived of their rights.
To claim this position is "anti-2A" is disingenuous at best. Hell, the 2A is written in a way that I don't think it applies anymore (the protection of a free State does not require a well regulated militia if we have a standing professional military, which wasn't expected to be a thing at the time), but I still think firearm ownership shouldn't be banned. It should be regulated, like car ownership is which is almost required to live life in the US and is designed for transportation, not killing things.
They learned a lesson from that, now they have us bickering with each other over rich political figures who we treat like celebrities. So, it’ll take longer to come to the French Revolution stage, by then they’ll be in safety bunkers.
Because its relevant
Against the Logic of the Guillotine Why the Paris Commune Burned the Guillotine—and We Should Too
For me the main point is: If you are able to execute your enemies publicly on the guillotine, you have already won and actually have better(more in line with your ideals) ways to deal with ex billionaires.
I agree. Launching them into orbit and shoving them out the airlock would garner a much greater sense of poetic justice.
Or maybe, if you actually think they should be killed, do it now? Like why wait for some situation like you described that might never happen.
I agree, but this is an image, not a guillotine. Maybe you could argue the image of a guillotine could lead to similar methods being used if a revolution happens, but I don't know if that's worth discussing in depth. As a tool to transport a message, I think a guillotine is valid. As a method of murder, probably not.
Garbage, low effort, polarising post that does nothing to further the actually important antiwork movement.
I wasn't talking about a flat tax. I was stating that if taxes increased for one part of society then it has to increase for everyone. Otherwise, whichever party is in power would increase taxes on the other party's registered voters.
We didn't chose our leaders. Leaders got billions because we chose to do nothing.
Why do you think corporations strive in America and at the same time the people gets the shit (bad labour laws, bad healthcare, bad wages) compared to Europe? Because they're better?
Fuck no, it's because of Europe. The founding fathers created a "weak" government on purpose, leaving the power to we the people. Why do you think we're the only country in the world with a Second Amendment?
(Except Mexico and Guatemala but that's a different story...)
But guess what, Americans are lazy, we had a duty and we didn't answer the call... so who filled the hole? People with ambitions. And people with ambitions create companies, and companies value profits, not wellbeing.
We didn't chose billionaires. Billionaires got billions because we chose to do nothing.
Speaking of guillotines..
Can anyone here edit videos?
I have an original piece of music of about 1 minute length, I was hoping to work with someone on adding images of rich people mixed what short clips of a rising guillotine blade or something like that.
The audio is ready. I was thinking of editing some video for it myself, but it is not really my area of expertise..
SO ITS ME AND I AM BEING IN TWO PLACES AT THE SAME TIME OMFG...test test test, deleting soon
But you did choose those leaders, by accepting the two party system and always voting for the lesser evil. The phenomenon of ‘the lesser evil’ isn’t born out of necessity, it is manufactured, so the people who have money can earn even more wealth and power every 4 years by giving you their option for leadership.
I like the idea of the guillotine, but those blades have never been sharpened in the US… you always liked your less evil leaders.
Like how we work for billionaires and make them money? How do you think billionaires make their money? Does it just appear out of thin air?
Can't raise taxes for the rich exclusively in the US. The 16th amendments wording prohibits raising taxes for specific individuals or groups of people. It has to be that everyone pays more taxes or it violates the Constitution. So if any politician says they're going to make the rich pay their fair share, keep in mind that you're going to pay more too.
I wasn't talking about a flat tax. I was stating that if taxes increased for one part of society then it has to increase for everyone. Otherwise, whichever party is in power would increase taxes on the other party's registered voters.
That's just not how taxes work. It's also not how they should work.
I have never, and I daresay will never have to pay a tax on owning and operating a personal private jet.
I have never paid the rather hefty taxes on cigarettes.
There are plenty of taxes that target behaviors that have nothing to do with voting. These taxes are necessary because these behaviors cause indirect but real harm to others, and a tax is much more civil throwing rocks.
You missed my point. If taxes could be targeted to specific groups or people, politicians would increase taxes on their rivals and on possible revenue streams their rivals use.
Are you suggesting that a progressive tax illegitimately targets the rich as a particular group of people?
Are you a troll?
No. I'm saying that increasing the taxes for a single bracket can't be done. If taxes for the top bracket increase the taxes for the lower brackets will increase as well
Taxes could be raised on things which disproportionately affect billionaires, it's not like a flat tax increase is the only option.
It's hard to find even one thing that affects just one group of people. For example, increasing the Capital Gains tax will also impact retirees cashing in their retirement plans. Also, what's to stop them from just leaving the country and renouncing US citizenship when taxes get too burdensome?
The emphasis of the post is not taxation.
A progressive income tax, as well as augmentation of the capital gains tax, are various ways to tax the rich that are obviously constitutional.
While some right-wing sources insist a wealth tax is unconstitutional, in fact no judicial inquiry has yet been tried, and mainstream sources readily affirm its viability.
I'm not saying that the progressive income tax is illegal. I'm stating an increase on one bracket will also mean an increase on all brackets. And such things as raising property taxes or the capital gains tax will hurt others than those you want to pay.
Please justify your claim that increasing the marginal tax rate for one bracket requires doing so for all.
Also note, even taking your claim on its merits, those in lower brackets benefit more greatly from spending on social programs. A household may experience a small rise in taxes offset by a large gain from in social spending.
Realistically? The number of people in the top tax bracket. There are less than a thousand reported in the US. Even if you give them an average of half a billion dollar incomes each it only adds up to around 5 billion dollars total. Not much. But, if you take the working population of the US and an average income of 30,000 dollars you get a total of 9 trillion dollars to work with. No matter how you work it there will always be more water in a shallow lake than a deep puddle.
And other ways to increase taxes on them sound equally attractive until you take a 80% hit on your 401k when you retire or your property taxes spike.
Money is not a resource of fixed supply.
Taxing the rich is not offered as a panacea to solve all problems, and no one serious about the idea has framed it so narrowly as you have done.
One quite natural benefit, which you seem not to have considered, of taxing the rich, is beginnig to assuage the severe inequality that affords immensely imbalanced power and privilege to a tiny cohort of society.