Anyone want to make up a topic and argue about it?

[shovelquest]

38% of billionaires came from middle class upbringing.

Why do we hate ourselves and think we can't accomplish anything?

Because propaganda, that's why.

[Reiwa]

Originally Posted by shovelquest [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

38% of billionaires came from middle class upbringing.

Why do we hate ourselves and think we can't accomplish anything?

Because propaganda, that's why.

So a veto-proof supermajority do not come from the middle class? [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[shovelquest]

idk but people believe you will never be anything more than a peasant when clearly that is not the case.

[Reiwa]

Originally Posted by shovelquest [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

idk but people believe you will never be anything more than a peasant when clearly that is not the case.

Middle class can have several meanings. In USA it means 'average or median person'.

In the M-word p******** ideology it means you have some amount of ownership in the productive entities.

[shovelquest]

41% of millionaires came from poverty.

lol everyone stop working the system is rigged.

[Ephirith]

Sometimes it's billionaires, sometimes it's dukes, kings, or communist party apparatchiks. Sometimes it's fanatical clergy, warlords, or messianic cult-leaders.

The only times the nameless, faceless masses (you, me) have ever had a meaningful slice of the pie is when they've banded together to claw it away at the institutional level, usually through revolution, democracy, and/or unionization.

John Steinbeck said socialism never took root in America because too many Americans see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires". I think an alternative way to look at is, a combination of egalitarian institutions and centuries of frontier conquest created a prosperous petite bourgeoisie, a huge middle class of small property holders who generally had the liberty to go through life without being trampled the way the urban masses of old & ossified Europe were.

America watched socialism liberate Western Europe's urban classes in the 1900's, and it happened a little bit in the US under FDR, but overall it didn't quite translate because it didn't really need to the way it did in Europe.

Yet.

I think our contemporary struggle is with a transition that has been occurring for decades now in American life. The frontiers are long settled, our political culture and institutions are largely pre-industrial, as we never had the egalitarian revolution Western Europe did in the 1900's, and our magnates have had nearly a century now to metastasize and consolidate in that environment.

A global economic revolution in economies of scale have all but obliterated the USA's middle class-- most Americans still call themselves middle class, but they aren't, because the meaning has changed. This was once a large class of people who owned property and either lived off the proceeds of their own industry/enterprise (a farmer, rancher, dentist, artisan, skilled tradesman), or other professional with a wage, assets, and bargaining power. Now, a much greater share of people rely on selling their labor to survive, and own little to nothing, which makes them distinctly working class.

The ability for corporations to exercise blatant, virtually unlimited (Citizens United) control over the US's political institutions has resulted in a situation where all forms of political representation in the United States further corporate interests.

Democratic leadership results in a globalist, cultural and moral relativist regime that works to maximize the availability of cheap labor by flooding the US with economic migrants, while simultaneously facilitating their integration as labor by fostering an environment of tolerance and acceptance, rather than assimilation. Which sounds great, until you realize that not all cultures are equally conducive to certain liberal, egalitarian institutions that are fundamental to the Western European/American way of life, such as religious freedom, democracy, the protestant ethic, etc.

The Republican alternative, at this point, serves corporations even more directly and extensively by professing to support a total laissez-faire economic environment, while in reality, simply acting as a channel for whichever entities exert the most influence on Republican politicians. Highly visible examples include petroleum companies crushing solar, nuclear, and wind energy products nationwide (China is powering their masses of AI data centers with cheap solar power, meanwhile, US electric bills have been skyrocketing and our AI companies are beginning to have difficulty competing), the coal industry being propped up by a party that claims to be laissez faire???, and the party actually doing almost nothing of substance to actually stem the flow of cheap immigrant/outsourced labor. And that is to say nothing of all the other unspeakable corruption and lunacy inherent in the Trump movement. The two parties are not equally bad-- this one is far more destructive.

This situation is fundamentally created by a convergence of many factors, the largest being 1. The two party system, 2. The Senate as an institution providing a mechanism for minority rule, 3. American cultural aversion to labor organization.

It will take either a revolution, a massive labor movement, or a cult of personality acting oppositely to the way Trump has... that is, benevolently, to fix.

All that to say, Shovel, the billionaires and millionaires are doing just fine without you licking their nutsacks

[Reiwa]

Originally Posted by Ephirith [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The ability for corporations to exercise blatant, virtually unlimited (Citizens United) control over the US's political institutions has resulted in a situation where all forms of political representation in the United States further corporate interests.

Why you gotta mix the real ones in with the fake ones? CU was a challenge to a law(McCain-Feingold) passed only 6 years earlier.

[shovelquest]

Yea well the difference is:

40% of our dukes & kings came from poverty

Became them by creating something millions of people use or love.

and their reigns end when they die.

Hope. This. HELPS.

[shovelquest]

80% of millionaires came from “working class”

Socialists always try to say they care about the working class but they want to import mass cheap labor.

And they fight against companies like Amazon bringing jobs to the working class.

[shovelquest]

Socialists should try to get together one day and prove to the world just ONCE that their economies can be self sustaining without depleting natural resources to maintain it.

You know, since it's so easy to get lots of people to work together for just the sake of it.