you do understand how circular and self defeating your analysis is, right?

you say the problem is not punishing greed. okay. let’s follow your last sentence to it’s logical conclusion… how exactly (in today’s corporate controlled society) would we punish greed? keeping in mind, greed at the level of corporations is inarguably the single most salient and damaging type of greed.

could the answer have anything to do with say, corporations?

you use the internet but nternet is where racists gather. curious.

checkmate.

not every single person of the ~90 million who didn’t vote “abstained” based on some high horse principles. you obviously understand that.

political news addicted leftists are a miniscule percent of that 90M which means at most a couple hundred thousand leftists might have “protest voted”.

why be angry (and still keep bringing up) the actions of that subset, when you could direct your anger at actual racists and bigots that voted Trump?

i understand that it’s more sneeringly smugly self satisfying to scold the former group, but you have way more in common with that subset than with the latter, who actually deserves the most scorn/ridicule. why attack potential allies when a mutual enemy is at the gates?

we need to move on already. the Dems lost, we’re all in this together now.

we ofc already have graduated tax brackets but it needs to be shifted upwards so that people making below a certain amount should pay zero Income taxes (I’m not talking about a wealth tax or carbon tax or VAT tax).

also, top marginal rates NEED TO BE INCREASED AGAIN. during WWII the wealthiest paid between 80-95%. from the New Deal until Reagan destroyed the country in the 80s, top rates were well above 50 percent.

Taxing the ultra rich is how America funded higher education, built the highway system, funded social welfare, uplifted 2 generations, built a global manufacturing and technology economy, and created a prosperous middle class. we did it by keeping oligarchs in check. in a strictly enforced progressively tiered system, top marginal tax prevents the obscene accumulation of wealth

sorry but I think you’re dead wrong. also, we have more than 2 options. we can choose to support the progressives who the DNC has been actively suppressing. that’s a different conversation though.

supporting the DNC only happens when they start supporting The People. I’m old enough to have personally observed just how the national Democratic party operates and how corrupt, ineffectual, and apathetic they are when regular working class Americans need lasting structural changes. all the programs and progress they made has been undone with a half dozen supreme court nominations and a wave of a pen executive order.

they don’t take adequate action and don’t break rules to achieve goals, because they fundamentally misunderstand that sometimes obeying the rules (even in a democracy) is morally wrong. in a society rapidly spiraling towards fascism, they fail to recognize that “trust the system” actually means “just follow orders” and that’s a very bad very dangerous thing.

it’s not a group worthy of my support, not until they do better.

relevant links if you’re at all interested in understanding my perspective better (or just follow my comments):

The Alt Right Playbook: You Go High, We Go Low (InnuendoStudios, YouTube)

The Rules Serve Us, We Do Not Serve Them (Parkrose Permaculture, YouTube)

you’re right, unfortunately, we live in a time when people won’t take action until they either experience the consequences personally or they’re pushed beyond a breaking point.

perpetual gradual harm reduction and backsliding is imperceptible and slow enough to be normalized. but sudden changes cannot be ignored and often radicalizes people in response (or at least forces them to ‘take sides’ in a battle).

one of the major challenges of liberatory movements is not enough people join the cause and instead wait things out. these so-called centrists and moderates only have this option because they have socioeconomic privilege compared the most oppressed groups.

therefore we must then consider strategies to capture their support, including shocking their sensibilities with outrage, or even potentially stoking fears that they could be next. “what if they close my alma mater too or what if my kids’ college gets shutdown also?” etc etc

I have a different view. he had two bad choices available and he chose the worse one.

he and the establishment Dems (hehem, Biden) as well as turncoats like Lieberman/Sinema/Machin/Fetterman who were inexplicably allowed to caucus with the party) are precisely why we’re here today watching the rise of fascism and oligarchy. from failing to seat a supreme court justice under Obama, sabotaging Bernie (twice), fielding awful presidential candidate after candidate, allowing the military to expand endlessly, not codifying Roe (and doing nothing in response to it’s overturning), to censoring Al Motherfucking Green…

the entire “opposition party” looks weak and disorganized and incapable of fighting every time a crisis arises. the party needs more progressive leadership and they need to realize that sometimes it’s appropriate to break a few rules and take risks on big power plays. and forward popular plans that will actually energize the base.

these ‘play it safe’ supposedly harm reducing tactics are why we’re here today. they had 8 years since 2016 to come up with ways to combat trumpism and the best they could do, after flopping on the election and then peacefully handing over power to a sociopath and a nazi billionaire - was… write an op ed in the New York Times.

I’m done with this group of shit heads. there are better senators who should be in charge. we need people getting mad and breaking shit, not another patronizing speech about having patience until the next midterm.

supporting a cause in person shouldn’t be underestimated. freedom of assembly is our constitutional right, it is a powerful way to connect with others and sends a message that you won’t just hide in your house while our communities are being attacked by the ultra wealthy.

thank you for having the courage and determination to make the drive and participate by yourself. hope you’re able to convince some friends and family to come with you next time there’s a chance to stand up and exercise your rights.

when entire world economies and hundreds of millions of lives can be destroyed by the childish petty illogical whims of a single man, we need to start banding together to figure out how to stop that man.

multiple generations of people will lead immensely more brutal, unhappy lives because some fucktard is throwing a tantrum that there might not be enough slaves to toil in his factories and mines someday.

I think they meant to say interbreed, ie, sapiens and neanders fucked each other. vast majority of humans living today have neanderthal DNA in them.

opposition party? these motherfuckers may as well be on the same goddamn team.

this is why Dems can never be an effective opposition party to right wing extremism

The Alt Right Playbook: You Go High, We Go Low (InnuendoStudios, YouTube)

painfully relevant and insightful even 6 years later.

Dems are rule following conformists who would rather keep the wheels of governance spinning no matter what, because they incorrectly believe that the “democracy machine” can only ever produce “more and better democracy”.

from Merrick Garland being denied confirmation, to Al Green at the state of the union, Dems fundamentally don’t grasp when it’s necessary to break the rules to achieve goals

they don’t understand, The Rules Serve Us, We Do Not Serve Them (Parkrose Permaculture, YouTube)

it’s not enough for their stock valuations to decline, we need to see their actual wealth (assets, private property) redistributed to the 99 percent.

in other words, control over the means of production needs to be taken from them. at minimum, reestablishment of top marginal tax rates and inheritance taxes.

they have demonstrated they cannot be responsible with the productive powers of our country. time to make the bosses pay.

Until Debt Tear Us Apart relevant economic analysis. collapse has many facets, and the “wealth pump” described by Graeber and the author of this article, is perhaps the most imminent threat. even resource depletion and climate perma-crises are relatively slow moving compared to the velocity at which resources have been gobbled up by the wealthiest ‘elites’, threatening all of humanity.

we all need to get serious about redistribution of wealth.

society as we know it may come crashing down, but there are mechanisms (taxes is a big one) to slowing down the free fall to a slightly more humane controlled descent.

i think the commenter is just baffled at how drastically overvalued (over hyped) so many stocks are - a well known problem where speculative over investment can and does distort the whole economy and has power over the whole population. see for example, speculation bubbles like the dotcom overvaluation or subprime mortgages, or Theranos, or Bitcoin, or even how Tesla stock was being traded higher than the next 6-8 major car companies combined.

in other words, stock prices are a bunch of bullshit.

stocks arent exactly the same as “money” in the common sense so it confuses people when headlines say money was lost or wiped out. but stocks are similar to money in that they are placeholders for value, however much more susceptible to wild devaluations. because ultimately they’re just speculative bets on what something is worth and can fluctuate rapidly, as rapidly and suddenly as human emotions.

seconded. big fan of pro publica right now. actually digging into the roots of corruption and abuse of power.

Rich people outbid regular folks for real resources (homes), taking away any chance at intergenerational wealth building. the only (legal) answer at the moment is taxation of the rich.

Gary Stevenson has some worthwhile insights on what we can do and how to convince working class people that the rich must be stopped or else your kids and grandkids will all be homeless renters.

inequality is sharply risinh all around the world. and it’s getting worse. this is arguably the most important issue of our time.

instead of subsidized the rich, we should be taxing the fuck out of them. they either comply with wealth redistribution by taxation or we seize their assets.