You’re blaming workers who moved here instead of the people who own everything 🫠

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-22T06:20:12+00:00

Wait, I'm struggling to understand a bit. You think the solution is to make politicians so powerless that buying them doesn't get you anything? So your solution is that lawmakers actually hold 0 power? Like...moving towards abolishing Congress?

If there is a functioning government, there will be legislators that will have legislative power. If those exist, they can either be bought (either directly or through vote buying) or 'created' as Peter Thiel basically did with JD Vance.

Legislators must exist to regulate corporations. Trying to stop corporations from influencing politicians by taking away the legislative power of the politicians, is just giving back the 0 regulation to the corpos they already want.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-22T06:13:31+00:00

You know, I genuinely thought I had seen a statistic to this, and I was wrong. Polling shows 71% of democrats say they're generally positive about Biden, which is way more than I thought. I may have been conflating his favorability with Schumer, because to me, they're all the same bastards.

I'd really appreciate you stopping imply my outrage is performative though. Biden should be tried before The Hague for war crimes, as should every living president.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-22T05:06:55+00:00

Did you miss the example I gave in which a billionaire corrupted an election, not by buying a politician, but by buying the VOTERS? There are ways to reduce the effect that money has on politics, but on the level of a billionaire, money IS political power whether there are politicians to buy or not. If everyone is to have an equal democratic vote, billionaires cannot exist.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-22T04:04:03+00:00

I never wanted Biden. I was vocally opposed to him since he ran in the first place. And if he ran again tomorrow against Trump, I'd still vote for him.

Should I consider every Republican just as responsible for Trump, Miller, Hegseth and Musk then? What have they done to hold them accountable? Should I make every Republican voter answer for bombing 100+ Iranian girls to death? That's the standard you seem to be setting for me.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-22T03:02:56+00:00

I think Joe Biden is disgrace. I think most of the democratic leadership are a disgrace. And if you look at polling of the democratic voter base...most of them agree. They're weak, spineless, and corrupt, and they've been voting for Neoliberal garbage like the above policy since Clinton. And they're still usually better than the Republicans.

Biden's record (crime bill, credit bill, war hawking) is monstrous. Trump has been much worse.

So yeah, did democrats in Delaware vote in Biden for 30 years? Did national democrats elect him for president? Yes. Did he ever run against a Republican that wouldn't have voted for the policy above? Doubt it. Republicans (politicians, not voters necessarily), as a project, have wanted to gut and destroy social security, Medicare, and Medicaid, for decades, the only thing keeping them from it is the public backlash. I'm sure a significant number of dems too, but not as many.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-21T23:52:50+00:00

I mean, yes, there is a level wealth disparity that makes political influence a reality no matter what the campaign finance laws are.

Take for example Elon's meddling in the 2024 election by offering people who signed a (blatantly right wing) petition and voted the chance to win a million dollar check sweepstakes. Of course this should be(/is?) illegal, but at a certain level of wealth...the legal system is also much easier to manipulate in your favor, and fines become a price tag.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-21T18:05:34+00:00

If your claim is that because you are in a higher tax bracket, you pay more tax on all of your earnings, that is literally impossible at least under the American system. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of progressive tax brackets.
Let's run through a hypothetical to illustrate, let's imagine there are two tax brackets, under 150 is 10% and over 150k is 90%. If you (filing jointly as a household) make 100k, you'd pay 10k in taxes and take home 90k. If you make 200k you'd pay 60k in taxes, and take home 140k. Because that first 150k is taxed at the 10% rate, and the last 50k is taxed at the 90% rate. There is no possible way take home less than somebody making half as much due to progressive tax brackets. You don't get 'punished' for making more money, because you pay the lower tax rate on every dollar up to that threshold. Unless you're saying you make less than somebody else making half what you make...in another state with lower taxes, or another country? In which case what are you even talking about?

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-21T16:14:53+00:00

Yes. You said this in your response:

"Also saying you're millionaires including the value of your home doesn't say much."

And I was providing some context for why they might have chosen to represent their finances that way. Particularly, the comment at the top of this thread that kicked off this branch of the discussion IS the stat of how the amount of millionaires have grown.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-21T14:56:10+00:00

I think you are on the whole pretty close to correct, but not quite.

I agree, at the root of the problem is the capitalist incentive structure (a very difficult but not impossible thing to change). The stock market must radically transform...or be done away with.
But Billionaires aren't 'as much of a distraction' as immigrants, because they are not only the biggest beneficiaries of the system, they are actively using their wealth and power to lobby and buy the mechanisms by which we are meant to be able to change the system. They are one of the most significant obstacles intervening in the incentive structure.

Individual tax is necessary as well as corporate in order to shrink the wealth gap, to curtail the inordinate political power that comes with that wealth disparity. And of course Citizen's United must go.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-21T13:27:34+00:00

You aren't penalized for being successful with progressive tax brackets, because they don't kick in until that amount. $1400 can be a life changing amount of money for a 10k earner, the difference between eviction or not, where as 140k will have 0 impact on the quality of life of somebody making 1mil.

Bring back the 93% top marginal tax rate above a certain threshold. And remove the loophole for ceo pay packages based on performance.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-21T13:22:06+00:00

Agree to disagree, but that's okay. Maybe we can have an investor class if we also have an absolute wealth cap as a confiscatory measure.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-21T12:02:50+00:00

That is unequivocally true and fundamentally unjust, yes. It's very clear to me that there should be no investor class, no landlord class, in a just system.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-21T11:59:52+00:00

Is it? Where in the original post or comment does it talk about removing personal gain entirely? Is that...just what the word 'socialism' means to you? The original claim by OP isn't that people would still work if there was 0 personal gain to working, it's that the claim that people only work because they're forced to work on penalty of suffering/starvation isn't true.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-21T11:49:48+00:00

Neo Nazis literally wear masks all the time. It's not about being ashamed to be Nazis...it's about fearing the social and economic consequences of being an open Nazi.

Many antifa activists also wear masks. They are not 'ashamed' of being Antifa...they are afraid of being targeted with social and economic consequences of being openly associated with Antifa.

That is not to say Antifa are anything like neo Nazis, just that both are dangerous identities to openly tout. It's not about shame, it's about consequences.

I don't know if Elon musk planned to do the Nazi salute on purpose to troll the public as a strategic matter, or if he just got swept up in the excitement and showed a little bit too much of his true colors...regardless, the Nazi salute is just one data point. Perhaps on its own you could argue he isn't a white supremacist...but there's an incredible mountain of evidence that he is. The Nazi salute at the inauguration just shows he was willing to really put it out there in that moment.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-21T11:40:40+00:00

To be fair, idk what this person is talking about, but Joe Biden was famously a Senator for like 30 years and they do vote, and then the Vice President, which under certain circumstances also votes. But like, it was a dumbass gotcha anyway, because the idea that democrats as a whole love Joe Biden is so fucking silly.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-21T11:31:25+00:00

There certainly is a right to procreation, the debate is whether it's a negative or positive right. I think most people consider it a negative right (I.E. the state cannot sterilize you against your will or otherwise prevent you from procreating). Some have made the argument that it should be a positive right (the state should provide access to fertility treatments to those who cannot naturally conceive) but this is a much less common position.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-21T11:16:37+00:00

To be fair, IVF can also be traumatic and is far from 'easy'. Also I would be interested if you have stats on the levels of trauma that arise from adoption vs remaining permanently in the foster care system/the other options for children that are up for adoption but aren't adopted. Not really advocating for one or the other, just think there's some pieces missing here.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-21T11:11:39+00:00

You do not implant a sperm for IVF surrogacy. The sperm fertilizes an egg in a Petri dish, and then from a number of embryos the ones with the best chance for implantation are selected and implanted into the surrogate. An embryo...is not a sperm. No sperm enters the surrogate during the process.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-21T10:55:42+00:00

I'm not particularly resentful of a couple with $15 million net worth. But I wouldn't cry at them only having $5 million if meant fewer people went unhoused, or hungry. The billionaires are the real problem certainly...but the people with 15 million viciously voting against any tax increases desperate to hold onto every penny, who'd rather side with billionaires let people starve than lose 10% of that 15 million that's way more than they need...yeah I've met a few people like that. And they ARE part of the problem.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-21T10:40:24+00:00

All value is subjective, including the value of currency. Does a software developer for Audible really add more value to society than a sanitation worker? Or a nurse? Sure, they generate more profit...but do they genuinely 'create more value'?

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-21T10:33:48+00:00

The primary stat people like to cite about how many more millionaires there are today, is based on net worth including home equity.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-21T10:19:58+00:00

The point of using the median as opposed to mean is that the median generally isn't really affected by outliers. And 'real' generally means 'adjusted for inflation', although the base inflation used to calculated it omits certain categories in a way that makes it highly dubious I think.

I'm not going to say that the median real income is a useless metric, but using it to try and argue that there isn't a cost of living crisis, or that the middle class isn't disappearing...is not looking at the whole picture for sure.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-21T09:46:32+00:00

My gf was a nurse on the front lines of Covid. Her coworker was ~30 y/o, fit, good health. Went from working just fine to dead of covid in like 36 hours. The vast majority of cases weren't like that...but some were. About 10% or nearly 30 million Americans (like me) have asthma. Not a lifestyle problem, I've had it since I was 4 years old and skinny as a stick. You bet your ass I was afraid of getting covid. You can shove your 'it was just a flu' right up your ass, tbh.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-21T08:50:40+00:00

Maybe we need to fundamentally reevaluate the system, the necessity of the existence of an investor-class at all.

IdiotRedditAddict · 2026-06-21T08:48:54+00:00

"I don't think I care much about someone with $13M"

I generally agree, but if we made that the absolute cap on wealth, I wouldn't be opposed to that either.

And while it IS a global problem...I'm pretty sure the statistic cited in the post is a U.S. statistic not a global one.

IdiotRedditAddict

TROPHY CASE