..
So, I think various people have talked about how clearly we’re less wealthy than we once were insofar as once a single worker could pay for a entire family to have a house and food and the like, whereas now two workers can barely pay for a family to have a apartment.
I was musing last night that even the most wealthy among us are not winning by my standards. This is not what winning looks like. I *know* what winning looks like – as I’ve said, it’s a bunch of friends and the holodeck. It’s also knowing that everyone that everyone you know knows has food and shelter and isn’t one wrong move away way from losing these things.
Of course, this is part of why I scorn so harshly the republican ideal of “personal responsibility”. We’re not gods, and life has no undo button, so in essence what they are saying is “people with bad luck deserve to starve so people with good luck can have two yachts”. It’s not a way to build a world I want to live in, but unfortunately we’re stuck with these people because they can’t be convinced that they are wrong – they have a religious attachment to their beliefs.
(And, lately, they’re willing to lie, steal, and cheat in order to keep those beliefs controlling the world. The bit about lying about the election having been stolen – and the number of them apparently dumb enough to believe the lie – is depressing. It’s impressive I suppose that Dear Leader is self centered enough to be willing to swing a sledgehammer at the idea of us being one functioning country if it will make him a few more million.)
(I actually had a friend who was gullible enough to believe that Trump wouldn’t need to take any money from people because he already had enough. This is wrong both because for people like Trump there will never be enough and because Trump is in fact upside down and probably owes the russian mob money as well. Anyway, he’s recently collected $200 million claiming it was for preventing election fraud but if you read the fine print it’s to pay down debts)
Anyway, I’ve talked before about how I want a different world – dramatically different – than the religious right and the small government right want. (Of course, ironically, the right is the party of big government – big war machine government in particular). But I also want a different world than the left appears to be championing. It seems like everyone is thinking *way* too small. It’s got to be a sign of something dramatically wrong that someone working full time can no longer afford to rent a apartment, and we really should be demanding that the bankers fix it before they find themselves no longer in control of anything. But instead we’re all pointing fingers at some of the most laughable, most obviously *not* the problem things there are – like immigrants. It takes a special kind of stupid – which unfortunately it seems a large number of people are – to think that immigrants are the problem. It takes not noticing that taxes are not really the problem ,among other things. If we gave that full time minimum wage employee all their taxes back, they still couldn’t afford to rent a apartment. We’ve built a resource allocation system that makes real value disappear.
December 13th, 2020 at 4:55 pm
I’m hard-pressed to disagree with that, except for the “the Republicans” part. There are terrible, greedy, piss-nasty people of every political persuasion. I don’t think you’ll see Bezos or Gates pulling the “R” lever any time soon. The problem isn’t money, the problem is user error. And yeah, the allocation system is crap, but that’s because it hinges on money being used as a ****ing bludgeon and not as a means of supporting fluid commerce. ” I spent more money than you, so I get to run the free world”. “I had more people *give* me money, so I get to run the free world”. And that’s why I sort of sigh at the people whose entire political catechism has been reduced to “ORANGE MAN BAD”. That orange man was scooping more greedy, elitist pricks out of the pool than almost any president in history. Trump isn’t a Republican, he isn’t a Democrat. He’s a brass plated sonofabitch and sees governance as another CEO gig. And if I thought for one second that Biden was anywhere *near* as capable of doing the job as well – as a job, not a comfy chair on the plush – I would have pulled the lever for him so hard, I would have broken it. F*** both parties. They are irrelevant. It’s time to step away from the shop windows where everybody is selling “THEIR PARTY” and the BS promises they’re flogging and notice that the shop is on fire. YMMV. Do the filthy rich need to return a lot of their currency into the economy that supports them? Yeah. Do the poor need a hand up into that newly revitalized economy? Yeah. Does that mean that every dirt poor person is poor because they’re a victim and not the result of a moose load of bad decisions? No. Things will start evening out when money is no longer considered to be “speech” and money is no longer a vote. IMHO. Cary on.
December 15th, 2020 at 9:56 pm
I think you have far more conservative party affiliation than you’re aware of. Trump is clearly *not* a capable CEO – if he had just left the money his dad left him in a low-yeild mutual fund, he’d have more money than he does now, and also we have to remember his repeated bankruptcies and also him repeatedly stiffing vendors. You’ve been sold a very cleverly crafted lie – in the idea that Trump is anything other than astonishingly criminal, and especially in the idea that he’s a able CEO. I feel comfortable that the truth about Trump’s *astonishing* criminality, not to mention his fascist tendencies and the destruction he’s brought on the USA.. will continue to be denied by the people on the right, and by you. I can send you 50 links, and you’ll call them all fake news. If Trump ends up where he belongs.. in jail.. you’ll claim it’s a witch hunt despite the fact that his tendency to stiff vendors – to rob people, in other words, who have done work for him – is very, very well documented.
In general I’ve noticed many people who always pull the lever for the guy on the right of the isle like to claim they are not sold on a particular party. But then they do things like arguing that Biden is senile while we have Trump talking about the people in 1776 storming the airports, unable to hold onto a water glass – or a bible..
Suffice it to say I think you are completely and impressively wrong, and I am curious if at some point you’ll figure that out, or if you’ll continue to defend a fascist dictator wannabe who is also a con man and impressively destructive indefinitely.
There is probably some psychological phenomenon describing continuing to hold onto a impressively, obviously wrong answer because you’ve already committed so much energy to it, that describes supporters of Trump at this moment.
I have a known political affiliation to collectivism/socialism – in other words, to working together to solve problems. Also to social safety networks like social security. Over and over, I’ve seen – and I keep a eye on them – the Democrats do more to help the individual and the Republicans do more to help corporations screw us all over. So that’s why I tend to pull the lever for the guy on the left. But if Trump were a democrat, I would hate him just as much, because of his fascism, his racism, and his desire to be president for only the republicans. (in this case, that would be the democrats). The president has a responsibility to *everybody* that Trump abdicated very quickly.
I will remind you, you are cheering on the guy who retweeted a video that said the “only good democrat is a dead democrat”. The guy who sent out – in his repeated begs for money – polls that said things like are you a “Republican” or a “Socialist”. I realize you can’t accept you cheered on Hitler-lite no matter what I do, and I mostly just find the whole thing sad.
Side note about Trump being “a good CEO” – one deep proof we have that this is not the case is that Trump only wants yes men around him. He doesn’t want to be challenged, doesn’t want to be corrected, doesn’t want to be told the truth. This is a sign of a *bad* leader.
Beyond that, we both agree that money should not be “speech” and that both the left and the right are crooked and flawed. I just think the right is far worse, in many ways, than the left, and that Trump is worse, in myriad well documented ways, than either of the above.
December 16th, 2020 at 1:27 pm
With all due respect, If were as unaware as you constantly insist that I am, I would have died of thirst ages ago. : )
December 16th, 2020 at 1:41 pm
P.S: As far as “astonishingly criminal”, every time I ask for a list of these heinous crimes, I get blown off. Then again, it just all comes down to “My guy, not YOUR” guy” in politics, anymore. I suppose Biden bragging on camera about refusing to send Ukraine a billion dollars of our money in aid until they fire the prosecutor who was shaking out his kid’s shenanigans either “Never happened”, was “Miscontrued” or “That’s OK because that’s different.
Your guy *is* suffering from cognitive decline, will *not* get through his first term, if there is one and is in no way ready to run a dry cleaning shop, let alone the free world, and his number two will be in yoga pants, huffing a mad dank blunt in the rose garden listening to CDs that haven’t been released yet. But it’s cool ’cause Orange Man Bad. Got the T-Shirt and the board game, boss.
December 16th, 2020 at 7:11 pm
Astonishingly criminal, we could start by talking about how exactly someone who is a billionaire has no taxes owed for most of the past years. We could talk about how he’s no longer allowed to have a nonprofit organization in new york because he stole from *kids with cancer* to fatten his pocketbooks. We could talk about the reasons he was impeached – using federal resources for his own ends, threatening to withhold aid unless someone would agree to investigate a political opponent, bribery, obstruction of justice, and that whole smear. We could talk about the emoluments clause of the constitution and his many clear violations of it, and how he’s even attempted to push major conventions into his hotels to boost his bottom line. We could talk about the many ways he’s used his golfing to fatten his bottom line, including special hotel rates for secret service and golf cart rental. I have sent you a number of links listing various crimes of Trump. Would you like some more?
December 16th, 2020 at 7:15 pm
As far as the unawareness, review http://www.sheer.us/weblogs/nnn/3819 – it’s not general (although there’s a dig I could throw in here if I were just trying to score points, which I’m not, so I won’t), it’s specific
December 16th, 2020 at 11:13 pm
On Wednesday, July 27, 2016, at the Trump National Doral Golf Club in Miami, Florida, Donald John Trump violated 52 U.S.C. §30121(a)(2), which states:
“It shall be unlawful for a person to solicit, accept, or receive a contribution or donation [of money or other thing of value, or… an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State, or local election] from a foreign national.”
Trump solicited a contribution of a thing of value in connection with a Federal election when, during a nationally televised speech, he made the following statement in the context of the then-recent “Guccifer 2.0” cyberattack against the Democratic National Committee:
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let’s see if that happens… By the way, they hacked — they probably have her 33,000 emails. I hope they do. They probably have her 33,000 emails that she lost and deleted because you’d see some beauties there. So let’s see… Now, if Russia or China or any other country has those emails, I mean, to be honest with you, I’d love to see them.”
December 17th, 2020 at 4:02 am
*sigh*
Speaking of self-awareness, I don’t suppose that it’s occurred to you that the bulk of your statements outlining your unimpeachable rectitude in all matters is largely comprised of you insulting the living piss out of me.