Maybe gen a will be the ones with the balls to actually rise up, set everything on fire, and kill the people responsible for destroying everything. Because of the rest of us are just sitting around complaining.
And yes, I admit, I’m in that category.
It looks like if gen Z’s massive wave of unionization doesn’t work that’ll be the case. Gen A is likely the water war generation unless we clean up our act enough for it to be gen ß
fails self-restraint check
gen β, not ß
- edited to correct a tragic ragey blunder
self-restraint, not self-restaint
No, the Troika changed it when Germany took control of Greece 10 years ago.
Good old Gen SS
SS seems powerful, sure but the godlike powers of SSS class generations could put black holes to shame with their inescapable might.
SSSS class generations can harness the power output of a galaxy
I have been educating my child on unions and workers’ rights. When he’s old enough, we move on to the proper engineering and maintenance of guillotines.
i’d rather complain than be complacent at least
The funny thing is that we have politicians here in Australia that complain about “woke” environmentalists standing up for the environment by sitting down on the road. They’re trying to have them labelled as terrorists for simply sitting down in the street.
Meanwhile in France, Farmers who are angry about stopping of diesel concessions are setting things on fire, blocking streets with tractors and dumping manure and dirt into the street to block public servants responsible into buildings.
The point is two fold, French have always done protests better. And the west conservatives have a massive raging boner for eroding ones rights to protest.
I support protesting wholeheartedly, but blocking a road is among the most moronic ways to protest I can think of.
They are blocking emergency vehicles, people going to work, people doing errands, visiting family, goods being transported etc.
There is a reason people get pissed off and pull them off of the road themselves. It does absolutely nothing to further their cause.
It doesn’t even effect the people they protest against.Imagine missing your kids show, mothers dying breath or the flight to your long awaited vacation and family visit because someone couldn’t think of a more appropriate way to protest than sitting down and being an absolute butthole.
Isn’t the inconvenience literally the point though?
I don’t call people potentially dying an inconvenience.
They have no moral right to decide wether or not people make it to where they are going.So what do they hope to achieve?
If it is awarenes, then there are much better ways of doing itJust wondering if you’ve ever participated in a protest or this is just an academic exercise. In my experience well behaved protests are basically ineffective. It’s true that you can actually end up vilifying the cause in the eyes of people that you’ve inconvenienced.
But that creates social pressure on our leaders to address the problem. Either by compromise with the protests demands or clearing them out by force.
I get that it may block the direct path of an ambulance potentially. But most gps algorithms when they see a ton of stationary phones in the street interpret that as traffic and try to route around it.
At the end of the day, yes there is the small potential for harm to a few individuals, but (hopefully) the benefits to a larger group offset that.
I went to UT and there were protests in the street all the time. It always inconvenienced me and I actually came to blows with a few of the protesters, but they should know that’s a possibility going into it. There’s really no right or wrong here. There’s only large organized group against a few impacted drivers.
It is getting to the point that is the only option. Voting doesn’t matter, protesting doesn’t matter, complaining doesn’t matter. Millennials were raised that those are the processes, we have come to realize they don’t work and our kids are being raised with the understanding that that doesn’t work. If they want things to change, and it literally HAS to, that is what needs to happen. Either accept the status quo or forcefully change it. If I understand history, that is the most American thing you can do.
This seems like a good place to post this reminder that in the last 50 years income has lost to inflation by 137 points. That’s decades of prices rising faster than wages. It’s not rocket science. They walked away with all of the productivity gains, and gave the entire country a pay cut at the same time. You want a boring dystopia? How about stealing your paycheck a couple percentage points a year until suddenly we realize we can’t afford to live without 3 full time incomes in one household.
Where I’m from, the median house price has risen 600% relative to the median income in the past 50 years.
That means the deposit we pay today is the equivalent of the entire 30 year mortgage of the people calling you lazy.
When houses cost twice a person’s salary there were no 30 year mortgages.
True - that’s been the response to pricing getting out of control rather than addressing the fundamental issues with the economy.
Yup, the 137 points is just “core” inflation. Education, Housing, Food, and Cars all come in over that. Which is fine because those aren’t necessary in the US right?
And yet nearly anyone IRL you point this out to spouts some form of free market propaganda bullshit.
We have the ability to feed everyone in the world, but we don’t. We could house everyone, but we don’t. We could heal everyone, and we don’t.
Capitalism was great for raising a huge portion of humanity out of poverty. It has its limits however, and we are reaching them. It’s time to find a new way of doing things, not for profit, but because those things need to be done.
After WW2 almost every other developed nation was in ruin. The US was “the only game in town” when it came to production. This caused US labor to be in high demand and priced at a premium compared to places like in Europe or Japan, who were more concerned about rebuilding than exporting goods.
THIS is how a high school dropout could afford a house and a family. Because that high school dropout was basically your only option for labor. As those other countries finished rebuilding a lot manufacturing jobs left and things started to get “back to normal”.
The US was in a unique position but like most things it was just squandered. Now the US is “regressing towards the mean”. This is going to be the new normal because the last 40-50 years was an exception.
I moved from the US to Italy, where everything is cheaper and better quality, and we get free healthcare, free college, retirement pension and six months paid maternity leave. All this on a 35% tax rate. Public daycare is about $300 a month, housing expenses are about half of what I paid in the US, and while groceries are about the same, they are all local, organic, non GMO and -get this - crops are grown for flavor rather than weight. Houses are smaller here and wages are usually lower, but working hours are less and less intense, and the pace of life is much chiller.
Oh wow non GMO groceries what a magical fairy tale land.
That’s what’s gonna happen here in America. IF and I mean IF your family was lucky enough to have a single home in the family everyone’s going to be living at it. Many aren’t even close to lucky though…I wonder how many more will die on the streets in the coming years.
The idea that any working class boomer could raise a family/ own a house on a single income is a myth. That was only true if you were a man, and happened to be white. The federal government built the interstates to the suburbs, the GI bill loaned the money to buy the house, and sent you to college. All to the exclusion of POC and women.
Even the labor unions told black men that you couldn’t be in a union without a job, and couldn’t get hired unless you were in a union. This “golden age” economy was also when a divorced woman couldn’t get a bank account, an apartment, or a job.
The capitalists weren’t sharing more wealth, they were sharing with fewer people.
Sorry no, you are deliberately sliding this discussion.
Okay, and now it’s even worse.
There are many things that need change, but fixing the housing prices isn’t complicated, it’s just unpopular. You just need to take make speculating on housing as an asset very expensive. This will drive down the demand from non owner occupiers (businesses). It will also reduce the value of the largest asset most people own. People who invested so much into owning a home with the expectation that it will appreciate aren’t going to support policies that do the opposite.
We should’ve been taxing homes or land that people own but are not their primary residence, from the start.
It would be super easy to implement, and flexible - if housing prices are too high for 75% of the population, you raise those taxes little by little and the problem eventually sorts itself out. If it’s no longer a problem, you reduce the taxes.
Or you keep those taxes the same and use the money to reinforce social programs to make sure no one in your area ever has to go homeless or hungry again.
This is why it’s critically important for millenials who want a family to buy homes. Good ones. Big ones with land. It’s going to end up a generational home. You’re gonna need room for additions.
Oh yeah let me just reach into my pockets. Oh right, I’m not wearing pants and I’m commenting on Lemmy from my air mattress unable to sleep.
You think it’s gonna be better for your kids?
Oh you don’t have kids? Well then my post isn’t about you. Feel free to fuck off.
Are you aware of the general difficulties faced by the Millennial generation with buying housing? Because it sounds like you’re not. Millennials aren’t not buying homes because of a preference as much as a lack of option.
I am. That’s why it’s so important.
Whole thing reeks of setting us up for failure. Insecure housing means no/less kids, and that has huge rippling effects 30 m-50 years from now when millenials are too old and infirm to work and there’s not enough people to replace us in the workforce.
And then our boomer parents, who somehow despite all our best efforts are still alive, will be blaming us for it.
Oh, well in that case it’s also really important that I win the lottery
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lol the problem isn’t that everybody should move out, it’s that hardly anyone can afford their own apartment (let alone single family home)
Historically, most families lived together under one roof (even royalty). It was only in post WWII USA that the idea of each generation having its own home became prevalent.
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It’s wealth inequality. Capital accumulates capital, and it actually means something because wealth is control, and things like housing that determine control over people’s lives are forms of wealth that get concentrated away from regular people along with everything else.
IMO two main things need to happen:
- redistribution of wealth
- increase housing supply
increase housing supply
It makes sense to me that governments should be providing their citizens with items at the base of the pyramid for Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Air is everywhere, but governments mostly do have clean air regulations to make sure that air is breathable. Water is also typically provided by the city for every residence. It’s not free, but it’s pretty cheap. But, governments could be doing a lot more when it comes to shelter and food.
It’s a bit strange that governments do spend a lot of effort / money on employment and personal security when they’re higher up the pyramid than basics like housing and food.
It isn’t that strange if you think of us as being in a sort of situation of soft indentured servitude which is intentionally maintained.
Why? Slave owners fed and housed their slaves. Providing housing and food seems basic.
What other mechanisms exist to compel people to do work they wouldn’t choose at unrewarding wages?
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How do we tax the rich?
Get rid of an income tax and move to a federal sales tax on everything. Provide cost of living stipends for everyone. It could provide a safety net and stop tax avoidance schemes.
Sales tax on everything… isn’t a tax on wealth. Why not just do some of the things Scandinavian countries do?
Why is it so all-or-nothing on any one idea? There is a lot of nuance in how you tax income, and the teeth and regulation in order to effectively tax corporations. E.g. Anything over 400k, taxed at 90%… is something. Suggesting to tax it instead at 0% because you can slap on some flat sales tax… is just silly.
Doesn’t help that politics are very corrupt, politicians can do insider trading, media is owned by private interests, unions are demonised and unsurprisingly workers rights are almost non-existent, and you have a two party system that’s deeply flawed.
The US had a real shot at moving in the right direction, but the DNC saw it fit to sabotage its own candidate. I’d imagine treason charges for something like that… but, not even an apology.
Anyways…
You don’t need to tax wealth. Amased wealth will be taxed when the wealth is spent.
I understood your argument. It’s just not how it works. Even if amassed wealth was used to buy stuff as a exchange of goods, it wouldn’t be anything significant, and it would be less significant the more wealth we’re talking about. That in itself should clue you in on why this doesn’t work.
If taxes is a problem in terms of inequality, why… not tax it more progressively then? That’s the whole point of it. Reduce taxes for lower brackets, increase for higher brackets. Even if you thought 0% tax makes sense, which sort of already exists for the lowest bracket, and you want this to apply to more people… then, just do that, starting at from lower income side. Do the same starting from the upper income side, but there you increase it significantly. How far you go, is politics.
Put into place stricter regulations for the exploitation of workers. Actually enforce this stuff, not just give fines that are less than the gains. Replace your election system, it’s broken. Etc. There are soooo many things, that actually make sense, and would have a good effect. But looking at say 400k+ incomes and thinking “tax it at 0%”. Reagan’s grave would look like the classic zombie stereotype, except it would be his dick protruding from the ground.
The thing a consumption tax fixes is eliminating all the tax avoidance schemes. People living off their wealth don’t pay high taxes, they take out loans against their wealth and pay the loan back at 5% instead of the 20% capital gains tax. Carl Icahn, an investor was able to pay no income tax using this scheme. He had an adjusted gross income of $544 million but deducted it all from paying his 1.2 billion dollar loan.
People living off their wealth don’t pay high taxes
That’s… why you might want to tax wealth? Sales tax does literally nothing to address the problem of neither wealth nor income inequality. Income tax does address some of it. Removing it just because it doesn’t address all of it is absurd. Thinking it is covered by sales tax, is even more so. Those who would be in the lower tax brackets would have less buying power, and those with high incomes would be having a party, well… until the fairly immediate collapse of the economy and the riots start, that is. Just because one aspect doesn’t cover everything doesn’t mean you remove it all-together and replace it with… well, I’m still curious.
The ways to circumvent paying taxes, is what you go after, but you don’t do that by just removing existing obstacles. You do it by adding more obstacles. You can still tax income, and you adjust it to tax the high income earners much more. You evaluate wealth and tax that. You put a tax on absurd inheritances. You limit the profitability of trading necessities (e.g. housing) as goods by also high taxation.
The only thing I objected to in your original comment was to suggest 0% tax on income… and that this is compensated for by increasing sales tax… as if it solves anything at all. Income tax accounts for about 50% of the US federal budget. Tricks to avoid paying income tax are well known, but the idea of not addressing the issue, but instead just “start from scratch”, or suggest to remove something fundamental to the function of a modern state, is … tiresomely American. It’s like the Churchill quote of Americans always doing the right thing, after having tried everything else.
The most important thing is the rich getting richer
The Market Has Spoken: Get Fucked.
A riveting exploration of the markets and society of the 21st century that will be written in 2200 lol
People who think of their children and want to give them the best future but don’t have the money for it don’t have children. People who don’t care about the future of their children, ended up having children.
This leads to more children being born with shitty parents who don’t care about them.
